I missed this till now. I'm hysterical after hearing the few samples on NPR. It's wrong, wrong, wrong... the black folk I know would be feeling toally ripped off all over again.

If these people are so desperate to "create" from an inherited foundation, why can't they sing the damn songs their own sorry ass selves? Every week our band does material in church influenced by, among other things, the Lomax collection of spirituals as we have heard them and as they have taken root and grown into our own heads and hearts in today's time. THAT is where my creative license begins and ends-- to dub under or over Vera Hall-- no, no, no!!!

What a slippery slope is ethics.

~Susan