Song Of An African American Woman

As time progressed, the public started to become increasingly progressive. With the age of the Social Dance Revolution and the rise of women in the work force on the cusp, women in particular began to shed the traditional ideas of courtship and modesty. The 1920’s song “Sweet mama tree top tall; Wont you kindly turn your damper down” tells of an African American woman that is representative of the women of this time period. This song utilized a black woman to both appeal to the free-spirited figure that women craved to be, but also to alert them to stay in line for the men. The main lyric of the song “turn your damper down” serves as a double entendre. In literal terms, a “damper” is an object used to regulate the amount of heat that flows through a stove.
But, like the other pieces of sheet music during this era, by using a black woman as the central figure for this composition, both the lyrics and cover illustrations propagate the racist attitudes of the white, upper class audience. Not only do the lyrics in the song keep the African American woman in check in accordance to her gender roles, but also her race. The line “She called herself the Blackville vampire” draws a line between the free-spirited white woman that the composer is trying to embody for appeal and the African American woman that she is in the reality of society. The cover art for this sheet music also promotes racism by depicting a male and a female clearly in blackface, an insulting gesture mocking African