'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: The Shambles
Date: 04 Mar 00 - 02:08 AM

The reaction of the others was indeed part of the problem as they were laughing at the (supposed) humour. I have briefly spoken to the singer, who said the song was from the singing of black people and that this made it OK. He claimed that his intention was not racist. The session there was not the same after that, apparently and the pub closed shortly after and the session split to different venues. This split was roughly on the lines of folk v blues but the singer of the song did not attend either of the new ones.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 11:45 PM

Can't for the life of me imagine having friends who would use the term "nigger" in ANY circumstances. I'm sure some will drone on about "authenticity" and staying "true to tradition", but of course the bottom line is they're trying to shock....and of course let everyone know that "no pinko PC liberals are gonna tell them what they can say". My evil twin would have me wait for an appropriate moment and then as casually as possible use the most vile terms imaginable to describe something or someone they respect. ie: their religious leaders or maternal relative. However my evil twin could get me shot if left unchecked, so simply leaving...and wondering about those who didn't would have to suffice.

Rick

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Bill in Alabama
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 11:08 PM

Several years agoI was working with another performer on an ETV documentary about the music of the War Between the States. One of the songs performed was -Year of Jubilo- which was written to be sung in dialect. The singer made some insightful changes and, in my opinion, did a fine job of maintaining the dialect without appearing to ridicule it or to seem condescending. One of the executives at the station insisted that the song be cut from the program. The executive was African-American. We finally agreed to delete that number.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 10:18 PM

Amos and Banana...you are both exactly right. The slang used in Porgy's words to Bess are exactly appropriate to his character and the feeling in the song. It is a perfect example of how black accent can be used in a way that does not cast the singer in a negative light. And a perfect example of how blanket statements regarding the prejudice inherent in racial stereotypes (including speech), rings false.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 09:50 PM

What was the reaction of the others at the gathering? Have you gone back to this gathering since? Have you ever spoken to the performer about what happened? Just curious--these things have a tendency to have repercussions--

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: The Shambles
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 09:31 PM

Well I have sat and read this one way in to the small hours and I feel a lot more knowledgeable because of it. I would like to thank all of the contributors for their comments.

Someone asked about trouble being caused by the singing of songs. This was not in the Victor Jara way of trouble but the relationship between my friend and I was never the same after this following incident.

We went together to a regular gathering where we thought we knew the other people there quite well. Quite out of character for the performer, a song was sung there that my friend stated that he found so offensive that he asked the singer to stop or he would have to leave. The singer, mainly I think, because he was challenged in this way carried on and my friend left. This happened a little too fast for me and I stayed to try and assess what had happened. This was the cause of my friends concern as he thought that I should have left with him. In fact, I did leave very shortly after but he did not know this.

The song was sung in that 'mock' style described here and contained lines like "throw another n***** on the fire", though there may have been some irony intended. I tried to find out more about the song and why he had chosen to sing it but feelings were running high and that didn't happen and we did not go there again. My friend and I did reach some understanding about the events of that night but things were never the same between us.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Second Banana
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 09:25 PM

"Bess, you is my woman now," evokes a conviction of absolute and total committal to his woman. Anything less than his choice of words would be false. I completely agree with Amos.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 03:33 PM

Leadbelly was discovered by the Lomax family. John Sr. thought it was opprobrious that Alan wanted to present Leadbelly in concerts. This was to cause a rift between father and son. Alan took a lot of heat and was persona non grata in Lubbock Texas for his interest in helping a black man to gain public acceptance. Leadbelly didn't just grow out of the ground. The facts are that if it weren't for Alan, nobody would know who Leadbelly is. How many people know who Iron Head Baker is? As a singer, he was Leadbelly's equal.

The Liberal High Horse is one in which comfortable and simplistic comments are made in a supercillious fashion about such complex subjects as race relations without having to really have them stand up to scrutiny. Many liberals defend an apocraphyl position from the ivory tower. As for me, I tend to be left of center (including liberal) and I am humbled by the information received by black people who have endured real suffering under racism. I have been informed and I think quite correctly that it's too easy to pass judgements on experiences that are limited by the platitudes of the liberal white community.

