Collection date: 4/25/2026
Context:
My mom immigrated to California with her parents and two siblings from South Africa when she was four. They moved for work opportunities. Growing up, her family wanted to preserve their culture as much as possible. They learned Afrikaans (the primary language in South Africa) to use around the house, ate traditional foods, and learned some smaller customs. As she tells me, my family comes primarily from the Dutch Huguenots who settled in South Africa and are called Boers. Aside from passing the culture down to their kids, my family also made a point of teaching others. One way, mom told me about is how she and her family used to teach South African folk dances and songs to kids.
Text:
My mom and her siblings learned the children’s songs or “Boeremusiek” around the house from my Ouma (grandma) and Oupa (Grandpa) growing up, similar to “how most people might learn Patty Cake or Ring around a Rosy.” My Ouma organized the lessons and taught my mom and her siblings the basic dance moves to choreograph. Her siblings, who were older, already knew some of the dances because they were children’s playground dances they played back in school. To get people involved, they would invite friends, or people they knew through Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, or other social communities.
My mom and her siblings borrow a room from the local community center and walk the kids through the dance moves. One of the moves she remembers is kids making arches with one another and then running through the middle, They would learn the moves to these dances for about a month then put on a performance once they were all ready for everyone’s parents. For the performance itself, my Oum (uncle) would play the accordion, and my Tannie (aunt) would play the recorder while my mom would sing the lyrics in Afrikaans.
Some of the lyrics as she remembers:
My Sarie Marais:
Unique melody for this song.
“My Sarie Marais is so ver van my af
Ek hoop haar weer te sien
Sy het in die wyk van die Mooirivier gewoon
Nog voor die oorlog het begin
O bring my terug na die ou Transvaal
Daar waar my Sarie woon
Daar onder in die mielies by die groen doring boom
Daar woon my Sarie Marais (2x)
Ek was so bang dat die Kaakies my sal vang
En ver oor die see sal voer”
Which she translated to:
“My Sarie Marais (Sarah Marie) is so far from me now
I hope to see her again
She lived on the shore of the Mooi river
Before this old war began
O bring me back to the old Transvaal
There where my Sarie lives
There under all the corn near the green tree with thorns
There lives my Sarie Maraie(2x)
I was so afraid, that the redcoats would catch me
and send me far away overseas”
She believes the song originates from the Boer wars of the 18th century as England was trying to colonize the land. The story of the song is from a prisoner of war longing for his girl being sent overseas as a prisoner of war. We looked up the lyrics for reference after and saw that the final two verses were cut from most versions. My mom suspects this is done to make the song more timeless, less sad and removed from the war.
Deur Die Bos
To the melody of London Bridge
“Janna Janna deur die bos
deur die bos
deur die bos
Mama kook mos lekker kos
lekker kos”
Which she translates to:
“Janna Janna through the bush
through the bush
through the bush
My mom does make good food,
she makes good food”
My mom imagines this is just a fun children’s song of kids playing in the woods convincing themselves to go back home because the food is tasty or they smell good food cooking back home. We tried looking this one up, but couldn’t really find much on it. Maybe not as much history behind this song as Sarie Marais, but still quite a fun song and it was definitely given more meaning being a representation of South African culture.
Analysis:
We had difficulty finding copies of Deur Die Bos online. This suggests that the folk song may have strong oral roots, but might not be recorded anywhere, especially not on an American folklore site. That makes the entry quite unique and valuable for me.
Although my mom and her siblings grew up learning and singing some of these folk songs in South Africa, the performances weren’t the same when they performed the same songs in California. The context, like the location and reason for the song’s performance, changed completely, changing the overall meaning of the performance under the ideas of performance theory. Back home, they were common children’s games, not much to look at; everyone knew them. But in California, the songs were a way to connect people and communicate identity. Because they were foreign, it was kind of like displaying new things in a museum to show what they’re about. The dances and songs were a way for my mom and her siblings to stay connected to their family history and culture. Alone, the dances might not seem like much, but they were part of larger family traditions carried to America that included speaking Afrikaans and eating traditional foods. My Ouma (grandma) and Oupa (grandpa) allowed their kids to adapt to much of American life. But they wanted to preserve aspects of their unique culture and traditions. By learning and performing these songs in America, they were able to hold on to and preserve those.
My mom said that she knew many friends who had immigrant parents and sometimes those traditions are lost or forgotten. Her mom taught the dances and shew grew up learning the songs from friends and family. She’s glad she learned the songs and played them with her siblings because being a first generation immigrant isn’t always easy. There are many pressures to fit in and forget about who you were of what your family is because it’s weird, unfamiliar or foreign. But the performances rejected that assimilation. They also were a way for her and her family to connect with each other. They didn’t really know any other South African families, so they had to be there for each other. The performances brought the family closer together by uniting everyone with a goal and identity. My mom thinks the dances were kind of silly looking back, but she’s glad she did it because small things like that made them a closer family.
The dance lessons also were a way for her family to share who they were to others. Especially when not many people knew about South Africa. Often, the few things Americans knew about South Africa wasn’t always positive. It was a very time where her and her parents had to navigate a complicated but generally negative global reputation. So, her family were in a way acting as diplomats to share what it really means to be South African. To humanize the culture and people beyond what the news might focus on. These folk music lessons were a small but impactful way to share that culture with others.
