Juba

DESCRIPTION: A dance and patting song: "Juba, Juba, Juba up 'n' Juba down, Juba all aroun' the town." "Juba jump, Juba sing, Juba cut that pigeon wing. Juba kick off this old shoe, Juba dance that Jubilo." Variations, as one might expect, are extreme
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1838 (William B. Smith; see Notes)
KEYWORDS: dancing nonballad food
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Randolph 263, "Dinky" (1 short text, 1 tune, which Randolph believes to be this piece; in any case, it's too short to really deserve a separate entry)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 201, "Round It Up a Heap It Up" (a "Juba" fragment follows the main text)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 98-99, "Juba" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Parrish-SlaveSongsOfTheGeorgiaSeaIslands, p. 116, "Juba Dis an' Juba Dat" (1 text)
Botkin-TreasuryOfSouthernFolklore, p. 708, "Juba" (1 text, 1 tune)
Courlander-NegroFolkMusic, p. 192, "(Juba)" (1 text)
Handy/Silverman-BluesAnAnthology, p. 53, "Juba" (1 text, 1 tune; notes on p. 204)
Wheeler-SteamboatinDays, p. 96, [no title] (1 fragment, filed under "Uncle Bud")
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Richard Walser, "His Worship the John Kuner" Vol. XIX, No. 4 (Nov 1971), p. 164-165, 167, 168-169, "(My massa am a white man, juba!"); "(Christmas comes but once a year)"; "(Haw low, here we go!)"; "(Run, Jinnie, run! I'm gwine away)" (4 short texts, the first two clearly linked by the refrain "Christmas comes but once a year," the latter two the refrain "Ha! Lo! Here we go"; the first having the refrain "Juba!"; the third and inked only by the fact that they are "John Kunner" refrains)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Richard Walser, "His Worship the John Kuner" Vol. XLVII, No. 2 (Midwinter 2000), p. 97-110 (a re-typeset reprint of Walser's article in volume XIX, easier to read but with the same song fragments), followed by Linda Wertwein, "John Kooner - Revisited," pp. 111-118 (with additional information about John Koonering but no additional song texts)
ADDITIONAL: John Allen Wyeth, _With Sabre and Scalpel_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1914 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")),"Juba," p. 62 (1 verse)
William B. Smith, "The Persimmon Tree and the Beer Dance" in _The Farmers' Register_, Vol. 6 (available on Google Books), p. 60, "(Juber up and Juber down)" (1 text)
Thomas W. Talley, Negro Folk Rhymes (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922 ("Digitized by Microsoft")), p. 9, "Juba" (1 text)
Roud #5748
RECORDINGS:
Lee Wallin, "Juba" ((on OldLove, DarkHoll [as "Juba This"])
NOTES [306 words]: Described in Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855. (Pp.252-253 in the Dover Reprint edition of 1936). Also fully described in Step It Down (Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes,1971: Harper & Row. pp. 27-30.)
"Juba" often refers to the patting pattern rather than the words. The words may contain disguised complaints about the treatment of Black people.
Some of the words -- without the "patting" -- were used as a "dandling rhyme" in my family, in Oklahoma, at least as early as 1909. - SHi
According to SIng Out!, Volume 40, #3 (1995/1996), pp. 80-81, "juba" was slave food (apparently a corruption of "giblets"). A "yellow cat" is said to be a white. Bessie Smith's version, transcribed in that issue, was mostly about the bad food given to the slaves. The issue includes a detailed analysis of how Smith patted out the song.
Richard Walser, in the NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal article, connects this with a custom he calls "John Kunnering," which he claims to have seen in Nevis in the West Indies, although they didn't use the name "John Kunner." This might be worth of a more detailed examination; I'm just lumping two of Walser's texts here because of the word "Juba!" Walser claims other John Kunner songs, here filed as "Young Gal Go Round the Corner," "Old Beau Bill," and "Oh poor Cooner Johns." - RBW
Wyeth learned "Juba" from the slave that tought him to make and play the banjo, in Tennessee, around 1855-1856. Wyeth sang and played the song for Scarborough. It's Wyeth who told Scarborough that "Old Aunt Kate was elaborated from Juba" (p. 99). - BS
The William B. Smith text, published in 1838, refers to a plantation dance "some years" before. He describes the patting and, to some degree, the dance. His chorus is "Hoe corn, hill tobacco, Get over double trouble, Juber boys, Juber." - BS
Last updated in version 6.7
File: BSoF708

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