Frank

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: tar_heel
Date: 03 Mar 00 - 03:26 PM

during the time between february 1990,and may of 1992,i was producing a series of tv news stories from the blue ridge moutains areas of n.c.,va.,tenn.,and west va.. in s.w.virginia,near whitetop mountain,lived a man mostly known for his old-time fiddle playing. but also known in his area of the mountains there,as a great coon hunter. i featured him many times playing his fiddle with many folks in the mountains there,but i really wanted to spend a week-end and go COON HUNTING with him. just to be on the safe side,i ran this idea by my news director at the time of my employment at this particular tv station. you would have thought that i had just announced to the world that i was going to do a PRO RACIST NEWS STORY. i could not believe how sensitive the news director was about this issue. his biggest concern was that he was afraid that the story would insult the local blck audience,to whom our news department, aimed much of it's programming. as a result,i never got to do the story... however,many stories have been featured on network tv on the same topic ,which was carried by that tv station,with absolutely no complaints or backlash,or whatever! i,personally,was insulted at the fact that the tv station let a local minority group control what stories we would produce for our audience..... just a passing thought for you...........................

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Petr
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 04:06 PM

Is the term Rufus derogatory? Ive never heard it before in that sense. I just thought it was a name. As for Caucasians, I didnt like using that term in the first place. I think anthropologists today say there is no such thing as race, only that people who live in a certain region tend to look similar to people in that area. P.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Grab
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 02:08 PM

Re McGrath - I wasn't implying that all hoboes were black, just that I'm English and middle-class, so it'd be a bit odd for me to be doing the "never had no money, lived in a shack, killed a man in a fight, travelling man" kind of bit. :-) Or I'd not feel quite comfortable with it, anyway - it just feels like the wrong idiom. Although I'm OK with Whiskey in the Jar - make what you will of that...

But there is a fair quantity of early blues centred on the hobo lifestyle anyway (was it Howlin' Wolf who said "you can't play blues if you haven't ridden the boxcars"? Some early bluesman anyway)

Grab.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: sophocleese
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 02:06 PM

Peter Ustinov got into trouble with his passport because he described himself as "pink".

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 01:59 PM

Caucasians live in places alike A=rmenia, and Georgia and Azerbaijan and in Chechnya where they are being massacred at present by Russians, who refer to the Chechens as "blacks".

Using the term "Caucasian" to mean "white" is as accurate and as offensive as using the term "Ethiopian" to mean "black". And black and white aren't accurate either -if I'm asked what colour I am I tend to say I'm a sort of blotchy pink.

I wish humans were like cats, covered in fur. I've got a black cat, a ginger cat and a tortoiseshell cat who are sibklings. I haven't a clue what colour they arer under the fur.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 01:54 PM

WOBH, Dave! Thanks! **BSEG*

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 12:59 PM

Amos, you may have just said the most penetrating post in this whole series, in my mind.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 12:35 PM

I think that it is the feeling in the language that must be taken into account. I can't say why off hand, but I have always heard "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" as a kind, loving, compassionate work, with the language of the lyrics simply being a genuine character portrayal. This may be subjective, but I detect not a whisp of malice therein. Crowhugger -- does this seem wrongheaded to you? I want to know.

But conversely you can take many Rufus tunes from 1890-1910 and they are redolent with the kind of mealy mouthed hypocritical condescension I mentioned earlier. And there are lots of shades of gray in between, from those whose "liberalism" is only above thier necks, to those who don't need the language of liberalism because they have always just been that way naturally. They can use identical sentences and feel as different as day and night, so it isn't just the words they use, but what they have put behind them. I can imagine both Martin King Jr and George Wallace saying "We must remember that this is a land of liberty" and sounding as different as Pavarotti and Dylan would sound if they did a duet singing "Old Man River".

A

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Crowhugger
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 09:56 AM

M.Ted:

I have PTSD and I avoid suffering from it as much as I can. Yeah, I know, this is a bit of thread drift, but gee whizzikers, we are discussing the effects of language on people's feelings.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 02:18 AM

What was that famous bigot's name who wrote an entire opera depicting the lives of humble negroes in a Southern slum town, right down to their ragged clothing and stereotypical speech? Oh, yes. George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Personally, I think " Bess, you is my woman now" and " It ain't necessarily so" are not significantly improved by changing the lines to "Bess, You are my woman now" and "It's not necessarily so". Was Gershwin interested in holding the African-American up to public ridicule, or was his primary interest to create transcendent music in the context of a morality play about nothing less than the nature of love, addiction, and the Good/Evil duality of man's nature?

My belief is that he was creating a musical morality play, in many ways similar to the ones depicted in the minstrel melodramas of an earlier time. The songs of the mid 1800's must be viewed in the context of the time. The basic themes of love, despair, suffering and exaltation were lacking in most of the world of proper white theatre. Opera was quite popular, and it's music is still familiar to us today. But name one song that survives from the popular stage of that era, that did not come from the Minstrel Shows. The attraction to the Minstrel show, I believe, was not based on ridicule and derision, although there were elements of that present. The attraction was due to the fact that issues were presented on a basic human level, and that the music was a hell of a lot more fun than the "white bread" being offered on the acceptable Victorian stages of the era.

