Ring, Ring de Banjo

"Ring, Ring de Banjo"
Song
Published1851
SongwriterStephen Foster

Ring, Ring de Banjo is a minstrel song written in 1851. The song's words and music are from Stephen Foster.

The song, written to mimic Southern U.S. Black dialect, is in the perspective of a newly freed slave who returns to his old master's plantation to play his banjo on the man's deathbed.[1] It is one of "minstrelsy's most explicit evocations of the potentially violent relationship in slavery between master and slave"[2] and inspired a number of imitators, including the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.[3]

References

  1. ^ Hall, Dennis; Hall, Susan G. (2006). American Icons. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-313-02767-3.
  2. ^ Walker, Janet (2001). Westerns: Films Through History. Psychology Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-415-92424-5.
  3. ^ Starr, S. Frederick (2000). Louis Moreau Gottschalk. University of Illinois Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-252-06876-8.