This African-American game song is sung to movements described in the lyrics and demonstrated by the children in the audience. Many African-American music and dance styles emphasize rhythm and self-expression, both evident here. As Paula Larke sings this song, she interjects encouraging words to the dancers and improvises rhythms within the beat throughout.
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Download OnlySinger Paula Larke shares this information about the song: “We used to play this as ‘Willoughby’ or ‘Willabee’ in Winston-Salem, but when I was in South Carolina, teachers and students knew it as ‘Zudio.’ Since my father was from South Carolina, I do this version to think of him.
“This song is sung to movements which are described with the lyrics and demonstrated on the video. To begin, have children line up in two lines facing each other. The two children facing opposite each other are partners. This is one way to play late at night in a good clean way. The nightmare isn’t bad; it’s the people who do bad things at night that give night a bad name!”
“Zudio,” or “Zoodio,” is widely known as a children’s game song danced in both urban and rural settings. African-American in origin, it probably has its roots in slave times. Written documentation about enslaved African children is very scarce. When African Americans are mentioned in print, they are usually referred to in terms of the labor they provided, their value, or as runaways. Likewise, there is practically no information about the games African-American children played. Even though enslaved children were expected to work as soon as they were physically mature enough to do so, they certainly had time to play as well.
Some African-American games taught children to work together—often to a cadence—as a well-coordinated team. Working to a rhythm relieved boredom and helped field workers establish a measured pace for their work. “Zoodio” may well have developed as a game to help children learn how to work together.
Children’s game songs from the African-American tradition include rhymed and unrhymed chants and songs that typically include some type of movement or bodily kinesthetic accompaniment. The physical movements may include actions that physically depict a story or narrative, improvised movements or motions, simple or complex patterns of hand clapping used to accompany the song by providing a steady beat, and other types of body movement or body percussion.
Play Bob a Needle
Toys that early African-American children played with were whatever they happened to have handy. In this case, they used a needle case. The children circle up, with one child in the center. While singing a song, the children in the circle pass the needle case behind their backs. When the song is over, the child in the middle has to guess who had the needle case.
Ask the students why they used a needle case and not a toy. Ask them to brainstorm other household items that slave children might play with.
Miss Mary Mack
This fun rhyme was actually a game that the children played to make fun of the master’s daughter. The toys in this game were their own hands, as they chanted the song. The point of the song is how silly the master’s daughter is for spending money to see an elephant jump over a fence because everyone knows an elephant cannot jump a fence. Ask students why the slave children would have made fun of the master’s daughter.
Find out who knows how to do the Miss Mary Mack hand-clap game. Ask students to share other hand-clap games they know.
Here We Go Loopty Loo
This popular song requires children to put their right hand in, put their right hand out, and give their hand a shake. Then they move on to the left hand, the right foot, and so on. This song helps to describe bath time on a plantation. Water from a local stream had to be heated by fire in a large washtub that sat outside. The slave who ran the childcare on the plantation was in charge of bath time and had to get every child bathed quickly. So, as they sang, the children would gather around the bath tub and go through the motions described in the song as they bathed together.
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