Re: Fw:

[Owen Davidson <owend...>]

Or, how about Ginger: Zingiber Officinalis, the genuine article, root with the
sting, adder of Zing!  Puts the prance in your dance, drives the shlep from your
step.  The only tonic you are needin': this, not the Apple, was the fruit of
Eden.

"'Still, it won't be cheap.  Shipping the horse, providing some feed, one thing
and another.'

'Certainly.  I leave that all up to you.  And when it's going to arrive, let me
know.  Just so some scoundrel doesn't try to ruin your good name by livening up
a nag with a plug of ginger.'

'Understood.  And I will bring a banker to look at your money and a doctor to
check your sex.'"

-Martin Smith, "Canto for a Gypsy"



Jacob and Nancy Bloom wrote:

> 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?
>

--
Owen Davidson
Amherst  Mass
The Wholesale Klezmer Band

The Angel that presided oer my birth
Said Little creature formd of Joy & Mirth
Go Love without the help of any King on Earth

Wm. Blake


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