HISTORY: Way Up North In Dixie (so-treu: Relying on family and public records...) > Dust Tracks On a Road

so-treu: Relying on family and public records and oral history, the authors (Howard Sacks is chair of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Kenyon College; Judith Sacks is an editor and researcher) present a credible and carefully researched case which attributes authorship of the Confederate anthem Dixie to an African American family of musicians. Thomas and Ellen Snowden, liberated from slavery and having moved to the Ohio frontier, formed the Snowden Family Band; they and then their children performed banjo and fiddle music for black and white audiences from the 1850s to the early 1900s. Dan Emmett, a white minstrel performer, claimed to have written Dixie in 1859; but the authors argue that the Snowdens, who swapped songs with Emmett, either wrote the song or coauthored it. The Sacks’s analysis of 18th-century African American musical culture documents the ways in which this music was appropriated by white performers. perfect example. the song that was the anthem for post-Civil War “lost cause” white southerners was originally created by *drumroll please* black people yeyy!!!!!

AND THE BEAT GOES ON... AND ON... AND ON

so-treu:

Relying on family and public records and oral history, the authors (Howard Sacks is chair of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Kenyon College; Judith Sacks is an editor and researcher) present a credible and carefully researched case which attributes authorship of the Confederate anthem Dixie to an African American family of musicians. Thomas and Ellen Snowden, liberated from slavery and having moved to the Ohio frontier, formed the Snowden Family Band; they and then their children performed banjo and fiddle music for black and white audiences from the 1850s to the early 1900s. Dan Emmett, a white minstrel performer, claimed to have written Dixie in 1859; but the authors argue that the Snowdens, who swapped songs with Emmett, either wrote the song or coauthored it. The Sacks’s analysis of 18th-century African American musical culture documents the ways in which this music was appropriated by white performers.

perfect example. the song that was the anthem for post-Civil War “lost cause” white southerners was originally created by *drumroll please*

black people yeyy!!!!!

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