Fw:

[Jacob and Nancy Bloom <bloom...>]

I'm trying to find some information for someone on another list.  Does
anyone have more information (tune, Yiddish lyrics) about the song
Dzhindzher, below?

Thanks,

Jacob Bloom

----- Original Message -----

Subject: Ginger - Dzhindzher - Yiddish song
Date: 11-May-00 - 04:47 PM
My friend Mrs. Lev came across this song in Mark Slobin's Tenement Songs:
The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. Most of the songs in the book
have both English and Yiddish lyrics, but not this one. Might anybody have a
tune and the Yiddish lyrics for this song? Thanks.

DZHINDZHER (GINGER)
(from a broadside printed by Sani Shapiro of New York)

Verse 1
This song is called ginger; I sing it quickly, with ginger.
It'll give you ginger, since ginger's the best thing.
It's very hard to live without ginger; whoever doesn't have ginger isn't
living.
Wherever you go, everywhere you just hear:

Chorus
Ginger, whoever's got ginger, is somebody today.
Girls who have ginger are all right,
Since boys creep around looking for ginger, a girl with ginger.
With a lot of powder and paint.
At the North Pole full of puffs, a face with ginger, full of bluffs
Since ginger's the best thing.

Verse 2
A rich man of fifty, dyes his hair every day;
His face has a toothless mouth, and he can hardly walk.
Although he's old and dead, he marries a young girl.
He gives her money without end, since he's looking for:

Chorus
Ginger, a drop of ginger.
He calls her darling dear;
Oy vey does she give him ginger - he makes way for her.
This old codger gets his walking papers because he doesn't have ginger.
He's already old and weak.
And for his money, on the sly, she gets a boy with a lot of ginger
Since ginger's the best thing.

Verse 3
My cousin has a soda stand, fixed up pretty and grand.
She has countless customers that only drink their ginger at her place.
All the standkeepers of the street know how to ask for her ginger.
She makes endless money, since everyone runs to her:

Chorus
For ginger, oy, oy, ginger
They run without end.
Whoever tries her ginger stays her customer,
And my cousin is no greenhorn, she gives everyone ginger
Since she understands the trade.
She knows her business like a hero, gives ginger and takes money,
Since ginger's the best thing.

I take it from the context of the book that the song comes from the 1890's
or so. Slobin says
The last stanza of "Dzhindzher" is perhaps the most offensive, since it
touches on the nearly taboo topic of Jewish-American prostitution. Of all
the subjects that have been tacitly declared off limits to public
commentary, this is perhaps the most sensitive. Yet we have already
seen...that it is not possible to discuss immigrant entertainment without at
least mentioning the unmentionable. Michael Gold's Jews Without Money
(1930), a description of the Lower East Side of his youth, parallels the
accounts available in memoirs and fictional sources of his time: "Pimps
infested the dance halls. Here they picked up the romantic factory girls who
came after the day's work. They were smooth story-tellers. they seduced the
girls the way a child is helped to fall asleep, with tales of magic
happiness. No wonder East Side parents wouldn't let their daughters go to
dance halls. But girls need to dance." For Gold, music was an important part
of street life. He describes Italian organ-grinders and other readily
available entertainment, and he keenly recalls the singing of Masha, the
blind prostitute: "Many nights I fell asleep to the melodies of Kiev she
sang to her seven-string guitar. we could hear it in our home. She sang
between 'customers.'" Masha served as a living bridge between the low music
of Russia (for many of her romantic tunes must have been songs of the Kiev
streets) and the parallel tradition growing in America.

Anybody have more information on this song, or related songs?


---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+