The oppression of the Black man in that era, or in this one, is inexcusable. But whether or not you think "gwine to run all night" is a cruel and belittling perversion of black speech, it's still a pretty damn good tune.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 09:19 PM

Visually-impaired is more accurate--most "blind" people can make some visual distinctions, and a considerable number of them can actually be taught techniques for interpretting what they see that can significantly extend their mobility and independence--

Impairments can be compensated for creatively--if people are willing to look at them as barriers that can be negotiated, rather than than as life sentences--Blind is blind, but an impairment is something you can work on--

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Petr
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 08:34 PM

An interesting example of unintentional racism (?) occured when a friend of mine when to lunch with some co-workers and as another co-worker arrived someone yelled out his name (Kuhn). Just as he did this a black man came in and looked around to see who shouted. My friend felt like going up to him and explaining what happened. A similar incident happened with another friend whose teenage cousin who yelled "look at all the nickers" at a department store and two black gentlemen in another aisle turned around. In both cases the speaker had no intention of any racial slur although the listener might have thought differently - would this be categorized as systemic racism. In this case the racism may be in the mind of the listener due to an unfortunate coincidence.

I guess I do use the term black as opposed to the PC African American on the other hand I dont consider white to be unacceptable even though people of Caucasian origin are no more white than people of African descent are black. I do think political correctness has gone a bit overboard at times - is visually impaired that much better than blind. I have a blind musician friend and I remember being careful at first and avoiding some words involving sight (not really consciously mind you) and of course avoiding the words tends to draw attention to them if anything. So there is something to be said about being overly sensitive. Petr.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,jofield, in Paris
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 07:10 PM

I think Leadbelly would have become fully as well known without Alan Lomax dressing him up in prison stripes. For someone who's contribution to field recording is immeasurable, for which he is owed our undying gratitude, Lomax fils seems to have had some seriously insensitive moments.

I have heard described a blues workshop at Newport in the early 'sixties where Lomax stood up two country bluesmen of the ilk of Fred McDowell or Bukka White -- he had them stand some distance from one another, possibly on boxes -- and instructed them to have a "carving session", "you know, like you used to do on streetcorners down South". The two singers, whoever they were, were understandably puzzled and embarrassed. If something like this actually happened, it must have felt really clammy, and does not reflect well on the great Lomax.

James.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 06:40 PM

Me, too, Art.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Art Thieme
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 06:24 PM

Why dismount the "liberal horse"---high, low or in-between ?? I've found good examples of decent ways for me to be there on that old mount. I even like the person I am as a result.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 10:58 AM

I don't think anyone would argue with the idea that racial prejudice is a part of American history which is reflected in many of it's songs. To some degree each song that employs it on whatever level is bound to be offensive.

This being said, it becomes more complicated than this. Some will take offense as did members of the militant black community at Louis Armstrong considering him a "tom" which is to my mind the height of intolerance. He was reputed to say in his defense,(and I'm paraprhasing) "I give my contribution to the NAACP every year. If someone busts my chops, they don't get it."

OK, there are certain songs that are riddled with offensive racial content. The other side to this is that along with the attitude of racism, there is a tremendous undercurrent of respect for the talent and contribution of African-Americans and many of these racist songs (maybe not all) are subliminal attempts to offer a tribute, bizarre as this might seem. When the ODJB made it's first jazz recording in 1917 of the Livery Stable Blues, an enormous hit for it's time and introduced the term Dixieland to jazz music, the song itself was a warmed over "coon" song. Yet, I would venture that no member of the ODJB had anything but the utmost respect for the black New Orleans musicians that they had learned from such as Joe Oliver, Louis et. al. The Livery Stable Blues was a novelty number in which the horns sounded like farm animals. But it has racist lyrics. It put dixieland jazz on the map as a popular music form. As a result, it paved the way for Louis and Joe Oliver to become nationally known.

Alan Lomax presented Leadbelly in prison stripes as a "black convict" with the idea of selling that stereotype to urban audiences at the time. Without this marketing, would anyone have ever known about Leadbelly? Was Alan "wrong"?

Here's another angle for you. How racist is it for a white rock and roll group or blues musician to attempt to imitate a black music group? I hear young white singers attempt to sound black and to me it grates as fingernails on chalkboards in the way that I remember the offensive dialects of the minstrel shows. At the same time, I also recognize that there is an unspoken tribute here which compounds the problem. We're all racist to some degree I guess and we're all responsible. The answers are not about banning music but presenting music in a healthy, reasonable and appropriate context so that it communicates the values that most of us cherish, that ALL men and women are created equal.

