Category Archives: Musical

South African Folk Songs – “My Sarie Marais” & “Deur die Bos”

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.

Drum Ritual at School Before Summer Break

Text:

“Every single year before summer break, there is a countdown, and our principal bangs on a big Chinese drum to signify the start of summer. Before that happens, we also sing four different songs: our school song, two songs about our school symbol, which is the tiger, and Sweet Caroline, which serves as our school’s theme song.”

Context:

This text was collected from a female student who attended an international school in China. She described this end-of-year ritual casually. The ceremony takes place at the close of every school year and follows a fixed structure: four songs are sung collectively — the school song, two tiger-themed songs representing the school mascot, and Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” — ending in a principal-led countdown accompanied by the striking of a large Chinese drum. The ritual is notably interesting in its cultural composition, merging distinctly American popular culture with traditional Chinese instruments. This reflects the school’s broader institutional identity as an American-style international school operating within China: an institution that consciously positions itself between two cultural worlds. The fixed, repeated structure of the ceremony — the same songs, the same drum, the same countdown every year — gives it the quality of a calendrical ritual marking the boundary between the school year and summer.

Analysis:

This piece is a good example of school lore functioning simultaneously as institutional ritual and political statement. Unlike the horizontal, student-generated traditions typical of school folklore, this ceremony is explicitly top-down, led by the principal and embedded in the school’s official calendar. Van Gennep’s rites of passage framework applies clearly here: the countdown and drum strike function as a formal separation ritual, marking the threshold between the school year and summer and releasing students from their institutional identity. The hybrid cultural symbolism of the ceremony is particularly significant. The Chinese drum and the American pop music “Sweet Caroline” are both involved in the ritual, reflecting what the course identifies as the political work institutions do through folk and folkloric symbols — the school is communicating its identity as simultaneously American and Chinese. In other words, cultural symbols are intentionally selected and staged to construct an institutional identity. The tiger songs further reinforce a shared group identity through esoteric shared symbolism, creating what Turner would call communitas, which is a collective sense of belonging produced through the shared experience of an annual liminal ritual.




Childhood Song – Down by the Banks

Context:

This informant is a 19-year-old student from Orange County. She learned this song from her classmates in early elementary school. She doesn’t specifically remember from who, but everyone in school knew this song.

Text:

“So this is like a childhood song that my friends and I, like, we would play on the playground. So if we’re bored, we would all like, sit down on the floor, get in the circle. There’s usually at least–like you need at least like three people, but’s usually more. You sit down and then you all hold hands with each other.

So like, your right hand goes on top of the person’s to your right to left hand. And then your left hand goes under the person on your left right hand. And you’re all in a circle with your hands up like that. And then there’s this song It’s called like Down by the Banks.

I mean there’s like different lyrics, but like the one I learned was like, Down by the banks by the Hanky, Panky, where the bullfrogs jumped from bank to bank, in the east frog, soda pop, hey mister something won’t you stop? I don’t really remember the lyrics to the last part.

“But like, on the beat, there’s one person that starts, and then you take your right hand and you, like, clap the other person’s hand. So you take your right hand and you clap, like, the person on your left, their right hand that’s on top of your left hand, on the beat, and you just keep going around.

And once the song ends, whoever it lands on, they’re eliminated, and they like, get out of the circle, and then you keep doing that until there’s only two people left. And then once there’s only two people, you hold you hold each other’s right hand in like a handshake, and then you just like, pull each other’s hand on the beat again, and you keep doing that until it lands on one person and then that’s, who wins the game.”

Analysis:

From what I have heard from other people, there are many variations to the lyrics of this children’s game song. Depending on the region someone is from, it seems they know different lyrics. In this case, my informant is from Southern California so she knows the song as “Down by the Banks.” This seems like a simple clap-to-the-beat game that every child learns. The game just gets passed down from class to class, as kids are bored during recess and play.

Moon Song

Song:

“I see the moon and the moon sees me,

The moon sees somebody I wanna see

God bless the moon, and God bless me:

And God bless that somebody I wanna see.”

Context: The informant’s mother sang this song to them as children. The informant is from the East Coast and their mother is from the Southern United States. Informant’s mother was taught this song by their mother growing up as a lullaby to put her to sleep.  


Analysis: This is a children’s lullaby passed through oral tradition across generations. From mother to child, it passes down, connecting generations through song. While the child does not necessarily understand the words being sung to it, the song itself is a family tradition. The purpose of the song (putting a child to bed) holds greater meaning than the actual lyrics of the song. Because it is passed down through song, it is an important oral tradition for this family.

Bangun Pagi

Age: 48

Text
Malay lyrics:
Bangun pagi, gosok gigi,
cuci muka, pakai baju,
makan roti, minum susu,
pergi sekolah, senang hati.

English translation:
Wake up, brush your teeth,
Wash your face, put on clothes,
Eat bread, drink milk,
Go to school, be happy.

*Translated from Mandarin Chinese
“I learned this song from my kindergarten teacher in Malaysia and it was a song for kids to remember their morning routines to start the day. Years later with my kids, when they were young, I would sing this song to them while waking them up before school. And they’re so hard to wake up, so I would use water on my hands to splash on their faces too, while singing the song.”

Context
This is a song that KL (who is my mom) learned 40 plus years ago as a young girl growing up in Malaysia. Even after moving to America and raising a family 40 years later, KL still remembered this song and used it as part of the routine of waking us up as that’s how the song was used when she was young.

Analysis
This is an example of verbal folklore / a folk song that my mom learned orally from her teacher in school. Functionally, it outlines a morning routine, but the value of the song is moreso found in its rhythm and memories/association with the song as a way for kids in Malaysia to wake up in the morning. It’s interesting how she turned a song that she learned from her hometown (rather than her family) into a piece of family folklore that my brothers and I still remember to this day. Bangun Pagi also represents the oral spread of folklore and folk songs, as outside of singing it, my mom never explicitly taught us the meaning of the song but my brothers and I still understand the song and its meaning from waking up to it over and over again. Sims and Stephens make a point that folklore should be understood through its context rather than purely its text, which in this case is especially interesting because even before I ever understood the actual meaning of the Malay lyrics, I knew that hearing this song meant that it was time to wake up and get ready for school. Even though my parents didn’t instill any Malay traditions in our family once they moved to America, this Malay song (which is the only Malay I know) became a core part of our family’s lore and connects us to the Malay folk.