Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision - July 19, 2026
This pancocojams post presents information about American play party songs, with a focus on White default, color blindness, and African American cultural contributions to play party songs and their performance activities.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, socio-cultural, and recreational and purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to to all those who are quoted in this post, and thanks to all of the collectors of play party songs.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/04/great-big-house-in-new-orleans-play.html for the pancocojams post entitled "Great Big House In New Orleans". That post showcases seven YouTube videos of the play party song "Great Big House In New Orleans" (also known as "Great Big House").
****
DISCLAIMER
Publishing these online write-ups and these excerpts does not mean that I agree with everything that is written in those excerpts and doesn't mean that I believe that these write-ups and excerpts provide a complete summary of these subjects..
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT (UNITED STATES) PLAY PARTY SONGS
SOURCE #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_party_(United_States)
"A play party is a social event in which toddlers gather to sing and dance. Play parties began in the 1830s in the United States as a route around strict religious practices banning dancing and the playing of musical instruments. The areas most influenced by the practice were the Southern and Midwestern parts of the United States. Folk songs, many of European and English origin, were used as means to give the attendants choreographed movements for each phrase. No instruments were played at the events, as they were banned by the religious movements of the area. Singing and clapping were used to convey each song. Because dancing was banned, the movements took on the quality of children's games. Though the performance of play parties dwindled in the 1950s, music educators use them as ways to incorporate music and dance in their classrooms.[1]
Some traditional examples of play-parties are: Skip to My Lou, Buffalo Gals, Bingo, Pop Goes the Weasel, Old Dan Tucker, Coffee Grows on White Oak Trees, and Shoot the Buffalo."
****
SOURCE #2
From https://balladofamerica.org/play-party-appreciation/ "The American Play Party: An Appreciation" by Cecilia Riddell, PhD
..."Origins of the Play Party
The
origin of the term "play party" is interesting, Some rural religious communities didn't approve of dancing or music of the fiddle, which they considered the "Instrument of the Devil." …. The Church code of conduct read that unruly song and dance was a social evil. Specifically mentioned was the forbidden swinging of arms and legs. … rural Americans agreed on an acceptable cover-up for dancing. It was a new term: play party. These two words together suggested healthy recreation to the authorities who might otherwise have objected. After all, there would be no fiddling since everyone sang the music. Approved conduct rules fell into place, such as no alcohol, no carousing, and no swinging by the waist.
The play party traveled with pioneer families across the United States in the 1850s and onward. Settlers and immigrants sang about cities and states. such as "Goin' to Boston," "Alabama Gal," and "Great Big House in New Orleans." I note, however, that they were only singing about these urban places, not wanting to move to them.
In the "old days," play parties needed some non-musical organization. There was a need to accommodate parents with babies or small children. Volunteer hosts provided extra rooms for the youngest while parents danced. Hosts (girls or women) secured a place such as a living room, parlor, or barn. They found room to tie up horses or to park buggies and wagons for those who didn't walk to the events. If the weather was fine, dances might take place in someone's field or front or back yard, perhaps under moonlight.
[…]
Play Party Songs
"Songs were catchy and provided an easy verse form to which new lines could be made up," notes Ives in The Wayfaring Stranger. One of those catchy songs was "Skip to my Lou," a favorite of Lincoln's. Others were well-known folk and popular songs of the time, such as "Yankee Doodle," "Pop Goes the Weasel," "Oh! Susanna," and "I've Been Working on the Railroad."...
I enjoy the melodies and lyrics of American personalities, such as "Old Joe Clark," "Sally Down the Alley," and "Captain Jinks."
[...]
Play Parties and Other Dance Forms
In many books and on recordings, the play party is listed as, or implied to be, a "singing game." Janet E. Tobitt described it as a "singing game for recreation." She writes that her examples are American play parties but refers to them as "singing games for recreation." Elsewhere in her publications, she uses the term "song dances." Notably, she was born and educated in the U.K., where the term play party is not generally recognized.
[…]
Reviving the Play Party
Music educators have become known for promoting play parties in journals and at national and local conferences and meetings, particularly by the American Orff Schulwerk Association. Martha Riley, a prominent music educator, wrote in the Orff Echo:
Accompanied only with singing, play parties use simple footwork with the emphasis on social and 'game' aspects. Children experience movements and concepts found in traditional folk dances . . . While you may think play parties are more difficult than dancing to recorded music because the children must do two things at once: sing and move. But the words of the song often include dance instructions, so that singing makes the game easier to play. Furthermore, when children are singing, the beat is internal… Children are more aware of the beat, phrase, and form when making music themselves."...