So it's time for all of us to dismount the Liberal High Horse. BTW, there is a so-called "Christian Right" and in my view, they are neither.

Frank

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 10:51 AM

Crowhugger,

Your suffer from PTSD? I knew there was something I liked about you--I was in an accident 13 years ago and have gone through(and am going through), and I have a stack ofmedical reports with those very same letters on them. I suspect, much of the same stuff that you do--from family Hell to Medical Care Hell, to Social Services Hell, and even Legal System Hell--

They tell us, in such a high-minded way, that the caste system in India is barbaric--what they don't say is that we have a caste system in the West, and the Untouchables are the disabled, and particularly those with a disability that includes pyschological deficits (actually, all disablities have associated psychological deficits)

I have and use a disabled parking placard(I have motor impairments, as well, and my daughter has CP) and it takes a while to get used to the stares that you get--

Anyway, over the years, I have had a great deal of practice trying to explain--well, you know what--if you need any help, in dealing with anything, please feel free to send a personal message--I can help you find resources for almost any sort of problem--

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: wysiwyg
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 04:15 AM

CH-- here's the thing. You CAN'T change people, BUT people do change. It's just that it isn't you that changes them, it's life (and God), and their reaction to it, and how they choose to see it.

Of course that is easy to remember at all times.

Good night!!

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Crowhugger
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 04:07 AM

Praise, mostly with my best friend who identifies herself as, among many other things, social activist, community developer, neo-golfer, book lover, loyal friend, and Pakistani. And with my husband and my Mom. Those are the regulars.

At choir practice, we often chew over thorny topics at break, racism, poverty and feminism included. And with my young pianist friend who is dreadfully prejudiced largely out of cultural unawareness. He'll complain bitterly about how "badly" a particular nationality of pianist plays Mozart without even a thought as to how badly he and I would play the music of their culture. I shall remind him of this the complaining gives way to a philosophical, curious approach to the matter. If it's true that you can't change people, I shall die a broken record on this account.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 03:59 AM

Re:Muleskinner Blues. I was surprised that recent recordings by Lonnie Donegan and Van Morrison used the opening:
Good Morning Captain, Good morning Shine.
which I took to be patronising in context. I'm sure other versions, including Rambling Jack, have it as:
Good morning, Captain, Good morning son
and change "line" to "run" to match the thyme. I'd be happier with the second version.
How you cope with a song like "Shine" I don't know:
Shine away your blueses
Shine away your shoeses
which ends:
Just because my hair is curly,
Just because my teeth are pearly,
That's why they call me Shine
I like the tune but the words need to be set in context as it is sung from the point of view of the shoeshine boy, to avoid offence.
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: wysiwyg
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 03:25 AM

I've been *away* fishing and I've looked in on this thread enough to see one huge obvious thing jumping out at me-- no, two.

1. The thread was started by someone who kinda made a mess for himself with inflammatory postings on another topic, and who is taking great care to communicate thoughtfully here. I just don't get that, but I love it that after starting this highly charged topic he came back to post again and apparently wasn't just stirring up an issue for fun. Hmm. (Thanks for coming back, Davecoje. Gotta say, ya got me pretty confoosed, and I know you know what I mean!)

2. 99% of those of you who've posted on this tried really really hard to think and communicate well about this sticky subject and you know what? Mostly what I saw you communicated was how deeply you are committed to communicating with each other without hurting each other. There are tough words here, but so loving, so urgently desirous of contact.

I find these things very significant. Racism discussions are either different here than elsewhere, or different now in our culture than they used to be.

Just curious-- Have any of you taken this discussion out into your 3-D friendships to see what other people think? Do you discuss these ideas with people of other cultures and color groups?

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Crowhugger
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 02:25 AM

Apology to and in defence of Jeri:

I feel I may have jumped on you too hard for the apparent assumption that POCs would identify themselves as such when contributing to this sort of thread. As you said, if the situation were reversed, you would identify yourself as a member of the group under discussion. It so happens that I wouldn't unless I felt a reason to. Which I clearly did when you mentioned the no postings thing after I had posted. **ding! ding! buttons pushed, buttons pushed1**

It is most decidedly not you who pushed whatever race buttons got pushed. You happened to be the one to articulate the apparent lack of postings from POCs. But I don't believe for one second that you were the only person making that assumption. No matter our personal ancestry, our culture is eurodominated, and we all make assumptions within that framework, rightly or wrongly.

