Origins: My Donkey Want Water

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 07:45 AM

Well, "Marianne" is originally bawdy as well. She was turning tricks down by the seaside. I'd love to sing that. Of course, that's more explicit than "My Donkey Wants Water". BTW Suibhne, have you heard the Harry Belafonte version of MDWW?He calls it "Hold 'Em Joe." I'm wondering if he sanitised it slightly to make it more palatable to his audience.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 06:34 AM

Does anyone have any evidence of this song before 1910? (At the mento website i read that this was recorded by Lord Executor in that year.)

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 06:11 AM

Well, I guess I'll teach it to them next time I see them, then!

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 06:04 AM

PS - Although here on this most solemn day in the Christian Calendar a song like My Donkey Want Water becomes a more graphic depiction of the sort of sinfulness for which Christ was supposedly crucified. Nature untamed - the mindless beast beating at the stall for escape into the wilderness of depravity. The stall is elightenment - containment & discipline: the donkey is instinctive impulse tamed and (hopefully) docile. Let's not forget the Biblical significance of donkeys in both the Nativity and the Passion, this most humble of beasts bearing the most noble of riders...

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 05:46 AM

Just one, eh? When I was 17 (way back in rare old times of 1978/79) I was all about the euphemistically rude folk songs - which you'll find by the shed load in the English Tradition of such things. Never reworked them though, which one doesn't, but obviously Calypso is a different scene to Revival Folk Song, which aren't there to be messed with in quite the same way. Even a song like Seeds of Love is full of random euphemism - as oppose to hard & fast symbolism which I dispute anyway; Butter & Cheese & All likewise, both of which are pretty surreal as narratives, though the latter is quite fun on the surface of it. These things work on all sorts of levels though, metaphors, euphemisms, otherwise it's just innocent fun for all ages with images of a thirsty donkey kicking his stall to bits.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 05:14 AM

Whoa! Better not sing it to my little cousins! Then again, they might just think it was a funny song.. end up singing it around the place.. and I'm so proud of having reworked it. Take a look. I am seventeen and I know a rude song. Wow.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 05:05 AM

How rude is this song? About as rude as you can get. The Donkey metaphor / euphemism for the more brutish aspects of male sexuality is an old one, but listening to Macbeth's rendering I'd say it becomes even more explicit somehow, especially in equating liquid refreshment with female sexual response.

my donkey want water / better hold your daughter

Origins?

Well, my thinking is that the Tradition of music is largely defined by its structure, culture and idiom. A song may arise from structure & idiom even by way of freestyling and still be traditional of that idiom - if you see what I mean. A lot of Folk Songs & Folk Processes operate in this way - they only become frozen at the point of collection, which is a different thing from these old studio recordings, which seem possessed of a greater freedom somehow.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 04:55 AM

Thanks. A few posts up I posted my own reworking. I want to be able to do that "free-style battling" in calypso myself:).

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 04:52 AM

PS - I must say a big thanks for all this calypso stuff by the way; I'm happily listening to Lord Invader on YouTube which is all new to me - the boastful free style battling is worthy of the best hip-hop MCs...

Macbeth the Great's Donkey is a real treat, just the thing for a sunny Good Friday morning in Lancashire...

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 04:51 AM

Suibhne, maybe I'm naive, but how rude is this song? Might you know anything about its origins? Is it a traditional song?

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 04:41 AM

And also, I've heard that this song has sexual innuendo.

I'd say that has to be Mudcat Understatement of the year so far.

Subject: ADD: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 03:11 AM

Lyr Add:Two verses: Anne Ching's
My Donkey Want Water (varied and reworked lyrics- influenced by Macbeth the Great's 1946 version)


MY DONKEY WANT WATER

I say, hold him Joe, hold him Joe, hold him Joe, and don't let him go.
Hold him Joe, hold him Joe, hold him Joe and don't let him go.

My donkey wants water, (hold him Joe)
Better hold your daughter,
Oh, he wants some water
(Hold him Joe)

Me and my donkey went up to town,
My donkey pulled me across the ground.
Some people say that my donkey is bad,
And that it's because he comes from Trinidad

This donkey of mine, does no work at all
All he does is break the boards of his stall
He won't do what he "oughter" (hold him Joe)
You've got to hold your daughter, hold him Joe

My donkey wants water,
My donkey needs water,
My donkey wants to drink and sometimes at night
He'll come kick your leg in a fright.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 02:44 AM

Post the lyrics, please. Or *a* set of lyrics you think you might sing. Then we might be able to give an opinion.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Apr 11 - 01:04 AM

I'm asking the question I did on the fifth post because sometime in the future I would like to upload a recording of me singing "My Donkey Want Water" onto this site.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 10:14 PM

Does anyone else have opinions on the origins of this song?

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 10:13 PM

Thanks! Do you believe that this song can be interpreted in the right way by a female singer?

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 10:09 PM

No, they didn't get it from Belafonte.

I don't know if there is a known composer, but nonetheless the song is regarded as "traditional."

I really don't know how old the song is. Mento recordings generally date only to the 1950s, as far as I know.

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 09:46 PM

Gibb Sahib, I have checked that lead. Do you think those mento performers got their version from Harry Belafonte? And do you believe that the song is traditional? I ask because I've seen to references to it as a work song or "slightly risque traditional West Indies folk tune" on Google Books. Can anyone point me to folk song collections? Who is Joe in the song? I imagine a group of men trying to pull a donkey with a rope! "This donkey of mine, do no work at all, all he want to do is break the boards of his stall."

Subject: RE: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 09:37 PM

FWIW this song is also common in the Jamaican mento repertoire. There is even a (later) skinhead reggae version of the song (by Symarip). You'll find lots of later interpretation in Jamaican music under the title "Hold him Joe". The mento website (I believe you were linked to it elsewhere) would have info. There is also a similar (?) song "Tie the Donkey's Tail".

Most mento songs had sexual innuendo! Though mento songs often were borrowed from calypso (which may be the case here), and the genre also seems to be influenced by Cuban music IMO...though calypso songs have that political messages, mento was mainly just sexy stuff!

Getting off track...but the foundations of Jamaican music IMO is bawdiness....nowadays called slackness!

The political songs appealed more to foreigners!

Subject: Origins: My Donkey Want Water
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 21 Apr 11 - 09:17 PM

I found a thread on "Tingalayo", but not on this song.My inspiration to start this thread was from Suibhne Astray's comment that Rolf Harris was inspired by Harry Belafonte's recording of this to write his famous "Tie Me Kangaroo Down". Does anyone have any idea whether this song- also called "Hold 'em Joe", "Hol' Im Joe", or "Hold Them Joe", is traditional? The earliest recording I can find on Youtube is Macbeth the Great's 1946 one, but apparently it was also recorded earlier than that in about 1910 by Lord Executor. Does anyone know about this? If it is traditional there should be field recordings. And also, I've heard that this song has sexual innuendo.