Episode 31: History and Symbolism in Jump Rope/Hand-Clapping Nursery Rhymes

Episode 31 explores the intricate history behind well-known nursery rhymes such as Patty Cake, Miss Mary Mack, and Miss Susie Had a Steamboat. By intertwining the subjects of race, literacy, and camaraderie, she uncovers how nursery rhymes served as a powerful medium for marginalized communities to express resistance, culture, and social evolution. Gina's research uncovers a treasure trove of connections, from the role of these rhymes in African American jump rope games during the Great Migration, to their importance in building camaraderie among World War I troops. As Gina navigates through these rich historical narratives, she emphasizes the importance of preserving these oral traditions that capture the essence of past eras. #NurseryRhymeHistory #CulturalConnections #HiddenHistory #MarginalizedVoices #JumpRopeSongs #SocialEvolution #HistoricalSignificance #OralTraditions #DeepDivePodcast #StorytellingThroughSong #WorldWarITroops #GreatMigrationNarratives #PreservingHeritage

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to a Tisket Tasket Podcast. I'm your host, Gina, and today we're going to look more in depth at the last three nursery rhymes that I've covered. These rhymes are Patty Cake, Miss Mary Mac, and Miss Susie Had a Steamboat. This episode contains spoilers for episodes number 27, 28, and 30, so please listen to those before you listen to this one. Before we get started, please check out my website, link in the description, for further instructions on how you, yes, you, can help me get to Portland to speak at the American Folklore Conference in November of this year. Your contributions are not only appreciated, but help keep this podcast going. But let's get started this week discussing the history of these jump rope and hand clapping songs. And, moreover, the symbolism and history just surrounding this era. Honestly, I wasn't sure where to start with these. Miss Susie at a Steamboat and Miss Mary Mac are both American nursery rhymes that are from the late 19th century, early 20th century. Patty Cake is much older and also European. But the three have a lot in common. I would go as far to say that these three nursery rhymes are excellent representations of the deep and dark history of marginalized communities. I've discussed in past episodes that nursery rhymes are excellent representations of culture, as well as class, that sometimes do not make it in traditional history books. However, this episode will drill down further into the nitty gritty and the darkness that prevails. For this podcast episode, since I have so little time to talk about it, I will briefly discuss two major areas of history, primarily focusing on American culture. These two areas are race and literacy. Not only do I find it difficult to limit myself to these giant areas of study, but also how to talk about them in separate categories. You see, nursery rhymes intertwine these categories, and it's yet another reason why I find nursery rhymes so fascinating. Also, I just wanted to note that this episode is a little bit different than the last one where I talked about symbolism. The last one, I pinpointed specific areas of which the nursery rhymes show symbolism and then talk about it. But this one is more of an overview of history, because when I was researching it, I just really fell down the rabbit hole of studying the history surrounding nursery rhymes and songs as a whole, and how it influenced specific culture. And I just found it absolutely fascinating. And I want to note that this could be an entire area of study, as in, someone could take just a facet of what I'm talking about today and make it their entire academic career. So it's really hard to make such a specific point in 20 minutes when there's just so much to talk about, but I'm going to try my best. My podcast certainly is not the platform to go into depth about the despicable acts of enslavement. Nor do I have the knowledge or research to really do the subject justice. However, many researchers before me talk about the connection between African Americans, their culture, and song. What is relevant to this podcast is the use of nursery rhymes in African American culture. In the book, The Games Black Girls Play, Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to Hip Hop, author Kira D. Gaunt talks about African American popular culture and its beginning in double dutch or jump rope games. And I did talk about this when I was talking about Miss Mary Mac. When talking about girls playing complicated jump rope games, Gaunt writes, Watch their daily routines, which mix colloquial gestures and verbal expressions, and you'll be hooked on their fascinating rhythms, their use of call and response from word to body, and their rap like manipulations of ph ph phonetics and rhymes just for the fun of it. Gaunt's book is a wonderful examination of gender, race, and culture. She calls it a story about the performance in politics of race, gender, and the body and African American vernacular and popular music. It's a fantastic study of learned culture, and I wish I just had more time to talk about it. I'll link the book into my reference page if you'd like to read it further. Nevertheless, Gant's point of these songs is that the performance of politics really begins to get into the essence of nursery rhymes. Like Miss Mary Mac, that have their roots in jump rope games. Researcher, Researcher Cornel West discusses this under the term institutionalized terrorism, referencing both slavery and Jim Crowism. Gant and others talk about how singing and dancing were physical ways to fight their oppressors. To bodily represent, quote, somebody ness. If you'd like to read more, or even a first hand account about how