Preserve Politically Incorrect Songs???

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: mousethief
Date: 16 May 01 - 01:02 PM

Yes, they should be preserved. Performed is another question.

I forget who said it,but I love it: History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: GUEST,Midchuck upstairs
Date: 16 May 01 - 12:48 PM

While the contemporary view of Jews as the background of Merchant of Venice is negative, it seems to me that the role of Shylock is best understood as positive. He's a rough, aggressive businessman, without question, but very human, clearly tortured by the hostile discrimination to which he's subject. Altogether one of the best, richest roles in Shakespeare, to my mind, and if acted right, very sympathetic.

I agree completely. I've seen similiar analyses from others, some of whom were Jewish.

It just isn't very politically correct, is all.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: GUEST,Ron Olesko
Date: 16 May 01 - 12:02 PM

Naturally we should preserve these songs... but perform and broadcast? It depends on the context. As a radio host, I try to be very careful and explain the original context. Stephen Foster's dialect songs for instance. However there is a fine line between preserving and exploiting.

I find it fascinating to go to a museum and examining medieval suits of armor and all the gruesome weapons. I certainly wouldn't want get one for my own and wear it the next time I walk into Stop & Shop to pick up a gallon of milk. Learn from the past, live in the present.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 16 May 01 - 11:46 AM

*walks by singing*

"Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces
while handicapped people make handicapped faces
I'm an asshole a-yodie-o a-yodie-o a-yodie-o"

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 May 01 - 11:41 AM

Midchuck, while I could plainly see the lump of tongue in your cheek, your reference to Merchant of Venice prompts me to comment.

While the contemporary view of Jews as the background of Merchant of Venice is negative, it seems to me that the role of Shylock is best understood as positive. He's a rough, aggressive businessman, without question, but very human, clearly tortured by the hostile discrimination to which he's subject. Altogether one of the best, richest roles in Shakespeare, to my mind, and if acted right, very sympathetic.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Lyndi-loo
Date: 16 May 01 - 10:32 AM

Most of Robert Burns would have to go (especially the collection of the Merry Muses)

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: BobP
Date: 16 May 01 - 10:11 AM

Un-PC songs are being trashed even as we speak.

Steven Foster's stuff is loaded with offensive commentary; according to some standards.

Social sentiments expressed in Irish and Scottish ballads will come under increased scrutiny as li'l minds continue to take over (the meek shall . . . ?).

Doesn't "Star of the County Down " concern a plan to plant a bride (permanently, I expect) in front of a fireplace? How's that for a candidate for the heap? I could go on all day (all year perhaps).

Dangerous contraction of free expression didn't vanish with the fall of Germany's National Socialists; The Nazi spirit remains alive and well. There are folks who would gladly control what you eat, think, say, do and sing.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 16 May 01 - 10:06 AM

The thought has just occurred to me that if any enterprising singer ever got round to recording a CD comprised solely of the most politically incorrect songs of all time, ir would sell like hotcakes. I mean, can you imagine all the free publicity ? Hell, maybe I will do it myself, purely as an academic project, you understand.

But which songs to include? "Mrs Stein Don't Rent to Gypsies Anymore", would have to be included. Anything by Stephen Foster which mentions "darkies" would be good, the aforementioned "Early Morning Blues", the whaling song "Ballena". Anything else spring to mind?

Murray

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Kim C
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:52 AM

Preserve, yes. Perform? Well, it depends on your audience. But I agree with all who have said that music reflects the attitudes of a particular time period, and if we do away with the songs, we're missing something. That doesn't mean you have to go around singing something that might make you, or a listener, uncomfortable.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: GUEST,Midchuck upstairs
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:25 AM

Well, I think we should certainly stamp out anything in the past that doesn't conform to enlightened present thought.

Ernest Hemingway once said, I believe, that American literature really began with "Huckleberry Finn." But that novel uses the "N Word" throughout, so it should be outlawed.

In Victorian times, people didn't want Shakespeare published because it had sex and dirty words. Now that's fine, but Gawd forbid anyone should want to perform "The Merchant of Venice." Sheer anti-semitic propaganda!

And how about a public document that says: "He (the King of England) has...endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." Obviously, any writing containing such a slander of "...the pre-Columbian settlers of the Continent..") (gag me with a spoon!) should be stricken utterly from the archives.

Songs are only a small part of the problem! Any writing or speech that in any way suggests that any difference whatever exists between any people whatever, must be stamped out, so that we can become an utterly homogenous mass, like one big amoeba...

Bleaaahhhhh!

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:24 AM

Where or if to draw a line, eh? I expect there could be songs that I would want to disappear - there must be songs so foul that I would want them to die. I suppose we all draw our own personal lines & there will be songs that I would rather preserve that someone else would feel too apalling to be kept & vice versa. So I guess my opinion is that one should help to preserve & pass on whatever one feels is worth preserving & that one shouldn't expect to be able to prevent anyone else doing the same.
I'd reserve the right to make my opinion known though.