-snip-
The portion given in italics was written that way online.
****
AFRICAN AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON PLAY PARTY SONGS
SOURCE #1
AI Overview [result of my April 18, 2026 query]
"African American influence on play party songs—a genre of
folk dance/games popular in the 19th/20th centuries—brought intense rhythmic
energy, syncopation, and call-and-response structures derived from work songs
and spirituals. These songs bridged traditional African melodies with American
culture, introducing dynamic, game-focused rhythms into community dancing.
Key elements of African American influence include:
Rhythmic Syncopation: Moving away from rigid European
rhythms, African American play parties introduced "swing,"
"swung," and "rocked" rhythms that characterized community
social dances.
Call and Response: Play parties often utilized this
traditional musical form, crucial for interactive, group participation.
Incorporation of Game Songs: Specific game songs with roots
in African American communities, such as "Mary Mack," "May Go
'Round the Needle," and "Plantation Dance," were key to these
social gatherings.
Cultural Adaptation: The melodies and rhythms were directly
influenced by plantation traditions and the music of African descendants in
America, adapting African traditions to new contexts.
These, alongside religious music, blues, and later funk,
formed the foundational rhythmic elements of many American celebratory
practices and popular dances. "
****
SOURCE #2
AI Overview [This write-up is the result of my query on April 19, 2026]
"Identifying Black American elements in American folk songs
involves recognizing specific musical, rhythmic, and lyrical traditions that
originated from African musical practices and the African American experience,
particularly during slavery. Key elements include the call-and-response
structure, heavy use of syncopation, the pentatonic scale, blue notes, and
lyrical themes focused on work, sorrow, liberation, and resilience.
Here are the primary Black American elements found in
American folk music:
1. Rhythmic & Melodic Characteristics
Call-and-Response: A leader sings or plays a phrase, and a
group or instrument responds, mirroring West African communal music.
Syncopation & Polyrhythms: Layering different rhythms on
top of each other, emphasizing the "off-beat." This is the
foundational rhythm behind ragtime and early jazz.
Blue Notes and Melisma: "Bent" notes, usually the
3rd or 7th degree of the scale, that fall between major and minor. Melisma
involves singing multiple notes on one syllable.
Pentatonic Scale: Frequent use of a five-tone scale,
reflecting both West African and European influences.
"Shout" Style: Spirited, rhythmic, and often
improvised singing style associated with spirituals.
2. Performance Practices
Improvisation: Individual creativity is prioritized within
the structure of a song.
Roughness/Noise: A preference for a "dirty" or
"stank" sound—varying vocal timbre, raspy vocals, or vocalized
"groans" and "hollering" to heighten emotional impact.
Body Percussion: Accompanying music with handclapping,
foot-stomping, and dancing (e.g., the Ring Shout).
3. Lyrical and Structural Themes
Spirituals and Freedom Songs: Songs filled with double
meanings, using biblical imagery (like Moses or Jordan) to discuss escaping
slavery or political, social, and religious liberation.
Work Songs/Sea Chanteys: Rhythmic, repetitive songs designed
to coordinate manual labor, designed to lift spirits and keep a steady pace
while working on plantations or docks.
Blues/Ballads: Often focus onpersonal hardship, sorrow,
love, or the stories of "trickster" figures who outsmarted authority.
4. Instrumental Influences
The Banjo: An instrument with direct roots to the West
African akonting, brought over during the Middle Passage and initially played
entirely within Black communities before being adopted into white Appalachian
music.
The "Bones": Percussive, rattling sounds created
by holding animal bones between the fingers.
Examples of Songs:
"Follow the Drinking Gourd": A spiritual
containing coded instructions for escaping slaves.
"John Henry": A ballad celebrating a strong black
work song leader.
"Deep River": A traditional spiritual showing the
expressive, soulful melodic structure.
"Shortnin' Bread": Features the rhythmic
patting/syncopation techniques.
Note: Many American folk songs are a result of
"creolization," or the blending of African and European musical
traditions, particularly in the South, making the African influence fundamental
to American vernacular music.
-snip-
These fonts are the way that this write-up is given online.
-snip-
I'd add that the text (words) and the textual structure also may suggests that a particular play party song or other folk song originated with African Americans.
****
SOURCE #3
From https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/game-songs-play-songs
"African American children worked beside their mothers in the
field and other settings, where they were exposed to the singing of adults.