songs played a part in fighting the oppressiveness of slavery, I also highly recommend Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by himself. You can find it on the reference page in my blog. Furthermore, if you'd like to learn about the evolution of African American influence on music, I highly, highly recommend Ken Burns 2001 documentary, Jazz, on PBS's website. I mean, I love all Ken Burns documentaries, but this one was particularly fascinating because it's just such a comprehensive look about music evolution, and that was such an area of study that I knew nothing about. And so it was really cool to see musicology research combined with culture. And combined with race, and it was just super fascinating, and again, it wasn't an area of study that I knew much about. Give it a watch, let me know what you think. But moving on from what little I said about slavery, we can also consider these nursery rhymes in the face of immigration. Both Miss Mary Mac and Miss Susie Had a Steamboat are examples of how race is represented in nursery rhymes. And I talk quite a bit about that in their individual episodes. In this case, these rhymes can provide viable information about America's Great Migration. The Great Migration, one of the largest intracontinental immigrations in the United States history, pertains to the approximately 6 million African Americans that moved from the American South to the North and Midwestern states from 1970s. There are many reasons that this migration happened, mostly pertaining to jobs and job loss from the industrial South after the World Wars. as well as an escape of the horrific Jim Crow laws. The larger cities in the North offered more opportunities to Black populations. The Great Migration affected more than just populations, and I talked a little bit about this in the Miss Mary Mack episode where I shared the interview of teacher Gertrude Westfall And her take of 1970s Chicago, where she taught. And she talks about how clapback songs allowed for African American children to utilize the nursery rhymes in clapping songs from their American Southern culture to learn a more Northern, or as educator Saad's, a more educated dialect. Looking back from a broader historical perspective, you can see how music and song evolved and changed as African Americans moved throughout the United States, and I'm talking about moved both like physically and culturally. At first, songs were used by African American slaves to sing against oppression, show faith, or even send messages, and nursery rhymes that followed or were sung congruently in clapping games were kept in that culture. They were passed down orally from parent to child. and brought with them as they moved north and entered an entirely different community and developed an entirely different culture. And with all this goes hand in hand with the idea of literacy. The National Center for Educational Statistics started recording literacy rates in 1870. The NCES recorded persons 14 years old or over who were illiterate, and they defined illiterate as unable to read or write in any language by race and nativity. In 1870, 20% of the entire adult population was illiterate. 80% of that 20% were black or African Americans or black population. By 1900, 10. 7% of the entire population were illiterate, 44% of that being black population. Former slaves had little to no educational opportunities to learn to read and write, and it is a clear example of how nursery rhymes and songs were so important to overall literacy. I would argue that just because one couldn't read or write doesn't mean that they did not have literacy. I think nursery rhymes, clapping songs, jump rump songs, I think that's all an example of literacy. It may not be written, but it certainly is oral. And it's doing the same thing that the written word does. It passes down meaning. It provides context clues and complicated tropes. But that's an entire other podcast that I could talk about the meaning of literacy. Moving on, one didn't have to learn to read or write to sing or celebrate. Communities of Black Americans shared stories through oral messages, and it is no wonder that nursery rhymes and clapping songs were so popular. In fact, it wasn't until after 1952 did the illiteracy rate for Black Americans drop below 10%, as compared to their white counterparts, whose illiteracy numbers dropped below 10% by the 1890s. By the way, if you're curious, NCES reports that 79% of Americans have quote English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low level inferences. And you can definitely tell how they changed the way they define literacy there, right? But, that translates to roughly around 43 million U. S. adults, 16 and above. And a very interesting note, of the remaining 21% illiteracy, the largest percentage of that are white US born Americans, not black Americans. So I thought that was really fascinating, and you can see my reference page for a full rundown of statistics, but why do I bring up literary statistics at all? Well first, I'd like to remind listeners that these statistics only cover Americans. And that the majority of nursery rhymes I've talked about on this podcast are from other English speaking countries. While literacy or education was not available for everyone, nursery rhymes that were passed down orally were much more accessible for those who could not read or write. And originally, when I was writing my notes for this episode, I really wanted a third major category to be socioeconomic class. And just to talk a little bit more about that, Even if one could not read or write, nursery rhymes were still passed down from parent to child. And those nursery rhymes, as I've spoken before, contained all sorts of information. They contained satirical information, political