Please don't feel you're a target, you are welcome to express your feelings here.

This is a debate that has been going around /n/ around for years. Basically the larger consensus in the traditional music community (I'll go out on a limb here and speak for all) is that you can't change history, you can't choose the way things were, only the way they are. We can't ignore the seamier aspects of our history and culture by pretending they didn't exist, and some of this material has real value. It's there for performers and scholars to examine and use. I find that some songs have an essential human essence to them that transcends the usage of terms which may be derogatory now. Even if you hold a Poetic Licence, you cannot mess too much with them without destroying them. (Then again, some songs are not worth singing--but we may not agree on which ones.)

If you're a performer, you already know that not every song is suitable for every audience. For example, I like singing "Get Up And Bar the Door" (look it up, aka "John and Joan Blount") because I think it's got a very clever usage of irony, especially in the ending. But I wouldn't sing it at a women's shelter benefit, because after all it's about a home invasion and implied rape. You might not want to sing it at all, or you might leave out or change the second last verse. (If its a listening audience, I just usually apologize in advance for not being PC) Point is, it's a performer's choice, you or I can choose to do it this way or that way. But I want to see as many versions as I can of a song like this, so I can decide what are the strongest parts, and what can be left out (usually because it's redundant and too long rather than offensive).

In particular, when a song has a known author--Stephen Foster, say, or Henry Clay Work--that person wrote a specific set of words. If you want to change the parts you don't like when you sing it, that's fine--but it's now "Stephen Foster as adapted by So And So".

Also particularly a problem in the nautical songs...sailors were not altar boys or New Left multiculturalists, and the music reflects this very strongly. What they sang is mostly not what you learned in Grade Five Music. If you're into this stuff seriously, you're going to have to compromise something, either your historical credibility, or current political sensibilities. It's a fine line. No wonder people write their own songs these days.

Getting off soapbox. Someone else's turn.

Bill