Day! Oh! Day! Oh!
Come, mister tallyman, tally me banana!
Daylight come, and I won’na go home!
jksw
Harry
Belafonte Day-O ( Banana Boat )
Lyrics
Day O! Day O!
Daylight come and me wanna go home
Day me say day me say day Me say day me say day o
Daylight come and me wanna go home
Work all night and a drink a rum
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Stack banana till the mornin come
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Come mister tally man tally me bananas
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Come mister tally man tally me bananas
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day me say day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
A beautiful bunch of ripe banana!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Hide the deadly black tarantula!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Daylight come and me wanna go home
Day me say day me say day Me say day me say day o
Daylight come and me wanna go home
Work all night and a drink a rum
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Stack banana till the mornin come
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Come mister tally man tally me bananas
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Come mister tally man tally me bananas
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day me say day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
A beautiful bunch of ripe banana!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Hide the deadly black tarantula!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Day me say day o
(daylight come and me wanna go home)
Harry Belafonte’s 1956 single “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” from the album Calypso is an adaptation of a vernacular Jamaican work song. This version of the song was adapted by Barbadian singer, Lord Burgess or Irving Burgie.
The song hearkens back to an era when the banana trade thrived in Jamaica before the predominance of banana republics. The call-and-response and repetition used in the song speak to the monotony of the work of loading bananas on ships in the Caribbean.
“Day-O” reached number 5 on the Billboard Charts in 1957, and remains a famous song cited in a number of more current pop culture references such as the possession scene in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) and Lil' Wayne’s “6 Foot 7 Foot.”
Subject: Fw: FW: Banana Picking in Costa Rica. Don’t miss. 5 minutes.
To:
To:
This is a great video on how bananas
get sent to market. Fascinating.
Banana
Picking.
Watch the
video.
