"Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is a traditional Jamaican mento folk song, the best-known version of which was sung by Harry Belafonte and an alternate version interspersed with another Jamaican folksong, Hill and Gully Rider, by Dame Shirley Bassey. Despite the song's mento influences, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is widely known as an example of calypso music. It is a work song, from the point of view of dock workers working the night shift loading bananas onto ships. Daylight has come, the shift is over and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home.
Read more about Day-O (The Banana Boat Song): Origins, Covers, Parodies and Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words banana and/or boat:
“I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)