Might be nice if I linked you to something about the book. Bonus points for something else, too.

Do you mean like "Miss Mary Mat" and "Shimmy Shimmy CoCo Pop" and the jump rope/dance step rhythms?
I do remember them disappearing from the enviroment once we left the new york tri-state area.
How's the book? Sounds interesting.
me and mine use to really burn up at high speeds on the hand games.

Yes, those ganes. They haven't disappeared; they just fly around under the radar in children's culture.

i can see it point for African Americans, but "children's games" appear in lots of cultures.
Funny, but i had a teacher who played this German music during class and it all sounded like kindergarten music (which makes sense with the kinder and the garten).
There is this counting game in Korean that basically goes something like "hey bunny, bunny you/ where are you going to?"
it's like hot potato but with legs instead of fists, so you sit with your legs fitting into each other alternatingly.

the point
it's that typo time of tired

maybe if i get time i'll audioblog the ditty
i'm fading despite the boppy tunes

Koreans also have a rhythmic musical cultural thing, but with fighting stuff.

(thanks for everyone for being interesting enough to keep me awake for the next thirty minutes)

That's the thing I think is her burden to prove in this book - that there are specific markers about certain games that pertain just to black musics. Because certainly there are games like this cross-culturally, and they probably all have something to do with developing the adult musical styles of their cultures.

I think there are specifics for the black culture. What i meant with moving, it was to whiter, less diverse areas.
If you look to the southern states and colleges, they have it still in-- sorry i forget what the dance line thing is called but it's also a big part of the bands stuff, etc. past elementary school.
sorry for the lack of verbal/textual lucidity.

If you need other cultural comparisons (i so doubt you need help in any way), i'm sure i can cite and imitate a few when i'm better rested.

Look into it in Baltimore, where all things black and white, Northern and Southern, blend together. My good friend and surrogate mother taught me and my daughter all kind of new rhymes, far better than the rhymes I learned as a white white white child in a variety of segregated places. But through her, my own memory and my daughter, we know some serious rhymes. . . what do you want? It's hard to do without the clapping, but we'll try.

I always loved that one I always heard on Sesame Street that went

Down, down baby, down by the roller coaster
Sweet, sweet baby, I'll never let you go
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop, shimmy shimmy pow!
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop, shimmy shimmy pow!
Grandma, Grandma sick in bed
Called the doctor and the doctor said
Let's get the rhythm of the head, ding-dong
Let's get the rhythm of the hands, clap, clap
Let's get the rhythm of the feet, stomp, stomp
Put it all together and what do you get
Ding-dong, clap, clap, stomp, stomp
Say it all backwards and what do you get
Stomp, stomp, clap, clap, ding-dong

Ugh...line breaks aren't working - no idea why. Anyway, here's a page you might like.

i think it's "bop" but the vernacular mutations are all a part of it.
Ooh, maybe we'll suss out the meaning to the "sound words" with this, like with the aiko aiko song origins.
Mebbee i'll even get a real nostalgia wave...

You say bop, I say pop. It's all part of the localese.

forget what the dance line thing is

Step-teams! I could watch those for hours. The first college I went to had a big national competition of these...it was amazing. Thunderous.

Thanks for the page, ico.

There are a few rhymes I remember only vaguely, can't find, and haven't heard since childhood. One was about spying on a girlfriend while she made out with a guy. All I remember of it was a call-and-answer part that went "How do you know? /Peeked through the window./Saw a box of candy/Nosy!"

I dunno.

We had innumerable variations of Miss Susie, too. And "Going to Kentucky/ going to the fair/ to see the senoritas/ with flowers in their hair..." that one had a point where each girl took a turn in the circle and did a solo dance. To the 'shake it' part. And there was an elimination game I've heard dozens of versions of. Ours was:

Crock-a-dilla-omar
Croc-croc-cro
Decima-trica
Trica-trica-troc
Vello, vello, vello, vello, vello, vel-LO!
One, two, threee...

You'd keep counting up until someone goofed and went out.

You say bop, I say pop. It's all part of the localese.


Yeah, the first thing they teach you in folklore study is that there's no 'right' version. There are only innumerable variants. it can be fun to trace them, but they really take different forms from place to place, and that alone is awesome.

It's funny, I never really thought about this before, how girl it all was. At the time I never wondered why boys weren't doing it - never gave it a thought.

I did a stint watching kids in after care at the local elementary school for a while, when my kids went there. The girls would gather outside and play these chanting clapping games, and the boys would often stand around and watch, engrossed. But they never attempted to join in, as if it was taboo.

cinderella dressed in yella
went upstairs to kiss her fella
made a mistake and kissed a snake
wound up with a bellyache!
Goin' up the elevator
First floor stop
Second floor stop
Third floor turn around, throw the baby OUT!


I think I'm missing a verse or two in there. Tomorrow when my daughter gets home I'll post way more. ;-)

This is cool Miko! (Dangit if I don't owe someone a book review-- I'm feeling the guilt now!)

Something which we called Chinese jump rope was big in Los Angeles. Wikipedia claims there are versions all over the world, which makes sense. There are short Youtube videos here and here.

Like with clapping games, this was a girls-only game. The first video actually has a young boy playing. Notice his body language though... he knows he's being watched by experts! And I love the excited kid-squeals.

Roll the dice
My name Tamika
Roll the dice . . .

(That's all I could remember of those chanting/clapping routines from my late seventies childhood.)

"Shimmy Shimmy CoCo Pop"

i think it's "bop" but the vernacular mutations are all a part of it.

i think it would be cool if the oldest versions could be compared across the different time and regional variations.

Still tired and now on hold, i was wondering about a slightly related thing, not to derail:
Did anyone do cat's cradle and string games?
They didn't seem to me to be as exclusionary to males, but maybe because with cat's cradle, it has a competion element in trying to find the most difficult mutations.

Cat's cradle was really popular among 19th century sailors, where skill with rope and knotwork was highly admired.

I can still do the clapping routine we did when I was a girl, lo, some twenty-five years ago. No African Americans in my class then, but there were Africans and Americans...

I remember some kids doing this at my grade school:

Go!
Bananas!
B-A-N-A-N-A-S! (repeat ad infinitum)

I remember some kids doing this at my grade school:

Go!
Bananas!
B-A-N-A-N-A-S! (repeat ad infinitum)

sorry, double post...I'm still across the pond.

sorry, double post...I'm still across the pond.