
Lyrics
(Jamaican folk song)
Buy a penny ginger
Pung it in the mortar,
Buy a penny ginger
Pung it in the mortar,
Doon-ak-a, doon-ak-a, doo-kay.
Game (Adapted)
Formation: Students sit or stand in a circle of 3-5 students.
On the steady beat, students pile their hands on top of other students’ hands on a table or floor (if they are sitting) or in the center of a circle (if they are standing). Stack all right hands first (one student at a time), then all left hands on top. Once all hands have been stacked, students shrug their shoulders so the pile of hands pulses up and down to the beat. On the last phrase, the beat gets faster, until the last word, all hands go up in the air. (The original version has the students pushing each other’s chests to try to knock them over.)
See also
- Country: Jamaica
- Activities: circle games
- Harmony: chords I & V
- Melody: low so / do / re / ti
- Meter: 4
- Rhythm: steady beat / ties
- Scale: tetratonic
- Tempo: fast & slow
- Tones: drst
- Source: 150 American Folk Songs to sing read and play, Peter Erdei, 1974
YouTube
- Printable & Digital Visuals in 2 keys


- PDF of song with chords + Lesson ideas
- MIDI file
- Listen to the song


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