Banana Boat song

2:08 red background, red letters. NAILED IT!

"This is a traditional Jamaican songthat was sung by dock workers who worked throughout the night loading bananas onto ships. It's daylight, and they look forward to the arrival of the Tallyman (who will take inventory) so they can go home." Not a slave song.

This song activates some sort of neuron in my brain that makes me feel like everything is good and all I have to worry about is collecting bananas

This is such a good song, unfortunately the maker of it died today, but this song is a timeless classic, rip

this shit is straight fire

I didn’t come here from anything I just randomly remembered this song and wanted to listen to it

RIP Harry! Thank you for making this timeless song. May you live forever through your music.

This is the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. When my mother was sick in the hospital I used to sing this to her. I love you banana song. #monkey

My theme song during last period in school

The baby elephant that is throwing a tantrums brought me here.

I can no longer listen to this song without thinking of the dining room scene of Beetlejuice

I can say with absolute certainty that this isn't a song about slavery. Well not conventional slavery at least. If you look at it, slavery was abolished in JAMAICA and the rest of the British Caribbean on August 1 1834. The banana trade in Jamaica started around 1866, 34 years after the emancipation of slaves and one year after rebellions protesting the treatment and rights of the slaves which was mostly successful. Taking this into account, we can estimate that the first time this song was sung may have been around the 1870s and just the basic rhythm. This song is not one talking of slavery but of the poor conditions that they had to work under and the long hours that they had normally starting from 8 in the evening to around 5 or 6 in the morning, when the sun started to rise. These conditions were seen all over the world, including in European countries as a result of industrialisation requiring much more labour. Also, taking into account that Jamaica was one of the leading countries in technology and industrialization, Jamaica may have had worse working condions than many other countries. These conditions may be compared to some of the sweat shops of our modern day. In my opinion the deadly black tarantula may be referring to any imperfections or diseases that the banana may gave. If this was noticed by the tallyman, they may have been forced to recount and reevaluate each banana, taking up more time. A few things I missed out, the first commercially produced banana, the gros michel, wasn't introduced to Jamaica until 1835. Jamaica was the first country in the western hemisphere to commercially produce bananas, starting in 1866. The only way this could be a song of conventional slavery is if it came from America during that time period

I once sang this while I was ringing up a woman who was buying nothing but bananas. Apparently, she was baking banana bread with her church group and she had to get the bananas. She appreciated my sense of humor, because she felt bad about the amount of bananas. Edit: This really did happen. I wasn’t singing loud, and I didn’t sing the whole song. It was just something I did to relieve the tension because this lady had about half a cartload of bananas. Maybe more; I can’t remember the number because it was about 6-7 years ago. No one clapped, since they didn’t hear me. I got no standing ovation. It was just me, the customer, and bananas. The only thing that happened after she left was a coworker coming up and asking me what was up with all the bananas, and I told her about the church group baking banana bread. That was the end of that.

Meaning: He’s a banana harvester and he wants the tally man to cont the bananas because he wants to go home after all his hard work

So heartfelt, so real, as an expression of end-of-night-shift exhaustion! I've been listening to this, and singing it to myself, since I was ten - about when it came out!

the aggressiveness of the “six foot, seven foot, eight foot BUNCH” and the softness of the “daylight come and me wan’ go home” juxtapose each other perfectly

Secret shame: in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody when Freddy goes “EEEHH-OOO” I always thought was gonna burst into this song.

Every time Freddie Mercury sings "Day-O" to the audience during a Queen concert, I keep waiting for him to sing this song. 😊

I was definitely singing this song during my last hour of my shift. Not counting bananas but daylight definitely means time to go home

I’m half Jamaican and for some reason this song always makes me happy. I love Jamaican culture 💛🖤❤️💚🇯🇲