Girls' Handclapping Games in Three Los Angeles Schools

Extract

Of the various kinds of singing games played by children, the handclapping game is practised with great vigor by young girls on the schoolyards of Los Angeles, California. This paper looks at five handclapping games representative of a collection made at three locations in the city, from three predominant ethnocultural groups: Afro-American, Euro-American and Latino. The five examples were chosen to illustrate what seem to me to be broader trends in tradition and innovation. The repertoire consists of both old and new games, with the old often modified in some way and the new invented out of a contemporary urban musical environment. For sources, children may turn to television, particularly musical commercials, which they then adapt to the requirements of a handclapping game. In my observation of children's games over a ten year period, I have been intrigued by the relationship between games and sex roles, and what is called “role-modeling,” which appear in the text and the structure of a game.