Roll, Roll, Roll and Go (Maroon Song)
Lyrics
Roll, roll, roll and go!
Oh, roll and go, lewi [let we] roll and go way.
I spend my money and I kyan [can’t] get ashore.
Roll, roll, roll and go!
Oh, roll and go, lewi [let we] roll and go way.
I spend my money and I kyan [can’t] get ashore.
From the liner notes: In Grenada and some of the other Windward Islands, maroon is the name given to a tradition of cooperative labor similar to what is known as “lend hand” or “jollification” in other parts of the Anglophone Caribbean and as kombit in Haiti. A maroon is a festive occasion in which those who come together to give a helping hand are rewarded with food and drink. Most maroons are held for purposes of cultivation. (In Carriacou, the term maroon has an additional sense, sometimes being used to refer to a kind of ritual feast in the Big Drum tradition.) In Grenada, work songs have traditionally played an important role in maroons, being used to coordinate various tasks and to make hard work more enjoyable. As in other parts of the Caribbean, work songs in Grenada have been drawn from diverse sources. The example that follows appears to have started out as a sea chantey.
Source: Grenada: Creole and Yoruba Voices, liner notes
Performed by Irene McQueen (lead vocal), with chorus and hand claps.
Recorded on August 5, 1962, in La Fortune, St. Patrick’s, Grenada.
Source: Grenada: Creole and Yoruba Voices, liner notes
Performed by Irene McQueen (lead vocal), with chorus and hand claps.
Recorded on August 5, 1962, in La Fortune, St. Patrick’s, Grenada.
Lamizè (Boat Launching Song)
Lyrics
Call: Mwen tini . . . Response: Lamizè! Calls: Papa-mwen pale ou Manman-oute pale ou Mwen pa manman-i Anba kann-na |
Call: I have… Chorus: Misery! [poverty] Calls: My father told you Your mother told you I am not their mother Under the sugar cane. |
Performed by Norman Miller (lead vocal), with Daniel Alexander, Sonny Francis, and Saville Greenridge (chorus) and hoeing sounds.
Recorded on August 7, 1962, in La Floretta, Grenada.
From the liner notes: This work song (like 11 and 16 below) was recorded in context. The sound of the cultivators’ hoes hitting soil is as much a part of the music as their voices. Lomax, a veteran recordist of African-American prison gangs in the southern United States, was much moved by these Grenadian work-song performances. The jottings he left on this particular session provide a vivid glimpse of his hands-on recording style – his close involvement with and active encouragement of, the performers – and give some idea of the emotional pull this work-song genre exerted on him:
Five men, alternating leader’s parts, sang magnificent maroon songs while ripping up the earth with their hoes, drinking, laughing, sweating, linked by the beauty of rolling away the mother earth, all together, and with proudly, loudly joined voice. . . . The singers were quickly my intimates and became very relaxed. I lay in the furrows ahead of them, trying to keep the mike warmly close but just out of the way of their impetuously flashing hoes. Stayed until after dark, lost light meter, almost missed boat.
This particular song appears to be one of the better-known maroon songs in Grenada; audio engineer Emory Cook recorded it in a different part of the island (see Grenada Stories and Song (Cook, 1957).
Recorded on August 7, 1962, in La Floretta, Grenada.
From the liner notes: This work song (like 11 and 16 below) was recorded in context. The sound of the cultivators’ hoes hitting soil is as much a part of the music as their voices. Lomax, a veteran recordist of African-American prison gangs in the southern United States, was much moved by these Grenadian work-song performances. The jottings he left on this particular session provide a vivid glimpse of his hands-on recording style – his close involvement with and active encouragement of, the performers – and give some idea of the emotional pull this work-song genre exerted on him:
Five men, alternating leader’s parts, sang magnificent maroon songs while ripping up the earth with their hoes, drinking, laughing, sweating, linked by the beauty of rolling away the mother earth, all together, and with proudly, loudly joined voice. . . . The singers were quickly my intimates and became very relaxed. I lay in the furrows ahead of them, trying to keep the mike warmly close but just out of the way of their impetuously flashing hoes. Stayed until after dark, lost light meter, almost missed boat.
This particular song appears to be one of the better-known maroon songs in Grenada; audio engineer Emory Cook recorded it in a different part of the island (see Grenada Stories and Song (Cook, 1957).