The Rhythmia

This song, thought to have originated in the West Indies, can be found in the books Creole Songs of the Deep South, selected and arranged by Henri Wehrmann (1946), and Bayou Ballads, collected by Mina Monroe (1921). It is also found under the title Lolotte in the book Slave Songs of the United States (1867). It obviously shares the same source as Skip To My Lou. According to Monroe, the song was one of the most popular songs sung on the Louisiana plantations. Louis M. Gottschalk, the first classical composer born in the United States to become internationally famous and the first to use the indigenous folk melodies and rhythms of the “new world”, included this as the basis for his piece La Savane-Creole Ballad (circa 1845 – 1847). The contemporary ragtime composer David Thomas Roberts also uses it briefly in his Impressions of Helen (1984). We play this piece using the beguine rhythm. The beguine is an Afro-French dance developed in Martinique and St. Lucia. The beguine is closer to the Creole rhythms of New Orleans than to Latin rhythms. The word beguine is a French term meaning “flirtation.”

— Kevin Sanders, May, 2010