dakwa4life, March 19, 2009
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Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision - March 18, 2024
This pancocojams post showcase the New Edition's 1983 hit R&B song "Candy Girl" and presents examples of the "Candy Girl" rhyme/cheer.
This post also presents excerpts about the "Candy Girl" rhyme & foot stomping cheer from a mid 1980s New York Times article and a 2006 book by Kyra D. Gaunt entitled "The Games Black Girls Play".
The content of this post is presented for cultural, folkloric, and recreational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to New Edition for their musical legacy, including the song "Candy Girl".
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/08/candy-girl-r-record-hand-clap-rhyme.html for the complete lyrics to the "New Edition's R&B Song "Candy Girl" .
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
"Candy Girl" rhymes/cheers are based on the 1983 hit R&B song "Candy Girl" by New Edition. All of the versions of "Candy Girl" that I've come across begin with a close folk processed portion of th chorus of that New Edition song:
"Candy girl
You are my world
You look so sweet
You're a special treat."...
**
The "Candy Girl" examples that I have come across show a remarkable similarity in their words and their structure. As of the date of this post's publication (September 8, 2021), I've come aross examples of "Candy Girl" from the following geographical locations: Brooklyn, New York; Harlem, New York; East Harlem, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and some of its surrounding communities; Newark, New Jersey; and Los Angeles, California. "Candy Girl" has also been mentioned in a few other online comments without any geographical demographics.
I'm not sure whether the "Candy Girl" hand clap rhyme is performed differently than the "Candy Girl" foot stomping cheer (comments about the cheer performances are given below in this post). Here's a general note that I wrote about "Candy Girl" foot stomping cheers:
"Candy Girl" is an example of a "dance
style" foot stomping cheer. Those types of foot stomping cheers provide
opportunities for the "cheerers" (steppers) to show off their dancing
ability. The focus in these cheers is on dance names. Ideally, when it's her
turn as soloist, each girl is supposed to highlight a different dance. Usually,
this means current dances, but old school dances [popular dances that aren't
done anymore] can also be highlighted.
The foot stomping cheer "Candy Girl" begins with
the group-including the soloist- chanting a portion of the chorus of New Edition's "Candy Girl" song.
The person whose turn it is as soloist then briefly does a particular dance and the group performs that dance along with the soloist. The members of the group don't need to perform the dance exactly the same way as the soloist."
**
Do you remember the Candy Girl rhyme/cheer? If so, please share your version of "Candy Girl" in this post's comment section. For the folkloric record, please remember to include demographic information (where-geographical location), when (year/decade), and who (your race/ethnicity & gender and the race/ethnicity and gender of those who performed this rhyme/cheer with you. Also, please share how you performed it (Did you perform it as a hand clap rhyme or as a foot stomping cheer?) Thanks in advance!
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ARTICLE EXCERPT, EXAMPLES, & COMMENTS ABOUT "CANDY GIRL" RHYME/CHEER
These excerpts, examples, and comments are given in relative chronological order based on their publishing dates or collection dates.
Numbers are given for referencing purposes only.
1. CANDY GIRL (Version #1)
Everyone: Candy Girl.
All my world.
Look so sweet.
Special treat.
Soloist #1: This is the way we do The Bounce.
[Soloist does The Bounce while standing in the same spot and while continuing
to chant]
Candy Girl.
Group: Do the bounce.
Do The bounce.
[The rest of the group does their version of The Bounce while standing in their
same spot and while continuing to chant]
Soloist #1 All my world
[Soloist continues to do this dance for the reminder of this rendition of this
chant]
Group: Do The bounce.
The bounce.
[The rest of the group continues to do this dance for the reminder of this
rendition]
Soloist #1: Look so sweet.
Group: Do The bounce.
Do The bounce.
Soloist #1 Special Treat.
Everyone: Candy Girl
All my world
Look so sweet
Special Treat
Soloist #2: This is the way we do The Snake
[Soloist does The Snake while standing in the same spot and while continuing to
chant]
[Continue the same pattern as before with each new soloist naming and
performing a different current or favorite "retired" R&B/Hip-Hop
dance. This continues until everyone in the group has had one turn as soloist.]
-Tazi M. Powell (African American female; remembrance of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania in the mid 1980s; transcribed by Azizi Powell in 1997 from an
audio tape that I made in the mid 1980s of my daughter and her friends.
Tazi mentioned that if someone chose the dance "The Cabbage Patch" in
order for the syllables of that dance name to fit the beat pattern, the group
wouldn't say "Do" for the second mention of the dance name, i.e. They
would say "do the Cabbage Patch/the Cabbage Patch".
I also collected this exact same foot stomping cheer [with some different dance
names] in 2000 from African American girls in that same age group in Braddock,
Pennsylvania (about 10 miles from Pittsburgh).