Kris

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:20 AM

Some sensitivity is certainly in order, but unfortunately a lot of the world's great music has been co-opted in support of pretty awful things. The Nazis provide one of the biggest examples of this -- their movement had a built-in soundtrack, everything from "Deutschland Uber Alles" (a profoundly beautiful tune by Haydn, I believe) to the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. Of course, most of this doesn't contain objectionable lyrics, which can be hard to ignore sometimes. I'd say preserve it all (you preservationists out there), but consider your audience before you sing something too insulting.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:19 AM

Mmmm, I don't know. There are some blues songs that are so outrageously sexist that even I baulk at singing them. Blind Blake's "Early Morning Blues" comes to mind. It contains the memorable line "The day you leave me , Momma, that's the day you die".

Also, although I realise the chanty singers would disagree, I have never felt comfortable singing whaling songs.

And I am about as un-PC as you get.

Murray

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 May 01 - 09:05 AM

Well, I would still pick and choose my audience before singing one of these "endangered" songs, and I'd work on the introduction to try to set it in context. So, let's see, what kind of introduction do I need before singing "The Old She-Crab" next Sunday at the Portland Public Market Sea Food Festival...?

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: sophocleese
Date: 16 May 01 - 07:57 AM

Certainly preserve songs. Tunes can be sung to different words. A fun example was when my husbands aunt was appalled, at a family gathering, when another uncle started playing Redwing. She only knew it as a song with very naughty words which she still hasn't shared with anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: paddymac
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:19 AM

Preserved? Yes, of course. Flaunted, under the guise of preservation? I wouldn't think so, but then, I'm not "everybody". Most often, it's a particular set of lyrics that people object to, but sometimes the melody itself carries associations that some people find objectionable. Take "Garry Owen" as an example - a great tune before it was adopted as a regimental air by the 7th Cavalry, and still a great tune, but there are folks who object to it because of its association (in their minds, at least) with the undeniably racist attitudes of the US government as regarded the pre-Columbian settlers of the continent. It wasn't adopted by the regiment "because" it was racist, but because it was a popular tune that reflected the ethnic heritage of a large part of the men in the unit. End of oration. I'll put the soapbox back in the closet (until the next time, anyway).

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: English Jon
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:02 AM

Springtime for hitler was a lampoon. In Mel Brooks film "The Producers", a tax inspector accidentaly discovers that you could actually make more out of a show failing, than being a sucess, so they hunt for the worst musical they can find. "Springtime for H" is put on, unfortunately, the production is so bad that everyone thinks it's splendid irony, and the show is a hit... etc

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Lyndi-loo
Date: 16 May 01 - 04:48 AM

Totally agree with chanteyranger. O tempora o mores. To alter things because they do not agree with modern thinking would be to wipe out the truth and would present an extremely revisionist view of the past. Cf The Ministry of truth in Orwell's 1984

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Banjer
Date: 16 May 01 - 03:18 AM

As with anything historical, they should be preserved, if for no other reason than to serve as a bad example.

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 16 May 01 - 03:11 AM

What's important is that songs articulated the feelings of people at particular times and in particular circumstances. They are windows into the past, as sordid as that past sometimes is, and it would be a crime to whitewash them out of history. I also second SeanM and Sorcha's motion.

-chanteyranger

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 May 01 - 12:55 AM

Yes. "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it."

Subject: RE: BS: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: SeanM
Date: 16 May 01 - 12:54 AM

Yes. Preserve the music. The old saying "He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it" cuts in SO many ways.

If you remove the music that represents the period, you remove one of the major contexts that the 'abhorrent' behavior sprang from, and render it that much more abstract and eventually irrelevant to present day study.

M

Subject: Preserve 'Politically Incorrect Songs???
From: Rebel135
Date: 16 May 01 - 12:28 AM

Im a free think, remember George Washington was always considered the "The First Rebel" and I have pondered over this question.

Are some songs so politically incorrect that they should never be heard again??

In the sound track of the movie, Cabaret the Song Tomorrow Belongs To Me Stands Out.

It is a beautiful Song that is conected with a hideous evil. If you remember its sung on a Beautiful Day at a German Beergarten,when a single Singer Sings in a Clear Voice.

The Stag In the Forrest...

Consider. The most polular Song of the Spanish American War among American Troops in the Phillipines was a song sung to the tune of

Tramp Tramp The Boys Are Marching.

It Was Called Damm Damm The Filipinos

The song expressed the opinion of the rank and file American Solider who was sweating and dying in a jungle war to find and stamp out the Rebels and Insurgents who were fighting first against the Spanish and then the Americans.

There are many others.

My question is, are we intellectual mature enough to record and listen to songs that in their day reflected the moods and views that we find offensive.

And what about.... Springtime for Hitler?????????? When it First came out as a movie some people and critics were appalled. Now thirty years later its gone on to become a hit musical. But what about the music??

Grins Always....

Rebel