DIXIE
“Dixie”, also known as “I Wish I Was in Dixie”, “Dixie’s Land” and other titles, is a
popular American song. It is one of the most distinctively American musical products of
the 19th century,[1] and probably the best-known song to have come out of blackface
minstrelsy. Although not a folk song at its creation, “Dixie” has since entered the
American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word “Dixie” in the American
vocabulary as a synonym for the Southern United States.
Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song’s composition;
however many other people have claimed to have composed “Dixie”, even during
Emmett’s lifetime. Compounding the problem of definitively establishing the song’s
authorship are Emmett’s own confused accounts of its writing, and his tardiness in having
“Dixie” copyrighted. The latest challenge has come on behalf of the Snowden Family of
Knox County, Ohio, who may have collaborated with Emmett to write “Dixie”.
The song originated in the blackface minstrel show of the 1850s and quickly grew
famous across the United States. Its lyrics, written in a comic, exaggerated version of
African American Vernacular English, tell the story of a freed black slave pining for the
plantation of his birth. During the American Civil War, “Dixie” was adopted as a de facto
anthem of the Confederacy. New versions appeared at this time that more explicitly tied
the song to the events of the Civil War. Since the advent of the American Civil Rights
Movement, many have identified the lyrics of the song with the iconography and
ideology of the Old South. Today, “Dixie” is sometimes considered offensive, and its
critics link the act of singing it to sympathy for the concept of slavery in the American
South. Its supporters, on the other hand, view it as a legitimate aspect of Southern culture
and heritage and the campaigns against it as political correctness and even cultural
genocide.
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land.
In Dixie land where I was born in, early on a frosty mornin’,
Look away, look away, look away,Dixie land.
Chorus:
Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie land I’ll take my stand, to live and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down south in Dixie,
Away, away, away downsouth in Dixie.
Old Missus marry Will de Weaber, Will-yum was a gay deceiver,
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land.
