Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-03-20
OUR COMIC SONGS.

A Glance as American Melodies
The Subjects of the Comic Singers
Jim Crow Rice and the Negro
SambO Played Out-Irishmen and
Dutchmcn as Subjects for Comic
SOngs-A Hope for the Futdre-SOI-
emn John instead of ChuckIing
SambO.
On the principle that it is always dark
est Just before day, it may be presumed
that the more than Egyptian darkness
which now enshrOuds the comic song
business is the precursor of a dawn of fun
which shall rival in brilliancy even the
pristine glorics Of jim Crow and negro
minstrelsy. When the climax of twaddle
in which these songs have for some time
been ascending is crowned by one of the
barbaric negro nonsense rhymes which
characterized the darkest days of South
eTn slavery, there is satisfaction in think
ing that if there are to be no better songs,
there at least cannot be any worse.
Popular songs have often been consid-
cred as among the surest induces of popu-
lar taste, and if the songs of a period are
low it has been considered q sign that the
popular taste of the time was low.
However correct this principle may be in
general, it does not seem to hold at pres
ent, as public taste by no means exhibits
the profound decentralization which the
peoples songs would indicate. The most
reasonable explanation seems to be that
the difficulty is not in the demand which
the public creates, but in the supply, for
which the song writers are responsible.
They have no good material to make good
comic songs OF, and so, of course, cannot
make them. The tunes furnish no good
subjects, and above all other kinds of com
position the comic song depends upon its
subject for success. Feeble fly the shafts
of The comic bard if not aimed
at something pregnant with peculiarities,
fruitful in illusions, and above all well
known to the public In a good comic
song much previous knowledge on the
part Of the audience must be assumed: q
word must suffice to suggest or recall
more than column Of prose could de-
scribe. Il is almost Indispensable that
the subject of comic song should be a
human subject, crowds, like individuals.
delight in a personality, it adds so much
piquancy 10 a joke. Man is not only
the nphltSl hll TIC most amusing study OF
mankind, and in his different spccics and
various conditions he is the unfailing
mine from which the Jester draws his raw
material. On the sensations of the dav a
feeble and short-hved lyric may occasion
ally be based, but the interest in pcr-
sonal pcculiaritics and iiiosyncrasies is
the one which outlasts all others.
The distinctive character of Amu !,an
comic songs is due TO the variety Of the
races collected in this new country; the
peculiaritieS of each successive one hay
ing afforded fresh amusement for the
masses, and fresh opportunities for the
fecund WRISTS. Just now, however, the
public has tired Of them all, and has no
one 10 laugh at
The race that stands without a rival as
a comic subject, in American minstrelsy,
is the African. So marked was the negro
in all his pcculiarities and tastes. end these
were 50 well known 10 every one that
when his comic side was once turned "a
the public by the immortal Jim Crow
Rice, thirty years ago, he became at once
the rage, and high and low, rich and poor,