Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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Just treat me pretty, be nice and sweet
I got a darn forty-
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ssarily planning to follow
through. To buy a woof ticket is to call a bluff, to take the verbal instigator up on his or
her threats. 377
In West Africa, verbal sparring and displays of physical feats were traditionally used as
proxies for physical violence
term derived from Scottish, were used in medieval Europe to resolve quarrels that
378
As English professor Ward Parks wrote in
Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old English Traditions, "Man,
whatever else he might be, is a rhetorical creature. And, in many of his moods, a
379
Playful
carried out as entertainment in the Middle Ages.
The West African tradition survived in African American culture in street corner games
like the dozens, and in the freestyle rap battles that surfaced in the South Bronx in the late
1970s and early 1980s as alternatives to deadly gang fights.
Songs that include examples of woofing:
- Britt, Robinson, and Roy Turk
- Lonnie Johnson
Y AS Y AS
Y
hokum
blues from the 1920s
-Yas-
Now the funniest thing I ever seen, tom cat jumping on a sewing machine
Sewing machine run so fast, took ninety-nine stitches in his yas yas yas.
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