information, information about money, or information about food or culture. Information about just life facts, and so I think that really goes back to when I was saying, like, literacy doesn't just have to be about the written word, and when I was reading Miss Mary Mack and Miss Susie, and its deep connection in African American culture and roots, I was just really absolutely fascinated by the evolution of these nursery rhymes and clapping songs, and how they played such a large role in literacy in young adults, if that makes sense. Not only, going back to what I was saying about literacy, while literacy or education was not available for everyone, nursery rhymes that were passed down orally were much more accessible for those who could not read nor write. And in fact, other facets of nursery rhymes made it easier for people to remember and repeat. In case of Miss Mary Mac and Miss Susie, the rhyming scheme is easy to remember. And further, the subject matter and the silly crude words that are used to make it easy to remember and fun to repeat. Which kind of brings me to another point of literacy, and that has to do with camaraderie in vaudeville. The last component I want to cover in this episode is how these nursery rhymes, the three that I mentioned specifically, also play a huge role in social media, and I use social media as a broader term than we mean today. I don't mean Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or X or whatever it's called now. I mean literally media that is meant for the social community. And I talk a lot about this when I talk about vaudeville acts, right? And in the last few weeks, I talk about how these specific nursery rhymes were popularized in the 1900s through the 1940s. And it's really easy to pinpoint the major events of the time. If you think about, okay, what are the big events that happened in the early 20th century? You're gonna be like, oh right, the World Wars. And nursery rhymes, and I use that term broadly, or these clapping songs, or these singing songs, We're part of the World War music culture, as I found out. In World War I, over four and a half million men served in the American military. And in World War II, over 16 million Americans served. Music and entertainment played an important role in the wars as a way to build camaraderie among the troops, keep spirits up, and stave off boredom. While some of the nursery rhymes we've covered were definitely geared toward infants, songs like Miss Mary Mac and Miss Susie Had a Steamboat were popular to sing among the troops, especially during World War I, as they were silly, easy to learn, easy to remember, and held a common enough theme to bridge across servicemen. I do want to comment that this was probably more relevant during World War I than World War II, as in the First World War, Americans didn't have access to public radio that World War II servicemen had. I want you to take a moment to think about, here you have men, primarily, from all over the United States, serving, together, spending all of their, all of their time together in very treacherous situations, we think of the Trench Warfare in World War I, and if you just google Trench Warfare songs, a bunch will come up. So you have to think about what, you know, these men are going through horrific circumstances in which they're seeing, awful, awful things, and they needed something to bond other than the horrors of war. And oftentimes these songs were a way that they bonded, and there are all sorts of really silly or really crude or very simple songs that these men would sing and use to build this camaraderie. And so nursery rhymes, and I use that term broadly, played a huge role in this, which I think It's really, really fascinating and something I didn't really get to talk about in the last couple episodes. So anyway, of course, these songs probably played a bigger part in World War I than World War II, but these could be passed around very easily and remembered and valuable. And of course, as I mentioned before, any songs that were humorous or dirty We're even more popular, and at this time, I'd like to take the time to play a popular trope song called Bang Bang Lulu, which is often mentioned along with songs such as Miss Susie at a Steamboat. Bang Bang Lulu, based on the older Bang Bang Rosie, which I think is Irish in origin, was used as a cadence song during the World Wars, and military cadence calls were call and response songs that were used for marching, running, or working. And as you can hear by the lyrics, it was a bit raunchy and ridiculous, making it popular among the troops to sing. And where I got this version was that the Library of Congress had a recording called Conversation with Weathers and Bill Henry, in which they sing part of Bang Bang Lulu. The notes say, recordings of songs, sog fragments, and conversation with Marty Weathers and Bill Henry, students at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, ABAC, in Tifton, Georgia. By the way, I visited that college. That's neither here nor there, but anyway. And recorded in that college's Crestwell Hall, also headquarters and lodging for the Folklife Project. Performances of Bang Bang Lulu learned from a high school teacher, and a fragment of I Like to Go Swimming with Bow Legged Women. Weather is mentioned as a friend who plays 12 string guitar and knows all kinds of sturdy songs. So let's go ahead and listen to it now. Wasn't that absolutely ridiculous? I mean, I know it doesn't fit what traditionally is called a nursery rhyme. Gonna have to follow the theme with me here. And when I listened to it, I was just blown away. First of all, I spent Hours, literally just hours trying to find a recorded version of Bang Bang Lulu or Bang Bang Rosie or an iteration, and I just had a heck of a