Leisure time mutually engaged children and adults in various play/game
activities of both African and European origin and was broadly categorized as:
baby games and plays, handclapping plays, jumps and skips, singing plays, ring
plays, dances, house plays and home amusements, and outdoor games. Games/plays
frequently were played in a ring or line formation. Despite a segregated
society, the traditions of both cultures passed back and forth and were
modified. In keeping with African practices, performers added individual
signatures to these traditions through minor changes in melodies, rhythms,
words, and/or movements. They also created songs to accompany new games and
forms of play that became part of the broader repertoire.
[...]
Musical Features/Performance Style
The African American tradition is distinguished from its European-derived counterpart by its distinctive imagery and complex dance steps, accompanied by rhythmic (often syncopated) handclapping, and foot-stomping. The singing employs call-and-response structure and repetitive choruses also associated with African musical practices.
Lyrics
Game and social or play songs derived text from various
sources: the game itself; folktales; children’s fantasies and experiences;
popular songs of the time; and television commercials, along with their
interpretation of local events and the world around them (often using their
colloquialisms)."...
-snip-
Italics added to highlight that sentence.
****
MY NOTES ABOUT WHITE DEFAULT, COLOR BLINDNESS, AND PLAY PARTY SONGS
People who teach play party songs or other folk songs may think that they are being "color-blind" by not mentioning race. However, by not mentioning race they are actually reinforcing the viewpoint that only White people are responsible for composing those songs. This is because both online and offline "White" is the default race (just as "male" is the default gender). When no race is mentioned for an individual (unless the discussion is about some criminal act or something that is stereotypically considered to be the purview of a particular race/ethnicity), people automatically assume that that person is White (just as people automatically assume that people posting online are male).
Regardless of their race or ethnicity, children shouldn't be led to believe that White people were the only composers of play party songs or other folk songs.
White default means to automatically assume that the creators everything good were White people, and particularly White men.
This automatic assumption hits home for me because I'm a seventy-eight year old Black woman who remembers going to an elementary school (in Atlantic City, New Jersey) in the 1950s when all the teachers were White except for two Black teachers. And I remember one of those White teachers saying "Black people didn't have any culture".
That statement may have been what eventually led me decades later to start and work on this pancocojams blog which focuses on sharing information about and celebrating examples of Black cultures in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
****
AI OVERVIEW WRITE-UPS ABOUT WHITE DEFAULT
AI Overview [This write-up is a result of my April 19, 2026 query about the meaning of "White default"]
"White Default: Examining Racialized Biases Behind AI ..."White default" refers to the societal, cultural, or media-driven assumption that whiteness is the standard, normal, or neutral state. It means that white characters, experiences, or behaviors are assumed unless specified otherwise, often centering Western perspectives and perpetuating racialized biases in literature, media, and AI.
Key Aspects of "White Default"
Media and Fiction Representation: In Western fiction,
characters are often assumed to be white unless their race is explicitly
stated, largely due to historical trends and author demographics.
AI and Societal Bias: Generative AI tools often reproduce
this bias, creating images that reflect a white default, which can reinforce
stereotypes.
Perception and Normalization: This concept suggests that
whiteness is treated as a "litmus test" for normal, with other races
often defined by their difference from this norm.
The Power Dynamics: Critics analyze this phenomenon to
understand how power structures and cultural biases are upheld, often
highlighting how it marginalizes other experiences.
Countermeasures: Many are actively working to break this
pattern by ensuring diverse representation in literature and avoiding the
assumption that unspecified characters are white.
****
WIKIPEDIA EXCERPT ABOUT RACIAL COLOR BLINDNESS
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_color_blindness
"Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's
race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in
society.
The multicultural psychology field generates four beliefs that constitute the racial color-blindness approach. The four beliefs are as follows: (1) skin color is superficial and irrelevant to the quality of a person's character, ability or worthiness, (2) in a merit-based society, skin color is irrelevant to merit judgments and calculation of fairness, (3) as a corollary, in a merit-based society, merit and fairness are flawed if skin color is taken into the calculation, (4) ignoring skin color when interacting with people is the best way to avoid racial discrimination.[1]
****
EXAMPLE OF A (UNITED STATES) PLAY PARTY SONG- "GREAT BIG HOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS" PLAY PARTY SONGS AND WHITE DEFAULT, COLOR BLINDNESS, AND THE PLAY PARTY SONG
Most online examples of the play party song "Great Big House In New Orleans", the lyrics refer to "every room that I been in/filled with pumpkin pie."
The replacement of the words "chicken pie" with pumpkin pie" may seem an innocuous way of substituting something familiar for something that is unfamiliar. But terms that are familiar in one population may be unfamiliar in another population.
