Crying "Wolof!"

[Herb Stahlke]

Random look-alikes strike again, with apologies to David Dalby.

Herb


On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Crying "Wolof!"
>
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>
> W:pedia
> "A case has been made out for borrowings of many place-names and even
> misremembered rhymes, such as "_Here we go looby-loo_ ... " =E2=80=93
> chief=
> ly from
> one of the *Luba* <aw, shit!> varieties =E2=80=93 in the USA.[18]"
>
> 18. Vass, Winifred Kellersberger, The Bantu-Speaking Heritage of the United
> States. Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, Los
> Angeles, 1979.
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages>
>
> I learned "Here we go _looby-loo_" as the song accompanying the eponymous
> line-dance in StL, ca. 1943. My wife learned it in Kingston, NE PA, as
> "Here we go _loop-de-loop_," ca. 1953.
>
> In 1962, Gil Hamilton a.k.a. Johnny Thunder, a black R&B singer from
> Leesburg, Florida, released a version of the song under the title, "Loop De
> Loop," composed by Teddy Vann, a black man from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DzRvTbveOamo>
>
> And then there's the site, Folklorist, which has the song as an English
> folksong, "Looby Lou."
>
> <http://www.folklorist.org/song/Looby_Lou>
>
> And, finally, Music Express Magazine has it as "Here We Go Looby Loo"
>
> <http://www.musicexpressmagazine.com/bin/FolkSongPartnersMA.pdf>
>
> In other words, even the mere suggestion that this song may have some
> connection of any kind whatsoever with the Luba people of Africa is so
> specious as to be non-distinct from a lie.
>
> The foolish claim that features of black-American culture originating in
> black-American culture must necessarily be traceable to some random African
> source pulled out of some "scholar's" ass, simply because features of
> white-American culture can be traced to a European source, is insultingly
> unreal, and I ain't going for it. And that a heap of black Americans, from
> academics to the boyz n the 'hood, fervently believe that nothing in
> black-American culture can possibly have sprung, fully-formed, from the
> mind of black America and not have African roots, because that would mean
> that black America, unlike white America, has no cultural history that can
> be traced back farther than 1619 and being just like our social "superiors"
> is our highest-possible aspiration disgusts me.
>
> --=20
>
> - Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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