time finding it. In fact, when I looked up World War I songs, I found some Trench songs, but they were all like propaganda songs, they were all like, I don't know, like... You know, wishing to go home, which is fine, but I was really disappointed that there really wasn't much of the recordings of the songs that were just ridiculous and silly that I know were there. I mean, you see them in records, but, in, in written records of World War I, but you don't see them in audio records, and that kind of makes me sad. I feel like that's a censorship of history. And that's not a part of this podcast, but I really liked the recording I just showed you because not only is it an actual audio recording of the song I was looking for, but in it, the young man says that he learned it from a high school teacher, which first of all, what high school teacher is teaching you that, but nevertheless, it shows that it was passed down orally, which is exactly what I'm talking about here. Here is culturally songs and stories that are passed down from generation to generation. And just is ridiculous, number one, and just kind of continues a culture and a history. And so, I really wanted to share that with you. Now, I have a lot of notes. I have pages and pages of notes from the last four episodes. And honestly, I could probably write a book of just these Just, just these three, or even just Miss Mary Mac and Miss Susie at a Steamboat. Two of the topics I really didn't get to expound on further were both vaudeville and circuses, and I do talk about both of those in their individual episodes when I talk about Miss Mary Mac and Miss Susie at a Steamboat, especially when it comes to race and exploitation. But the other thing I want to drive home again, especially with vaudeville, And, and circuses, of course, but these are social performances before TV, before radio, before mass telecommunication, and especially in American communication history, you have to think about how news passed between people. It's not like today, you know, we, you can't have a news story from today from You know, from Ohio and it hit California in one day. I mean, you know, there, obviously there's no internet, there's no telephone. For the most part, there's no radio. And when I talk about nursery rhymes, and I especially talk about nursery rhymes that are centralized in London. Yeah, these nursery rhymes are, how do I put it? They, they are in one place. They're being passed down generation to generation. People aren't moving, right? You're not, you know, a lot of families aren't moving from London to another country. When these nursery rhymes are being used, they're, uh, I can't think of, like, the term I want to use. Like, monosomething or another. Like, monolocated. I'm gonna coin that term in this podcast, monolocated. There's probably another term for it and I'm gonna feel like an idiot for not thinking of it. But nevertheless, when we talk about American news and culture, and especially in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, you have to think about how news and culture spread, especially In the American West or just American, rurally speaking, you know, you have these small towns that are fairly isolated as far as news and stories. And so, oral songs, oral tradition, especially in vaudeville, especially in circuses that are perhaps traveling by train. are a really good way to hear what's going on from the news wise. So, you know, here, politically, uh, socially, things like that. And so you have a song, such as Ms. Susie Had a Steamboat, that are really steeped in cultural practices of the time. Ms. Susie Had a Steamboat particularly talks about invention. So we have the steamboat, we have the telephone and switchboard, and Ms. Mary Mac, we have how much it takes to get into a circus. So things like that, these, these essences of history. That you're not gonna get in, for example, a written account of a civil war battle. You're getting these in these songs, in these nursery rhymes. And that's really the point I'm trying to drive home in this particular episode. I've talked a lot about history here, but I just think it's absolutely fascinating that these small points of history and culture that can so very easily be lost In the sieve of just so much information are being held tight and being remembered and being repeated through ridiculous songs. Perhaps maybe such as raunchy songs like Bag, Bag, Lulu. But, I don't know, that's what I really wanted to talk about. And I'm looking at my, you know, 80 browser tabs I have open. And 10 pages of notes I have here. And it really just comes down to that sentence. And that's... I guess my overall summary of this is that nursery rhymes, clapping song, jump rope songs that I've covered in the last three ones, you know, even patty cake, they capture such a unique essence of history that could so easily be lost. And so if there's one thing you take away from this episode, that's what I want you to take away. That jump rope songs. And clapping songs and nursery rhymes like these really should be continued to taught and passed down because they're just so unique. They're such unique historical remnants. And now I'm just like rambling into my microphone about how passionate I feel about this. So I'll stop because I've already run out of time. But I want to thank you for listening to me and I really hope this is not a rambly episode and is cohesive at some point. But, again, check out my blog, I do have a lot of references there. Check out the last couple episodes I've had because, seriously, I've done a lot of research, I just didn't have time to make it into the episodes. But I want to thank you for listening and continue to listen in next week where I continue to talk about the absolute weirdness of nursery rhymes.