However, I'm not sure if this cheer is still performed in
2013* in Pittsburgh or its surrounding communities. When I did my last informal
gathering of rhymes & cheers in 2007, few girls knew any of the foot
stomping cheers from the 1980s and 1990s.
*This summary was written in 2013 for a pancocojams post on this subject that
has been deleted and replaced with https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/08/candy-girl-r-record-hand-clap-rhyme.html and with this post.
****
2. [New York Times Article Excerpt]
…"Many cheers deal with the physical changes of adolescence.
The girls do a kind of hokey-pokey to the tune of New Edition's "Candy
Girl" for example, but instead of putting their "right foot in",
they shimmy forward with their chests and hips and then their buttocks.”…
-from Fromhttp://www.susanhartman.net/assignment_pix/cheers.pdf "It's Not Rap. Give A Clap And A Tap And Call It Cheers" by
Susan Hartman [New York Times Page C1 and C6]; [African American and Hispanic girls in Brooklyn, New York, 1986?
-snip-
The date that is shown for this article in the pdf. is Aug. 11, 198_. The year 1986 is mentioned in that article and may have been the article's publishing date.
I'm including this excerpt because it is an early documentation of what I call "foot stomping cheers".
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/06/1980s-new-york-times-article-about.html for a pancocojams post about that article. In addition to "Candy Girl", that article also mentioned the cheers "Hollywood Go Angels" (The lines quoted are the same as or very similar to the cheer "Hula Hula"), "Fly Girls", "Betty Boop", and "Lachichu' (which the girls indicated they made up based on seeing a homeless man). The first three cheers- "Candy Girl", "Hollywood", and Fly Girls" appear to have been widely known among African American girls in the 1980s and 1990s. This article is the only time I've come across any mention of "Betty Boop" [cheer] or "Lachichu".
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3. [Book Excerpt] & Candy Girl Fragment (Version #2]
From The Games Black Girl's Play: Learning The Ropes From
Double-Dutch To Hip-Hop by Kyra D. Gaunt (New York University Press), 2006;
chapter: "Mary Mack Dressed In Black: The Earliest Formation Of A Popular
Music", sub-title "Hand Clap Games"
(Pancocojams Editor's Note: The author describes African
American girls from Harlem performing recreational material that they knew for a television program on
WGBH in Boston, Mass. (October 18, 1999). That segment was filmed in New York
City.)
..."I turned my focus back to the girls, and five of
them were in a circle, surrounded by cameras and a sound boom...
"Lights, camera, action!" The girls began chanting the lyrics and melody of the opening lines of "Candy Girl". I recognized the song immediately and was titillated at discovering a game-song that showed a relationship between recent popular music culture and the ongoing tradition of creating girls games from it as a resource.
The girls patted hand with the girl to either side of them, creating an alternating current of contact around the circle. I was witnessing one of the latest bridges based on the early 1980s "bubblegum soul" of the
[page 73]
group New Edition. The game would have preceded these
eight-and nine-year-old girls by ten years: they were born in 1991 and 1992.
("Candy Girl" was New Edition's first single hit, and it became the
title of their first album released in 1983.)
[...]
The girls' handclapping, bridge version of "Candy Girl" highlighted the borrowing of popular dances from the recent past: It featured the Jamaican Pepperseed, marked by the alternating movements of the torso from left to right on one two three and (hold) four / one two three and (hold) four. With arms spread out to the side, the movements of the torso on one two three and (hold) four transferred wavy currents of motion from one arm to the other, causing the arms to look and feel like they were treading water. Th game featured the late 1980s dance the Running Man, popularized by bad boy Bobby Brown of New Edition. This dance involved the funky locomotion of lunging forward on alternate feet while thrusting your chest out and pulling your fists back by your sides. The dance was all about subdivided timing of strides marking the offbeats between one and two and three and four, while your feet executed a sliding action and a slight scuffling sound after each forward lunge, emulating a running man (or woman).
[...]
[page 74]
The girls had fit these three dances, and others, into the kinetic orality accompanying the lyrics. They repeated the game-song for the cameras.
Can-dy Girl/You are my world
Look-so sweet/ Spe-cial treat
Following this was a section of show-and-tell, an embodied call-and-response of a sort, where the conjunction between word and the body, between individuals and the collective, became apparent. As they sang of doing the Janet Jackson, they danced the Pepperseed. As they sang of doing the Mike Tyson, the did the Fight. As they sang of doing the Bobby Brown, they did the Running Man.
This is the way you do - the Janet // Jackson
["Pepperseed"]
This is the way you do - the Mike // Tyson ["the
Fight"]
This is the way you do - the Bobby // Brown ["the
Running Man"]"...
-snip-
The words in parenthesis are the names of the dances that Kyra Gaunt wrote that the girls did during that performance of "Candy Girl".
-snip-
As noted in this entry, Kyra D. Gaunt placed this "Candy Girl" example in a chapter of her book on hand clap rhymes. She also referred to it as a "game song".
