Are lyrics offensive

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: belfast
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 08:30 AM

It is sometimes hard to know exactly where the offence lies. When Christy Moore recorded "The Time Has Come" it received extensive airplay on RTE. When someone told them that it referred to the last meeting between Peggy O'Hara and her son, the hungerstriker Patsy O'Hara, they banned it. The words of the song had not changed.

On the other hand "one Sunday morning as I was going mass etc" mentioned earlier is simply and obviously offensive to anyone catholic, protestant or atheist. Is this being politically correct? Perhaps. It's also stating the obvious.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 09:21 AM

What's REALLY offensive is having someone else decide what I ought or ought not to feel offended by, because I failed to read their mind correctly on intent. That compounds offensiveness beyond one's own boundaries, and repeatedly violating someone else's boundaries is beyond offensive.

~S~

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: GUEST,Ireland
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 09:33 AM

Christy Moore really P.'s me off, but that's the twisted Irish in me, on the otherhand he tells a story and to ban that would be offensive. I'm on the otherside wrt the hunger strikers, but do admire them for sticking to their convictions. Their story should be told, its up to us to take out of it what we want, inspiration or offence.

Now there's an opinion I did not have before!

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 01:25 PM

No, you can't read people's minds, as WYSIWYG says. As a rule of thumb, I feel it is always best to give people the benefit of the doubt - if they offend, assume that they aren't doing it just to offend; and if people claim to be offended, assume that they genuinely are.

If you're wrong in that assumption, it normally becomes pretty clear soon enough. But if you do it the other way round, and assume malice or bad faith, and you are wrong, the chances are you will never find out the truth, because the way you react will mask it.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Wolfgang
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 02:19 PM

Ireland,

I'm curious, will you give us the original lyrics of the verse you started your argumentation with, eventually? My bet is the last line is

here lies a soldier of the IRA

Or am I mistaken?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: GUEST,Ireland
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 02:52 PM

Wolfgang, to add IRA at the end would make no sense as the song indicates the territory of "ulstermen", for an IRA man to be buried in Ulster he is still in his home land if you know what I mean.

There is another song No pope in Rome? Tune of home on the range. No pope in Rome No chapels to shine in my eye, No nuns and no Priests and no rosary beads Every day is the 12th of July.???

These songs are brought out around the start of July, they only cause offence and instill hatred. My friend is catholic as he is older than me he takes the mick out of the situation, you know prod v cath, mixing the Soldiers song with the sash, goes over my sons head but I think it's funny.

My point I suspose is this,if my children are not exposed to this crap there is one less way of filling them full of bigoted crap the ruins a great country. And if they are exposed to it I rather have the situation protrayed for the joke it is.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Wolfgang
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 03:01 PM

Ireland,

I had meant of course that the other lines had to be adapted as well. But your response shows I was dead wrong thinking this was originally an IRA song.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 03:12 PM

Singing Kevin Barry to the tune of The Sash, and the other way round, is sometimes done. You can get away with the same chords, so if anyone had the nerve they could have the two going on at the same time, and it might sound quite good - harmonising.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Jimmy C
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 03:21 PM

I know quite a few Irish songs and would never intentionally offend anyone, However if I went into a "Orange" club I would expect to hear certain songs and if I went into a "Nationalist" club I would expect to hear certain songs as well. I am not going to be offended when I know in advance what to expect.

The difference is whether the song offends your moral values, your nationality, your religion or your sexual orientation etc. I am a catholic nationalist but there are certain rebel songs I would not sing because I know by the lyrics that they cross the line of acceptance. I do sing many songs that are pro-irish rather than anti-english. I find that the majority of "orange" songs for example are not anti-irish as much as they are anti-catholic and are very offensive.

I once sang " Over the Sea to Skye" at a Scottish function and was warned not to sing it again because it was a Catholic Jacobite song. This was in Toronto in 1988. It's a judgement call, and really there are lots of great songs around that there is no need to offend anyone. If in doubt don't include it in your set.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Leadfingers
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 03:52 PM

I have heard of people having problems by ordering the wrong brand of Whiskey.Jamesons is Catholic ,Bushmills is protestant.Is that ridiculous,or what???

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Amos
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 04:03 PM

I've heard of whiskey becoming a religion in extremis but this is the first time anyone tried to tell me that a religion had a whiskey as a parishioner!! LOL!

A

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 04:18 PM

Guinness is ecumenical, I believe.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Grab
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 04:21 PM

Amos, I disagree. You can be offended by anything, and what offends you depends on the beliefs and values you hold. It doesn't even take any skill or communication - about the easiest way to offend is to chew your food and then hang your mouth open in front of someone!

