No More the Moon Shines on Lorena

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No More the Moon Shines on Lorena is an American folk song composed and published by Louis Staab in 1889 under the title Lorena . It should not be confused with the song Lorena , composed in 1856 by Henry DL Webster , one of the most popular hits of the American Civil War.

text

The text is written from the perspective of a slave on a plantation in the southern states , who sings about his romantic affair with a slave named Lorena; one day Lorena suddenly disappeared - she was sold to Virginia ( old Virginny ). Years later, his master ( Massey ) reads him a letter stating that Lorena has died. In the last stanza he expresses the confidence that Lorena is now in heaven and no longer has to wear the " darkie's chain " :

As with many popular songs, the lyrics vary from version to version, with the Smyth County Ramblers recording the song in 1928 as Way down in Alabama . In the most famous recording, that of the Carter Family from 1930, the text is as follows:


Way down upon the old plantation
Old Massey used to own me as a slave
He had a yeller gal he called Lorena
And we courted where the wild bananas waved
For long years there we courted
And we were as happy as one
And my hard work for did Massey
And the happiness of life had just begun

Refrain:

No more the moon shines on Lorena
As we'd sit and watch the coon among the corn
And the possum playing on the wild bananas
And the old owl a-hootin 'like a horn
One day I called to see my dear Lorena
I thought she would meet me at the gate
But they took her away to old Virginny
And left me to mourn for her fate
For years I have longed to see her
And the thoughts of her was ever in my head
One day Massey read me a letter
Telling me that Lorena she was dead

refrain

But I know that her soul has gone to heaven
And there she is ever free from pain
And to her a brighter crown is given
And no more she will wear the darkie's chain

refrain


The song, however, by no means originates from Afro-American music , but rather from the tradition of blackface comedy, in which white people with soot-blackened faces in a racist manner drew a stereotypical image of Afro-Americans (often subsumed under the term Jim Crow ). Also No More the Moon Shines on Lorena addresses many of perpetuated in clichés, especially in its exaggerated representation of African American English and the use hackneyed phrases like old Massey and darkie's chain . In his portrayal of the suffering of the slaves, however, it becomes clear that the song's intention is not disparaging towards the slaves, but rather stands in a humanitarian tradition, related to the blackface compositions by Stephen Foster , which were also in the service of abolitionism .

Recordings (selection)

literature

  • Guthrie T. Meade, Richard Keith Spottswood, Douglas Shannon Meade: Country Music Sources: A Biblio-discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music . Southern Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries in Association with the John Edwards Memorial Forum, 2002. ISBN 0807827231 (pp. 467–468)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Leary: Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music . Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 42 and 206 (footnote 3).