Forgive me for losing my cool earlier. I'm just going to post the lyrics to the song so that everyone has a reference. In my view you cannot say the word Dixie, let alone make a melodic/lyrical reference to it without intentionally calling up conceptions of "The Old South", and "Southerness". I will be happy to elaborate on those concepts if need be. Additionally, the narrative of the song is highly suggestive of Civil War balladry in which a dying soldier is given space to utter his last words, and relates his love of home and family to a commrade (Think: Just as the Sun Went Down, Brother Greene etc.) These sentimentalist tropes were used extensively during the war and are an outgrowth of 19th century conceptions of the proper stages of death, dying, and grieving. Just for the record. I've never used the word racism once in all of these threads because i'm not interested in moral valuations right now. While I'm glad of the spirited debate that has occured as a result of my original post, and find it to be very very interesting and indicative of some important truths about where we as a nation stand on our conceptions about the war, I perasonally have been mostly interested in comparing narrative structures of songs and trying to suggest some historical concepts about the developement of Country music. Here's the song currently in question. I sang Dixie as he died The people just walked on by as I cried The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride So I sang Dixie as he died He said way down yonder in the land of cotton Old times there ain't near as rotten as they are On this damned old L.A. street Then he drew a dying breath And laid his head against my chest Please Lord take his soul back home to Dixie Chorus He said listen to me son while you still can Run back home to that Southern land Don't you see what life here has done to me? Then he closed those old blue eyes And fell limp against my side No more pain, now he's safe back home in Dixie Chorus: I sang Dixie as he died The people just walked on by as I cried The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride So I sang Dixie as he died
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