I make these assumptions too. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that I was acting on racist assumptions EVEN THOUGH MY FAMILY IS HALF BLACK-LOOKING, HALF WHITE-LOOKING! **Sorry, sometimes I shout when I'm chagrinned.**

Here's what I did: I was on an elevator going to work, knowing I was late but wanting to know just how late. There were two other people on the elevator, one black, one white, both wearing watches. I asked the white guy for the time. After leaving the elevator something hit my gut with a sickening thud. I had positioned myself in the elevator further from the black guy than the white, and in hindsight I realized that I hadn't even considered the black guy as a viable source of information. That was nearly 10 years ago and I remember it like yesterday.

If I can make a subtle race-based choice like that when my family is mixed race and my childhood dolls, 2 black, 1 Innu and 1 white, were all sisters (you should've seen the looks on the faces of my parents' friends when I announced that!), I can surely understand what a difficult challenge it is to tolerate diversity, never mind to expect it and to embrace it!

The elevator episode, and the doll one for that matter, will remain with me forever, always very close to my awareness.

Jeri, I fear I put you on the defensive because of my own issues, and that's not fair. I'm sorry.

CH

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Crowhugger
Date: 01 Mar 00 - 01:31 AM

Warning: thread creep!

As long as I'm in an "outing" frame of mind, more and more I'm leaning toward calling my particular Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) an illness. Not any particular type of illness, just an illness. Perhaps like asthma or Crohn's disease or arthritis or depression, sometimes I'm too much under the weather to carry on with what I had planned for my life. Sometimes I'm sick for a day, a week, a month. Medication helps to a point, but there are triggers that can do an end run around the meanest meds.

In my experience, only one thing generally makes people more uncomfortable than mental illness, and that is prison. Everyone in my life holds at least some of the typical fears and misconceptions about mental illness or emotional challenges or whatever term works for you. I've found that by just being "sick" sometimes, going to "the doctor" etc., a lot of fears don't get triggered and I am treated less like a weirdo and more like a person. This isn't any 100% solution, but it helps a lot in my circles.

Right now I'm too sick to be able to cook for myself, so tomorrow a friend is delivering Beef Palak and Achari Chicken and some soft onion nan. Just as one would do for a friend recovering from surgery, for example. Just "sick" works well for me. I guess it somehow places the emphasis on the need for support and takes emphasis away from the stereotype of some mental deficit. When it stops working so well I'll be on the hunt for a new approach!

End thread creep.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Troll
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 11:45 PM

Art, my heart goes out to you and your wife I sincerely hope that you and she can find peace.

My choice of the term, mentally ill, is a personal one. I use it BECAUSE it forces those who,like your father-in-law and my father, to face up to unpleasant facts. If someone wishes to use some other term to avoid what they perceive as hurtful, that it their right.

For me, personally, I prefer to call a spade a spade.

troll

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Nathan in Texas
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 11:11 PM

Art wrote: To me, the term politically correct is a semantic ploy created by the religious right in order to denegrate strongly held points of view of folks they differ with.
But how easy it is for us to ignore the fact that the term "religious right" is a semantic ploy created by liberal media in order to denegrate strongly held points of view of folks they differ with.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 09:59 PM

Thank you, Crowhugger and Art! CW, I will send you some stuff I wrote by message on this. My son-in-law is from Antigua and my twin grandsons are what he jokingly calls, "Zebra children", half black, half white.

In the previous thread we had, which I started, called PC And Proud Of it, we finally agreed that ethically conscious was a better term and that PC had been co-opted, as Art pointed out, by the far right.

I am not going to go into the tings I did in that thread nor in the Song Appropriateness thread. If anyone is interested, you can do a forum search and see what was said. Just don't want to be repetitive and have to trot it all out, again.

There is nothing wrong, IMO, with being considerate enough to watch your language. And, you all have been talking about this issue as though it has disappeared. It has not. Security guards in CT, at WalMart and elsewhere put their hands on their guns when they see my BIG, black son-in-law walk by. Whenever a black man is stopped by cops there, he is asked WHOSE car he is driving, NOT for HIS registration, etc. Here I sit, in Wyoming, where my other daughter just told me again, tonight, that her friends, whom she does not consider racist, think nothing of using the N word and a bunch of other equally reprehensible OLD terms which, in my opinion should be let go and disappear from our language.

Crowhugger, as my daughter says when asked if her husband is black, when she is out with the babies alone, "he is Antiguan and we are all of human race." That is how I think of all of you, as part of the HUMAN race and I am proud to know you and consider you my friends.

