The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #143440 Message #3310999
Posted By: matt milton
19-Feb-12 - 02:05 PM
Thread Name: Consciousness of the Lyrics we sing
Subject: RE: Consciousness of the Lyrics we sing
Interesting piece, though I think the most telling part of it is the Ed.'s comment that the second a black person turned up the folk club, the word 'nigger' vanished from the song. Which makes it very clear that, deep down, everyone in the club knew that it was morally wrong for white people to be singing a song that referred to black people as niggers irrespective of context.
NB: Having just said irrespective of context, I'll backtrack: one glaring exception would be that of film or theatre, in which somebody is playing the character of a racist.
I can think of quite literally one or two other - highly debatable - possible exceptions. I heard a Billy Childish cover of a Leadbelly song the other day in which he retains use of the words "niggers". It's very much a "niggers do the work/white man gets the money" type line. He just about gets away with it, largely because the line itself makes it clear that it is against the very discrimination that invented the term. There's also the fact that it's a punky cover, spat out by a punk singer with a large repertoire of songs about abuse and exploitation of one kind or another. Having said all that, it's treading on thin ice: I wonder if Billy C would sing it if he suddenly found himself playing to a sizeable black audience?