DYSAETHESIA AETHIOPICA

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)

“Dixie” was not written by a Southerner; the copyright is held by a white guy from Ohio who played minstrel shows in blackface makeup named Dan Emmert. Apparently he did not write this or a number of tunes he had published under his name, such classics as “Turkey in the Straw” and “Blue Tailed Fly”as well as one called only “Genuine Negro Jig.” A friend turned the ‘Drops onto “Genuine Negro Jig” and they learned the history of Dan Emmert’s tunes. According to their descendants, Emmert got many of his tunes from a black family of string band musicians who lived nearby, the Snowdens.

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“Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig),” the source of the album’s title, has quite a history. Dan Emmett (of “Dixie” fame) wrote it down in the mid 1800s as “Genuine Negro Jig.” When the Chocolate Drops discovered that Emmett probably learned the tune from a black string band family called the Snowdens, they changed its title.

(source)