Saturday, April 7, 2012

The Dixie Song


I Wish I Was in Dixie

"I Wish I Was in Dixie" is a popular song about the South. It was allegedly written by composer Daniel Emmett, a Northerner from Ohio, and published in 1859. Supposedly, Emmett was taught the song by the Snowden family of African American musicians, then freemen of color, with the lyrics coming from a letter written longingly of life in the south by Evelyn Snowden to her father.
As with other minstrel show numbers, the song was performed in blackface and in exaggerated Black English vernacular. The song proved extremely popular and became widely known simply as "Dixie". The song has also been published as "Dixie's Land".
The song became the unofficial anthem of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The tune's minstrel-show origins have created a strong association of "Dixie" with the Old South, despite the fact that it was written in the North. As a result, some today perceive the song as offensive and racist while many see it as an honorable part of Southern heritage.

LyricsCountless lyrical variants of "Dixie" exist. Emmett's lyrics as they were originally intended reflect the mood of the United States in the late 1850s toward growing abolitionist sentiment. The song presented the point of view, common to minstrelsy at the time, that slavery was overall a positive institution. This was accomplished through the song's protagonist, who, in comic black dialect, implies that despite his freedom, he is homesick for the plantation of his birth:

I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times they are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land where I was born,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
 


Both Union and Confederate composers produced war versions of the song during the American Civil War. These variants standardized the spelling and made the song more militant, replacing the slave scenario with specific references to the conflict or to Northern or Southern pride.

This Confederate verse by Albert Pike is representative:
Southrons! hear your country call you!
Up! lest worse than death befall you! . . .
Hear the Northern thunders mutter! . . .
Northern flags in South wind flutter; . . .
Send them back your fierce defiance!
Stamp upon the cursed alliance



Compare Frances J. Crosby's Union lyrics:
On! ye patriots to the battle,
Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle!
Then away, then away, then away to the fight!
Go meet those Southern traitors,
With iron will.
And should your courage falter, boys,
Remember Bunker Hill.
Hurrah! Hurrah! The Stars and Stripes forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!

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