Performed by Harry Belafonte.
key: C major
mode: C D E F G A B C
melody: STdrmfsltd'
form: AA', call-and-response
meter: duple
English function names: tonic dominant
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: T D7
Scale degrees: I V7
Chords: C G7 C G C
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“Come Mr. Tally Man…”
C G C G C
|:////|////|////|////:| I remember teaching this to a group of 7th graders who were a bit put off singing about such irresponsible people drinking while working!1 I duly informed them that it wasn’t irresponsible, it was all that they were allowed for food and drink, since they were considered lowly workers by their employers. We forget the social power of such songs at our peril.
Most of the verses use what I like to call a punctuation cadence. There's one brief instance of a different harmony (in this case, the dominant), the counterpoise to indicate the end of the phrase. It's like a period. We hear this in "Ceniv se u popa" as well. The "Come Mr. Tally Man" section2 uses a formulation that Tagg [p394] discusses: If you have a shuttle that starts with the tonic, then you'll never end your even phrases on the tonic. One of the (many) ways around this issue is to double the frequency (halve the temporal interval, as you like) at the end of the phrase so that you do in fact end on the tonic. That's what we have here. It starts as a shuttle and then we have a quick return to the tonic in the last measure of the phrase.
The song has become pretty much synonymous with Harry Belafonte's wildly popular recording, but there are musically interesting aspects to the other recordings. The Edric Connor version has a lot of parallels in Paul Robeson’s voice-and-piano recordings. Louise Bennett’s has some lovely rhythmic variations in each phrase. Both recordings are under the title "Day Dah Light" instead of Day-O.
other recordings:
Edric Connor, Songs from Jamaica, Phorminx. G major.
Louise Bennett, Jamaican Folksongs, Smithsonian Folkways. Bb major
Not to mention that the English was all wrong! These were very picky kids. I hope they remembered a thing or two from that year…
It's not really a chorus, is it? But then it's not really a verse, either… it's just something… different…