That's why I find "artists" who say that they're offending to communicate to be idiots. Being offensive takes no skill or talent, and shows no intelligence or motivation on the part of that person beyond the desire to do something generally considered unacceptable.

What you *can* do is not to get het up about it. If the person doing it doesn't know it's offensive to you, then don't shout about it, and don't blame that person. For instance, if I sang "Pretty Polly" and only later found that someone in the audience had recently had a daughter murdered, I would feel bad that I could have chosen a more appropriate song. And if that person had left the room, I wouldn't be surprised when I found why. But I *wouldn't* expect them to want a written apology from me, or for anyone to get on my case about it, if I simply didn't know. If I did know and sang it anyway, to get that person pissed off, then I could rightly expect them to dislike me for it. Whether that song is offensive *to me* or not is one issue, whether the singer/writer is intending to *be* offensive is another issue altother.

So if someone sings a pro-IRA or pro-UDA song in a club I'm in, they won't get much applause from me bcos I don't like those songs, but that's it. But if they come up to me afterwards and try to pick a fight with me for being in favour of Brit soldiers shooting the little kiddies, they have deliberately chosen to be offensive to me personally, and that's a different matter.

I would really rather ppl sang what they want and we all tone out what we don't personally like, than that we have limits imposed. Wysiwyg's point is true - political correctness should just mean that you don't *intend* to cause offense, not that you take a focus group from every corner of the world and produce something which is so vague, you can't tell what it's supposed to mean anyway!

Graham.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: GUEST,Ireland
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 04:42 PM

Fields of Athenrye (?) is a song that is anti-English, but it is about how people were sent to Australia both Catholic and Protestant met the same fate, so I understand the anti-English songs, but hate the way people hijack it for political reasons.

I have said the Wolftones bug the *&"^ out of me before, but when I consider what has been said about the songs you sing and why, it has changed my opinions a bit.

I agree that the anti-catholic songs of the orange order are very offensive, it shows an ignorance and ingratitude that does nothing but stir it up.

I know I started from an Irish perspective I'm interested in songs that offend in general, I do not want to relate every thing to Ireland.

Religous songs can be pretty near the knuckle.

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Amos
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 04:53 PM

QUite right -- You can be offended by anything, and that depends on your beliefs. And, let us not forget, your beliefs are the result of your own decision to assume them. You can also be NOT offended by anything. Pay yer money, take yer cherce! :>) In my experience, the more offense one arounds taking from the environment, the less productive and helpful they are, as a general rule of thumb.

A

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: GUEST,Ireland
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 05:04 PM

When Geldof brought out "I don't Like Mondays", was the family who took offence justified in trying to take him to court and have the record banned?

When they (Boomtown Rats) wrote the song, were they more interested in making money at the expense of the girl the song was about

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 05:05 PM

At the functional level of everyday life, it's real simple. People simply vote with their feet when they've had more than they are willing to have. What happens in between the offense and the vote is where it gets sticky.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: Amos
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 05:37 PM

A virtual clarion, as usual, Susan!


A

Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 06:17 PM

I can't see anything "anti-English" in the Fields of Athenry, and I've never met any English person who saw it that way. Rebelling against "the Crown" is something a lot of English people have felt called to do at various times, and have seen as their patriotic duty.

Maybe that's a quibble - there are songs which would qualify. But the relevance of making that quibble is that it's quite easy to identify songs as partisan, and they get used in a partisan way, when they aren't in themselves partisan at all. Singing a particular hymn can be seen, and can be intended as, a provocative and sectarian act - and then you find it's in a hymn book of the other religion anyway, used in another part of the world.

There's stuff which is intentionally and explicitly sectarian or racist or whatever, and anyone singing it except in a special kind of quasi-academic context, is setting out to make a sectarian or racist statement, and maybe laying down a territorial claim of some kind. And there is stuff which gets taken up and used as some kind of banner, when the content is in no way offensive ("I'm for Ever Blowing Bubbles" becomes a way of expressing support for West Ham, and could even get your head kicked in.)

It's easy enough to say "don't be offended" and if its a question of something that might be aimed at you or yours, that's probably something to aim for. But there's the question of how to react if it's aimed at someone else - I don't think there's anything particularly admirable in keeping quiet when some bigot is throwing insults at Black people or Jews or Arabs. Or Catholics, if you're a Protestant, or Protestants if you're a Catholic, if you're in a part of the world where those kinds of insults carry weight.