Camptown Races

Camptown Races Sample? / I is a song by American composer Stephen Foster, who first appeared in 1850 in the print. The piece is also known by the alternative title Camptown Ladies, its text describes in überzeichnetem African American English events during a horse race.

Music

Camptown Races limits his musical means to simple phrases, underline the popular character of the piece. Like all 201 published by Foster songs and instrumental movements, it is held in a major key, most of the early editions write D major before.

The melody in 2/4-cycle is strictly diatonic and, as in the musical example shown, accompanied only with the three main chords tonic, subdominant and dominant. Formally, the song from an eight-bar verse, which again - with a new text - is repeated and a following, also eight bar chorus.

In typical style characteristics of the - at that time anyway only nascent - Afro-American music Foster does not attack back. The characteristic syncopated rhythm to which the syllables are sung " doo -dah! " Is very common in this form in the folk music of the British Isles (eg, as a variant of the Scotch snap ).

Text

It is true that occasionally attempts to bring the scene of the unorganized, turbulent and bustle, of which the song tells a town called Camptown in connection that actually exists in Foster's home state of Pennsylvania. However, played the tradition of blackface comedy whose tone is recorded in the song to Foster 's lifetime rule in clichéd way to the southern states. The Foster biographer Ken Emerson also points out that the composer in none of his songs sings about his home region. The improvised horse racing, which provides the framework of the "plot" of Camptown Races, on the other hand fits quite well to the makeshift tent camps ( camp towns ), as they existed at the example of the workers along the railroad tracks, which were then re-created in large numbers.

Chorus:

Chorus

Chorus

As a result of its association with the minstrel shows Camptown Races is nowadays often considered a song with racist undertones, although Stephen Foster himself no sympathy for those in the USA that was still ruling slavery cherished entered in the Civil War for the Union cause and in his compositions endeavored to draw less discriminatory image of black Americans, as was customary in the 1850s.

History

The song first appeared as part of the collection Stephen Foster 's Plantation Melodies, under the title " Gwine to Run All Night" at FD Benteen, Baltimore and WT Mayo, New Orleans. Like other compositions Fosters, for example, Oh! Susanna, the piece was like presented in the context of minstrel shows and was even more firmly in the 19th century part of the musical folklore of the United States. The first minstrel troupe, the Camptown Races afforded public were, Christy's Minstrels, who had specialized since 1847 on interpretations of Foster's music. You attributed hence the " premiere " of the number in 1850.

In Giacomo Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West in 1910 is the conspicuous syllable sequence " Doo -da, doo -da day" alluded to Foster's song. Charles Ives processed the issue several times in his compositions, for example, it appears, presented by Horn, in his second symphony.

In jazz, the familiar tune was mentioned frequently. She is one of the preferred licks, well known for its intrinsically hurmorvollen quotes bassist Slam Stewart, while the keyboardist Jim Beard a stylistically modern version under the title Ode to the Doo Da Day wrote that has become known by the tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker.

His international fame owes Camptown Races, especially the cartoon series Looney Tunes, where Bugs Bunny and especially from the tap Foghorn Leghorn - is sung - as its signature tune of the song may apply.

Mel Brooks plays in the opening scene of his 1974 resulting Western spoof Blazing Saddles significantly to the aforementioned racist implication of the song: As the leader of a gang of white gunslingers a group of black railroad workers prompts a " good ole nigger work song " to sing for him, intone this Cole Porter I Get a Kick out of You ( 1934 ), ie a pronounced urban hits from the Great American Songbook. The grotesque humor of the scene based, apart from the macabre reinterpretation of anachronistic cited previous track, the fact that it is the white bandits, then intone the Camptown Races.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the spokesman doodah under the express terms of Foster's composition as a slang term for " dithering ", " restless, agitated".

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