I am all for humankind.

kat

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 09:44 PM

Davecoje.

When I was a kid in school, three recess periods a week, they taught us folkdances in the gym. One of the dances was called "Jump Jim Joe", another was "Turkey in the Straw".

We also spent a lot of time watching civil rights activities, and heard much about the terrible "Jim Crow Laws"--which we were told, were named for a very popular song--I was always puzzled because, thought I was familiar with many songs, I did not know this song--

Many years later, I had a chance to hear recordings of two very old, and notoriously racist songs, "Jim Crow" and "Old Zip Coon" do I need to tell you what songs they were?

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Crowhugger
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 09:24 PM

Troll,

To someone with a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Yup. I'm a quilter and there isn't any storage or decorating problem I can't solve with cloth, batting and plenty of thread!

If you are looking for racism, you can certainly find it or at least what you perceive to be racism. Sometimes. And sometimes society is in denial. Especially in Canada.

One can see racist sentiments in a song where the writer meant no such thing. The name for this is systemic racism. Most people don't intend to be racist.

Sophocleese and Troll:

Ages ago I thought long and hard to come up with sass for those who groan about political correctness. Until something better comes up, this is what I say in response to snide remarks or tones of voice about being PC: "Yes, Personal Consideration takes a lot of careful thought, doesn't it?" This generally has something of a shock effect, sometimes it's a complete conversation-stopper. But I simply must do what I can to offset the dehumanization of real people with real feelings and issues.

Troll again:

if you said "mankind" when referring to the human race ... someone would scream "sexist". I mean COME ON! Are we to assume (are you male?) that you feel included when you hear "womankind"?

To the several 'Catters who noticed that I'm first and foremost a person:

*singing loudly, not shouting* THANK YOU!

CH who is never too old to climb the tallest tree she can get into. As I stated earlier, when what you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. And when you're a nail, what does the world look like then?

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Oversoul
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 09:07 PM

Just as I thought, this issue roils the waters of much calmer ponds than my own. I must admit that the tin-pan alley stuff was not even a consideration in my mind. Those are just dumbed-down ragtime ditties, aren't they? But you guys are right in putting them in the "coon song" genre. I should have been more specific, what I had in mind were really just melodies with "crude" titles such as HELLO COON and RUN NIGGER RUN. And yes, I recoil at even mentioning these tunes. If I would have learned these tunes as being called something else, like LIBERTY or TATER PATCH this issue wouldn't be - I wonder how many tunes with kind and mysterious titles once meant something entirely different? Any more thoughts on this? This is a difficult issue and I appreciate the wide range of views expressed.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 09:03 PM

Victor Jarra and Joe Hill are two who "got into real trouble" for singing their song(s). They were both deprived of their lives for daring to sing points of view that some would say were politically correct in order that those views might be diminished and negated.

"Emotionally challenged" (a decent term I think) is simply a term that forces my father-in-law not to ignore his own daughter's (my wife's) horrendous mental problems simply because, in his generation, NOBODY was supposed to admit to or acknowledge mental illness in the family at all--ever. Mentally ill, emotionally challenged, crazy, nuts, psycho ---all are terms that mean the same thing within the cranium of the sufferer. The disease feels the same no matter what term is used. The use of any term for "the disease" says more about the speaker than anything els. And it says nothing about the sufferer of any value at all. I, for one, prefer emotionally challenged. It is, at least, a halting step forward. I will use any term that helps my spouse to get through the next half hour with less symptoms.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Midchuck
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 08:54 PM

M. Ted wondered it anyone had gotten into any real trouble for singing a song.

Not really, but I've come pretty close with "The House of Orange."

Peter.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 08:53 PM

Changing the label doesn't get rid of the stigma, it can just transfers to the new label. But it can be part of the process of getting people to think about those kind of things, and working towards getting people to see members of an stigmatised group as people first.

And when people who have a label stuck on them indicate that they want that label taken off, to refuse to comply with that is just bloody bad manners.

I strongly suspect that most of the examples of stupid examples of language described as PC were actually originated and promulgated by people who were trying to discredit the concept of using language sensitively so as to avoid hurting other people.

There used to be all kinds of stories in the press about how loony left councils in England were penalising people for asking for black coffee, or were banning nursery rhymes like "Baah Baah Black Sheep". Most of the time the stories were lies, but that didn't stop them spreading and being used as ammunition.

"If in the year 2000 you use the term 'mankind' you are referring only to male members of the human race." Not where I live. We might not say "Man" as a synonym for "Humanity" - but Mankind, no problem. And I think the term "male members" is one to be used with discretion...

