Here's an old African proverb "To stumble is not to fall but to go forward faster"

And here's a oldish American proverb-"If you're in for a penny, you might as well be in for a buck {or something like that}.

Sooo-all that to say- here is the new Susanna not like the Old Susanna but Susanna still the same [at least the girl's name hasn't changed].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fui5VRsyg3A&NR

Osuofia - Susana
[Nkem Owoh Singing]

Added June 14, 2006 ;From bogene2020

But-if they could, would the folks who made up that Old Susanna song still be singing it now the same way that they used to sing it then?

And should they be singing it the same way-all the time? I thought improvisation was a huge part of what made traditional music traditional {maybe that's just some forms of traditional music}.

Does the call & response techniques used in this song make it traditional or at the very least traditional-like [this for those who say you can't know the composer of a traditional song].

But maybe the very fact that it is recorded nowadays and credited to a known composer means that folks would not do what they used to do with songs-use the folk process to "tweak" the words, adding to them or substituting other words for them-maybe using another female name in the song [or changing the gender of the song all together].

I'm just saying...