JAFSProject,
****
There's a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
There's a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la la
There's a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Plum plum
And you show me your motion
Tra la la la la
And you show me your motion
Tra la la la la la
And you show me your motion
Tra la la la la
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Plum plum
2. Azizi Powell
"I definitely didnt see or hear it..."
** Reply 5. Azizi Powell, 2021 Although I don't hear that exchange in this video, if the White girl was told she couldn't play "There's a Brown girl in the ring" because she was White, I'm sure she was hurt by that. However, I wouldn't categorise that incident as "colorism". Colorism is defined as "differential treatment based on skin color, especially favoritism toward those with a lighter skin tone and mistreatment or exclusion of those with a darker skin tone, typically among those of the same racial group or ethnicity." [end of quote] That said, JAFSProject, I agree with what I think is your point that there is too much racism in the world- even though I believe that that girl may not have meant her comment (if indeed it was said) to be racist. ** Reply 6. Azizi Powell, 2021 "It's my guess that the "There's A Brown Girl In The Ring" singing game (and the earlier version "There's A Black Boy In The Ring" that is documented in 1904 in a book by Walter Jekyll ) was composed not just as a fun activity for children, but as a way of helping Black children develop and reinforce their personal self-esteem and their group esteem in a world that hates Black people simply because of their race.
I published a post on that video in my pancocojams cultural blog inpart, because it is a variant form of "Brown Girl In The Ring" that I wanted to document and share. Another reason that I published it was because of the change in color references. That change makes me question if this venerable "Brown Girl In The Ring" game has served its positive purpose, and should be retired from active use. I think that most children nowadays have already retired it. I believe it's time for adults to do the same.
**** Thanks for visiting pancocojams. Visitor comments are welcome.
Notice in that video that a little boy wearing a red shirt is playing near and sometimes standing as part of the ring (the circle) that the girls have formed for this singing game.
ReplyDeleteIt seems likely that if and when boys play this game along with girls, when a boy was the center person in the ring, the words to the singing game would change to "There's a Brown boy in the ring".
In his notes for the "Black Boy In The Ring" singing game Walter Jekyll wrote ""Shamador" is possibly a corruption of "camerado." [end of quote]
ReplyDeleteHere's some information about the old Spanish word "camerado"https://whitmanarchive.org/published/foreign/spanish/vasseur/introduction.html
“… Camerado is a defunct term borrowed from Renaissance Spanish, and is the root of the English comrade, … A little-used term, camarada is derived from the Spanish cámara, or chamber, and a camarada was originally a group sharing a chamber, or sharing a bed. Hence it first meant bedfellow, then more generally a companion or friend.”…
"Camerado" may have been the source for the word "shamador", but that word may also have changed its meaning over time. A similar phrase "Jump Shandalay" is found in the 1924 Dictionary Of Jamaican English "edited by Frederic Gomes Cassidy and R. B. Le Page (University of West Indies Press, 2002; Originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1967, and revised as a second edition in 1980):
"SHANDELAY sb dial; etym unknown — perh [perhaps] no more than a nonsense refrain: cf jump shamador. Some kind of dance or caper. 1924 Beckwith 172 (Song:] "Massa Puss and Massa Rat a jump shandalay, jump shandalay".
Note that Walter Jekyll's 1904 book on Jamaican singing games also includes a singing game called "Jump Shamador" [on page 211 of thay gutenberg document.
This video's example of "Brown Girl In The Ring" is the first time that I've come aross the verse "Stand and face your partner" in that singing game.
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of contemporary children's singing games in which the person in the center purposely goes to stand in front of someone who is forming the ring, and that person becomes the new center person. "Little Sally Walker Was Walking Down The Street" is a contemporary example of this type of singing game.
The color change from "Black" in Walter Jekyll's 1904 collection of Jamaican songs to "Brown" that is commonly used in this singing game may not have been because of any profound reason.
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me from reading (some) of that 1904 collection, that Jamaicans (and other Black people) were very conscious of skin colors for very real societal reasons, both within the population of people of African descent and outside of that population.
There's a number of songs in that Jekyll's 1904 collection that refer to skin color. Here's one of them:
[page] 275 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35410/35410-h/35410-h.htm
"Mister Davis bring somet'ing fe we all,
Mister Davis bring somet'ing fe we all.
Oh him bring black gal,
An' him bring brown gal,
An' him bring yaller gal an' all."
[end of quote]
This leads me to wonder if early on when playing the singing game "There's A Black Boy In The Ring", did people change the skin color of the person of African descent to "brown" or "yellow" (meaning light skinned) just like they probably changed the gender to correspond with whether the person in the ring was a female or a male?