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Troll
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 08:36 PM

It just occurred to me that the "boy" in Chatanooga Choo-Choo could be a kid with a shoeshine box. It was one of the few ways that an urban kid had to make money back when the song was written. The other was selling newspapers.

Just a thought.

troll

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 08:27 PM

James,

That may be the beginning, but my line is in there somewhere, too-- I have a performer friend who covers that song, accompanying himself plays tenor guitar, I cringe whenever I hear him sing it--I am the only one, however, I have seen him perform it for politically correct and racially mixed audiences in the large, liberal East Coast city where he lives,(including, on occasion, some nationally well known "Bleeding Heart Liberal" politicians an not raise an eyebrow.

I on the otherhand, have gotten the fisheye for the "pardon me boy" in "Chattanooga Choo-Choo"--Chattanooga, it will be remembered, was a city that was often mentioned in blackface comedy--

Has anyone gotten into any real trouble for singing a song?

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Troll
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 07:54 PM

Sophoclees, I fully agree with you.What really got me going with the whole PC thing was that everything got sanitized; as if changing the term used for something somehow made it less unpleasant.

Take mental illness for example. "Emotionally challenged" is a prime example of PCspeak if I may coin a word. It's use doesn't change a danm thing for the mentally ill. To us it's just another way of shoving a very real stigma under the rug. Yes,US. I have a mental illness. It is controllable with drugs and therapy. I won't go into gory details.I fight for acceptance for all who have mental problems and it angers me when someone thinks that they can re-label it and make it all better.And they're doing it for MY sake. I didn't ask them to,and what I see is an attempt to gloss over the real problem by saying,"See. We care. We've done away with that nasty old term and given your problem a nice non-perjoritive name." And nothing has been done to change the way the rest of the population views mental illness. All that happens is that now there is a new perjoritive term and the do-gooders have moved on.

Sorry about the length, but it really upsets me.

troll

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: sophocleese
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 04:56 PM

Troll, I like your image with the hammer and the nail. There hasn't really ever been a PC movement. Negative connotations of the phrase, politically correct, started with the sneering implication that people were ONLY doing something (recycling, composting, attempting to be sensitive to what other people felt when called particular things) because they wanted to be 'cool' and 'with it'. The ridicule came from both those who were genuinely interested in effecting change and also their opponents who used it to undermine eforts at both useful and unuseful change. If in the year 2000 you use the term 'mankind' you are referring only to male members of the human race. One of the nice things about language is that it can evolve and become more specific when necessary. The ambiguity of having the same term used both to exclude and include has resolved to where we can now all speak of men, women and humans.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 03:52 PM

It don't think much of these songs at all. They were obviously made at a time when science and the rights of man were not as well protected as today and the U.S. Constitution not as strongly enforced.

I've been doing quite a bit of research over the last couple of years into the songs of 19th century New York music saloons and I find that the "delineators of Ethiopian characters," as blackface performers were rather pompously called, almost invariably did uncomplimentary Irish, German and other ethnic songs as well. This was at a time when Irish were considered to be a separate race, 1/2 step up from blacks but a couple of flights of stairs below Anglo-Saxons. The Germans were perceived as fairly solid citizens and usually only had the "mickey taken" out of them over linguistics.

I once heard a guy say, "Some people insist on conforming to stereotypes." I though that was humorous. Are there drunk Irish, jiveassing blacks and dictatorial Germans. Yes. Are they all that way? No. Does further humanity to call attention to stereotypes in song. Probably not.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Troll
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 03:24 PM

continuation of previous post.

This is called in Logic "Argumentum ad Hominum". If you discretit the man, you discredit his argument.

troll

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: Troll
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 03:21 PM

James makes my point for me.The type of song that I was refering to is a song like Chattanooga Choo-Choo and the use of the word "shine" in that song. As I stated in an earlier thread, "shine" refers to shoeshine.Every train station had a shoeshine stanMany of the songs of the early 20th century were written by people who were insensitive. Most of those songs would not see the light of day in todays media.