Kyra D. Gaunt mentions cheers in her "The Games Black Girls Play" book (as noted in this 2017 pancocojams post http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/08/excerpt-about-foot-stomping-cheers-from.html , but it appears that she didn't consider "Candy Girl" a cheer.
I wonder whether the girls who performed "Candy Girl" for the cameras as documented in that book changed the way they usually performed that example. And I wonder if the way they usually performed "Candy Girl" different from the "cheers" that are described in this post?
I should also mention that I came across this comment written in 2020 by Kyra D. Gaunt in the discussion thread for the video entitled "90’s hand games (part 2)" that is given as #8 in this post.
"What city are you all from? I learned Candy Girl from
kids in Harlem. I wrote a book about Black girls musical games."
-end of quote-
Geneas, one of the two young Black women who published that video, responded that they were from Newark, New Jersey. Two other commenters posted these responses:
nyya0509
"Played these games growin up in Jersey"
and
Alexia BingHeath
"I can tell y’all are from Jersey because I’m from
Trenton and we did the same games."
-snip-
Presumably, these commenters included "Candy Girl" in the list of "games" that they grew up with in New Jersey. But what [also] interests me is that -like Kyra Gaunt- these two commenters used the term "games" as a catch all referent for a hand clap rhyme and/or a cheer.
****
4. CANDY GIRL (Version #3)
Candy girl,
all my world,
looks so sweet,
candy treat
This is the way
we do the (insert a dance)
Candy girl
Do the (dance) the (dance)
All my world
Do the (dance) the (dance)
Looks so sweet
Do the (dance) the (dance)
Candy treat
Do the (dance) the (dance)
(Repeat)
Directions:
This one involves the whole participation of the group at
once. You repeat it for as many dances as you have until you can’t think of
anymore.
- Jennifer (Korean), undergraduate female college student
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ; remembrances of rhymes she
performed when she was 8-12 years ; (she indicates that she learned this from
African American girls); sent via email
to Azizi Powell in 2005
-snip-
In 2005 my daughter, my two pre-teen nieces, one of their girlfriends
of the same age, and I presented a session on playground rhymes & cheers at
Carnegie Library (main branch. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Jennifer was a college
student who attended that session. She talked with me afterwards. I gave her my email address,
and she sent me this cheer and two hand clap rhymes that she knew.
Jennifer described this example of "Candy Girl" as a "Handclap with dance". I wonder if her description that rhe entire group participates as once means that the group decided what dances to do beforehand. In my opinion, this way of performing this cheer is a modification of the original "consecutive soloist" structure where each member takes one turn as the soloist, and comes up with a different dance on the spot and not with prior knowledge of the rest of the group. The rest of the group would then all do the dance with the soloist.
5. CANDY GIRL (Version #4)
candy girl, oh my world
look so sweet, special treat
this is the way you do the "wop"(or the
"snake", or whatever dance is cute that u know the name of)
candy girl, say wop,wop
oh my world, say wop, wop
look so sweet, say wop,wop
special treat, say wop,wop(and then move on to the next
dance)
- bitsy196 (African American female; Los Angeles, California
6-25-2003
-snip-
Unfortunately, I didn't save where I got this example from.
6.
Candy girl, all my world,
look so sweet special treat
this is the way we (then they name a dance i.e the whop)
Candy girl
do the whop the whop
all my world
do the whop whop
look so sweet
do the whop the whop
special treat
do the whop the whop...
goes on with different dances mostly what is in at the time.
-Guest KLC,(East Harlem, New York, New York);
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=63097 "Folklore: Do kids still
do clapping rhymes?" July 11, 2008
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7. CANDY GIRL (Version #6)
you are my world
you look so sweet
you're a special treat
this is the way we do the...
(insert things like butterfly, criss-cross, etc)
-ChrissyIrene, March 25, 2011, http://hunsford.blogspot.com/2007/02/childhood-sayings.html
8. CANDY GIRL (Version #7)
all my world
looks so sweet
special treat
this is the way we do the car wash [Do motions with one hand
held to the side like you were using a rag to wash a car]
gotta wash the car
Candy girl
gotta wash the car
looks so sweet
gotta wash the car
special treat
gotta wash the car
candy girl
all my world
looks so sweet
special treat
this is the way we wash our face [Do motion of washing your
face with a washrag in one hand.]
candy girl
gotta wash my face
all my world
Gotta wash my face
-Geneas and Atiyah (Newark, New Jersey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-NKrzvqz_I&t=2s&ab_channel=Geneas "90’s hand games (part 2)", Geneas, March 28, 2020
-snip-
Geneas and Atiyah are two young African American women from
Newark, New Jersey. The women demonstrate how to play various hand clapping
games. For most of the video they are seated. This is my transcription of the
handclap game that begins around 4:13-4:56
[There are two takes of this rhyme because of a mistake]. This is my transcription of that rhyme. Additions and corrections are welcome.
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