Song
The song blends together a variety of musical traditions. The opening line refers to "a banjo on my knee", referring to a musical instrument with African origins, but the song takes its beat from the polka, which had just reached America from Europe. Glenn Weiser suggests the song was influenced by an existing work, "Rose of Alabama" (1846), with which it shares some similarities in lyrical theme and musical structure.
The first two phrases of the melody are based on the major pentatonic scale Play
The lyrics are largely nonsense, as characterized by lines such as "It rain'd all night the day I left, The weather it was dry, The sun so hot I froze to death..." (first verse) and "I shut my eyes to hold my breath..." (second verse). It is one of the few songs by Foster that use the word "nigger" (others are "Old Uncle Ned" and "Oh! Lemuel", both also among Foster's early works), which appears in the second verse ("De lectric fluid magnified, And killed five hundred nigger.").
Read more about this topic: Oh! Susanna
Famous quotes containing the word song:
“And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:—
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!””
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.”
—Frank Loesser (1910–1969)
“Writing, madam, ‘s a mechanic part of wit! A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.”
—George Etherege (1635–1691)