Art

"politically correct" became a term of ridicule when the desire to offend absolutely no one,not even inadvertantly, reached the point where,if you said "mankind" when referring to the human race (and even that term was suspect) someone would scream "sexist". I mean COME ON! As I stated earlier, when what you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. I agree that ethical decisions must be made every day. But what I see as ethical might not fit your definition. I have no right to try to shove my beliefs down your throat and thats what the "PC" movement tried to do. One of the PC methods is to use the "if you disagree, you're a bigot" line.

troll

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: GUEST,jofield, in Paris
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 02:50 PM

I see what you mean that "shine" may have been a condescending term used by white foremen. I'm still positive that this and the bulk of Jimmie Rodger's blues material was lifted from black musicians -- and came out of him in a wonderfully unique adaptation -- he made the blues his own. I thought the lyrics to the jazz tune began:

Just because my hair is curly,
Just because my teeth are pearly,

Maybe something that seems very clear to me is not so to others: lyrics like these and Bert Williams "Black and Blue" talk about race -- an all-too heavy reality for the singer -- but they do not burlesque or denigrate african-americans, not to me anyway. I can listen to "Shine" (though I prefer it as an instrumental) or "Black and Blue" and sense it comes from a real place - and they're good songs. But "Rufus, Rastus", and the myriad other "Coon" songs that were so popular during the first 20 years of the 20th century are just crude and musically entirely forgettable.

I gather that the comment about "innocent" references to race were not directed to me. A white songwriter's reference to race can hardly be called innocent. When W.C. Handy writes "what's that you say? I can't talk to my brown? A storm last night blew the wires all down...", he's trying to capture the talk of contemporary Memphians. When Irving Berlin writes "it's the grandest band what am, my honey lamb", he's intentionally using the white burlesque fabrication of how black people were alleged to talk, and he's doing it to get laughs and sell sheet music. (Not that W.C. minded selling sheet music either.)

James.

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 02:21 PM

"there's some songs that just don't work if you're a white person singing them. It'd sound odd if I was to sing about being a hobo in a boxcar, just as a black person singing songs about how they fought in the Irish civil war might sound a little out-of-place - I do think that realism plays some part in it." (That's quoting Grab)

1) I've never heard that hobos in boxcars were particularly likely to be black.

2)There weren't many black people around in Ireland at the time of the Civil War back in the Twenties. But there are a few more these days - and I'm sure there are a few people who'd count as black whose grandparents were involved in it. And I suspect there are black Amwericans wqith a lot more personal understanding of resisting oppression than most of their white compatriots, whatever their ancestry.

3) Men sing songs in the first person as a women, and woman sing songs in te first person as a man. I can't see how realism comes into. What does come into it is whether the singer can show that they can get inside the person in the song, and inside the song.

4) Art's right about the label "politically correct" being a bigots charter to sneer. If we've got to have a label for it when we use language in a respectful and courteous way, I suppose ethically correct is better.

But when we refrain from spitting on the floor in someone's front room, we don't have to give that a label, it's just a matter of not behaving offensively. I can't see much difference. (Next time someone sneers at you for being politically correct, you might just spit on their shoes, and ask 'em if that's ok by them.)

And changing the spelling of "MASSA OB DE SHEEPFOL'" to "MASTER OF THE SHEEPFOLD" is just commonsense, makes it easier for everyone to read including people who might well actually pronounce it was originally written, but wouldn't spell it that way...

Subject: RE: Help: 'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 29 Feb 00 - 01:43 PM

Crowhugger,

Thanks for the wake up call--it is pretty easy to get up on a soapbox and take on the role of the all-knowing, all-understanding, all-explaining guru--and then caught being simplistic and condescending while there are poeple around who know more and better--

James,

In Muleskinner Blues, when the Captain called one of the muleskinners "Shine" I don't think he was invoking the name of an old folk hero, he was speaking to one of the muleskinners--I didn't realize, until I read Alan Lomax's wonderful and disturbing book,"The Land Where the Blues Began", that the muleskinners who built the Levee were all black, and that they were particularly brutalize by the white overseers-- As for more on the subject of "shine"--I have been looking around for the words to Ford T. Dabney and Cecil Mack's "That's Why They Call Me Shine"--as I recall, it begins with the phrase "Just because my hair is nappy"--Louis Armstrong performed this song for many years, much to the disgust of many of his contemporaries, particularly Duke Ellington--

Troll,

As to your point about many of these references being innocent as opposed to having racist intent--Here are the lyrics to one of Kate Smith's somehow forgotten hits, from the pens of Henderson and Brown, who also wrote "It had to Be You" and other great standards--

"Someone had to pick the cotton, Someone had to plant the corn, Someone had to slave and be able to sing, That's why darkies were born. Someone had to laugh at trouble, though he was tired and worn, had to be content witb any old thing, That's Why Darkies were Born. Sing. Sing, Sing when you're weary, sing when you're blue Sing! Sing! That's what you taught all the white folks to do. Someone had to fight the devil, Shout about Gabriel's Horn, Someone had to stoke the train that would bring God's Children to Green Pastures, That's Why Darkies Were Born"

I would welcome your comments on this bit of innocence--