Revisionism?

I think this belongs here...

I'm in a small singing group and we're singing some Steven Foster songs from the 19th century South (USA) for a festival commemorating Abraham Lincoln. These songs have some...questionable?...words in them. Our event is being recorded, so we have made a decision to change the lyrics in the sensitive areas.

This seems like a small thing, but it's a poor culture who can't appreciate the context of when a song was written, and reflect on how it has changed, and where some things were appropriate 150 years ago they no longer are.

If you are familiar with the songs "Old Folks at Home" and "My Old Kentucky Home" you'll understand.

Just some thoughts...

For the Underground Railroad commemoration we ARE going to use the period words.

This has and always will drive me nuts. The Methodist Church went through a few years ago and changed lyrics in some of the hymns to be more politically correct, and I was in a couple performances in HS where they had us change lyrics to classical pieces. Leave 'em alone, they were written like that for a reason.

Hmmm. I can see the other side. Yes, the words were written at a different time. Depending on the particular word, it could be that is passed out of favor, OR, that is a term we now associate with racism. Or, sexism. Or, insert another 'ism word here.

Times change. Mostly, in some forward process towards 'better'. Usually. So, if the word was in the song, originally, and that word is now considered inappropriate, for good reason, or deemed to be unnecessarily offensive, why not change it? If is so significantly offends the listener or performer, as modified, maybe another song would be a better choice.

I probably don't fully understand the performer's opinion on protecting the originality or history of the song. But, I would like to hear more about it.

But, first, I need to perform some revision on my physique! The elliptical trainer calls. Like Arnold, "I'll be back".

I say leave them alone how will the younger generation know the "truth" of our histroy if we keep changing it all?

One additional comment.....

Are we going to go edit out all Satchmo's recordings that have the same lyrics in them?

Unfrortunately I'm too late on this one. The lyrics to Satchmo's recordings in all the online lyrics sites have already been "Cleansed". There goes an Era of music (New Orleans Jazz/big band) into the politically correct dustbin. :mad:

1984


Read that.

Yep Winston Smith just changed the past and everyone was OK with it..

Orwell wasn't far off the mark.

Maybe we're TOO afraid of giving offense. If one removes all traces of a word from the oral history, the oral history itself ceases to exist. An extreme example of this is President Ahmaninijed (sp?)of Iran disavowing the Holocaust.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Corinna

I say leave them alone how will the younger generation know the "truth" of our histroy if we keep changing it all?

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Good point!