That substitution effectively "White-wash" that play party/folk song because-generally speaking- pumpkin pie is much more familiar to White people than Black Americans and the opposite is true for Black Americans.
"Pumpkin pie" is largely a dessert that White Americans and may be unfamiliar to Black Americans who are much more familiar with the similar looking, but different tasting "sweet potato pie". The opposite is true for White Americans.
Click https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2022/1122/What-s-in-a-pie-History-culture-and-a-taste-of-home for the article "What’s in a pie? History, culture, and a taste of home" by Kendra Nordin Beato, November 22, 2022
"If you grew up in the northern United States, it’s likely you associate pumpkin pie with Thanksgiving. But travel south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and another orange-colored pie reigns supreme on the holiday table – sweet potato pie.
Historically, pumpkins don’t grow well in the Southern heat. But that’s not the only reason for the absence of pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving was originally perceived as a holiday forced on the South by the victorious North after the Civil War. The arrival of pumpkins was just another pie in the face.
There’s more to the story. Sweet potatoes are also central
to Black Southern cuisine; they’re tied up in the history of the slave trade,
the yam, and plantation cooks.
[...]
Maia Harrell, who grew up in Georgia, is a self-described pie nerd. She started working in a pie shop in high school, studied the history of Black women and pie-making in graduate school, and then launched her own business, Lord of the Pies.
Today, she makes more than 100 pies a week and sells them at farmers markets around Atlanta. Ms. Harrell, whose family traditions lean more toward cake, didn’t even have her first piece of pumpkin pie until she worked in the pie shop. She found it bland.
“I was raised with ... ‘Black folk don’t eat pumpkin pie’ kind of thing,” she says. “If it’s an orange pie, it’s always sweet potato.”
Even more surprising, she says, are her white customers who have never seen a sweet potato pie before. “I got a lot of questions like ... ‘Is it sweet?’ ‘Is it savory?’ I’ve never had to explain to somebody what a sweet potato pie is!” Without fail, she adds, they grew up in the North."...
-end of quote-
The replacement of the words "chicken pie" with "pumpkin pie" also erases important elements of pre-emancipation American history and culture, particularly with regards to the history of the scarcity of food for enslaved African Americans. African American originated songs about "chicken pie" reveal how that population coped with food scarcity by baking chicken pies that would last for several meals. The lyrics to some of those songs that referred to "chicken pie" revealed their desire for food and a life when they wouldn't have to worry about being hungry.
Read this excerpt from https://matadornetwork.com/read/classic-southern-pies. Why
pie flourishes in the South [no author or publishing date given]
"So many of the most iconic pies in the country have Southern
roots: sweet potato in North Carolina and Alabama, pecan in Oklahoma and Texas,
key lime in Florida, and coconut cream in South Carolina. Other styles have
barely caught on in the rest of the country and remain Southern secrets deeply
rooted in the region’s culinary culture…
A history of Southern pie would not be complete without
mentioning its ties to slavery. This is especially true for enslaved women, who
were responsible for all of the cooking in the homes of wealthy white families.
Slaves might also be responsible for popularizing another favorite Southern
pie: sweet potato pie. Antebellum cookbooks are packed with recipes for this
Southern favorite, but slaves likely cooked most of these pies in plantation
houses. Sweet potato pie rarely appeared in their own homes until stoves became
more affordable, according to food writer and historian Adrian Miller.
After the Civil War, many recipes were adapted during times of food scarcity. NPR reports that one 1863 recipe details how to make an apple pie without apples. In a story for The Washington Post, writer and pastry chef Lisa Donovan explains that a freed slave who made a living selling pies in 19th century Alabama might be responsible for one of the first ever chess pies. In 1881, a former slave named Abby Fisher published her remarkable cookbook, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking, which features recipes for custard pie (similar to chess pie), as well as sweet potato pie. Chess pie is another pie that grew out of need — it replaces citrus with vinegar and fresh milk with buttermilk.
Burdett of Crook’s Corner thinks that creating meals, not just pie, with easily obtainable and inexpensive ingredients is an essential piece of Southern cuisine.
“With most food when you’re in the South, when you’re broke you just kind of pull ingredients, and that’s where new things develop and that’s how Southern cuisine stays alive,” Burdett says. “My grandmother just made what she had available, and those dishes morphed into something amazing. That’s just ‘what’s in the kitchen’ kind of cooking. Being broke and not having any money and trying to cook for a family.”...
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
