“Composed for a group of overland emigrants, who left Massachusetts, in the spring of 1849.”
Tag: California
“They follow the American race” ~ Banjo Songs in the Gold Rush
How antebellum minstrel music served a growing continental empire…
I’m Off for California (1850s?)
Here’s a song you’ll recognize, and yet… it’s a side of the Gold Rush story you might not have heard about in school: The melody is Stephen Foster‘s first big hit, “Oh Susannah” (1847), ubiquitous in its time and still common in the “folk song” tradition over a century and a half later. Foster’s original composition features two world-changing technologies…
I’m Off for Nicaragua (Rice, 1858)
Phil Rice gives us this striking vision of slavery carried south in the service of the Filibuster president, General William Walker:
The Hardtacks 