Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: pavane
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 09:51 AM

WELSH is actually from a Saxon or German word meaning foreign, therefore doesn't really describe the inhabitants of Wales (Do you call yourself a foreigner?). I expect the origin of Welching is from the same word, rather than from any connection with the people (And there is a Welch Riesing grape, also nothing to do with Wales)

The DUTCH terms, by contrast, DO refer to the people, with whom were at war for many years. We have Dutch courage and double Dutch, as well as Dutch treat.

(We have lots of black sheep near where we live, and though not all are totally black, there are plenty which have more black than white in their coats.

They were probably of less value than white because the wool could not be dyed to other colours?)

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: van lingle
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 07:51 PM

Now I gotta track down that song, Cool Beans. Seems like I read that in an interview with Gary Davis somewhere. A blind street singer who also used to carry because, he said, people kept stealing his guitars.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Cool Beans
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 07:43 PM

I'm skeptical of that Blind Boy Fuller story. How hard would it be to avoid getting shot by a blind guy?

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 07:18 PM

Ooooooo . . . about time for Art to make another appearance, after that one!

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 06:25 PM

Or Czech Mate.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:55 PM

Don't forget French Leave, French Letters, French Fries, French Kiss and the English Disease. Not to mention Spanish Influenza, Dutch Treat, and Hong Kong Flu.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: van lingle
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:39 PM

Interesting thread, Art.

Country blues is full of Non PC lyrics. Sugarbabe It's All Over Now by Mance Lipscomb ("Going dowtown gonna get me a rope, Whup that woman 'til she buzzard lope" and Bo Carter's Soo Cow (Soo Cow better come home quick, I'll break your leg with a stick.") come to mind and the one by Blind Boy Fuller where he brags about shooting his woman which he actually did according to some sources.

Then of course there is Lightfoot's "For Loving Me".

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:24 PM

Welching, indian giving, dutch courage, are all terms based or derived from racial/national stereotypes. Niggardly is not. Honking your horn is not a disparagement of Hungarians, nor is Doo Wop music an attack on Italians, nor is yanking a chain an insult of Americans. Now, that doesn't mean someone won't take offense at those expressions. It just means they are getting pissed for a stupid reason. In other words, their problem not mine.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rog Peek
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:14 PM

Nice Legs Shame About the Face - The Monks

Rog

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 04:47 PM

Pavane-

When we drove through the hills of Wales last year we only counted 17 Black sheep, and 38,657 White sheep. But maybe we missed a few sheep and a few hills.

With regard to "niggardly" not being offensive to Black people, do people from Wales consider "welching" on a bet offensive?

I don't think I'd use either term.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 04:03 PM

I remember a local blues band who used to do a number that I can only recall a few lines from, he was singing to a woman and it went 'you won't cook, you won't sew, you won't even scrub that floor, babe I love ya but you gotta go'. anyone know the title of this song? Jane

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Cool Beans
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 03:10 PM

"I'm really torn between cracking up at that and considering it to be
one of the most genuinely offensive things I've ever heard."
Frogprince, I don't believe those concepts are mutually exclusive!

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 02:14 PM

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I recently saw a "definition" of political correctness that came pretty close to the mark:

PC:
"Advancing the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

I would also propose that veritas is not served, in the main, by such filtration of thought and speech. It is not unlike the making of wine. Too much fining and filtering removes the heart and soul of the finished product. The result, in the words of the late Ernest Gallo (of Gallo Wines), is a product whose main distinction is that it is "designed to offend as few as possible."

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 01:07 PM

My wife sings in a large choral group with an evangelical bent. They were rehearsing a medley of the U.S. armed forces songs, and were to sing just the chorus of "Anchors Aweigh". Someone objected to the words "on our last night ashore, drink to the foam"; so they sang "on our last night ashore, hail to the foam". I consider that a total travesty, and completely inappropriate in the context of their intention to honor servicemen.

On an entirely different level, my seminary roommate strolled into the apartment one day and belted out:
    "Jesus loves the little children,
    All the little children of the world;
    Niggers, kikes, and spics, and wops,
    Jesus thinks they all are tops;
    Jesus loves the little children of the world".
I'm really torn between cracking up at that and considering it to be
one of the most genuinely offensive things I've ever heard.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: goatfell
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:02 PM

I like non PC songs because they are more truthful than PC songs

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Mark Ross
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 11:58 AM

THE HAND OF GOD(aka GOD WILL FUCK YOU UP)by John R. Butler gets my vote.


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 11:22 AM

"Drop-kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life" (can't recall the 'country' composer.

"Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" by Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jewboys (supposedly dedicated to Gloria Steinhem)

"Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" by Jimmy Buffett

"The Yellow Rose of Texas," in the sense that most Texans who sang it lustily for years didn't recognize the implications.

"When Our Hearts Were Young and Gay" - if you're hetero

"Take the Job and Shove It!" by Johnny Paycheck

Any number of songs by the late Country Dick Montana and The Beat Farmers

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 10:34 AM

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned "Hunting" Songs, other than Whale.
Dido Dendigo
Innocent Hare
The Keeper (Yes I do know about the sexual side of it)
Greenmore Hare
Horn of the Hunter
John Peel
etc
JohnB

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: meself
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:52 AM

Umm - I read the Classics Illustrated comic - and I remember the version in 'The King & I' - do those count?

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:09 AM

Ah, meself -- did you ever read Stowe's book?

..."I understand," said the young man, "that you bought, in New Orleans, a boy, named Tom. He used to be on my father's place and I came to see if I couldn't buy him back."

Legree's brow grew dark, and he broke out passionately: "Yes, I did by such a fellow, -- and a h--l of a bargain I had of of it, too! Set up my niggers to run away, got off two gals, worth eight hundred or a thousand dollars apiece. He owned to that, and when I bid him tell me where they was, he up and said he knew, but he wouldn't tell, and stood to it, though I gave him the cussedest flogging I ever gave nigger yet. I b'lieve he's trying to die; but I don't know as he'll make it out."

                            -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's
                               Cabin (New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
                               s.d), p. 410.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,Suffolk Miracle
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 08:31 AM

Ewan McColl wrote a song beginning:
Hitler's a non-smoker and Churchill smokes cigars
They're both as keen as mustard on imperialistic wars
But Uncle Joe's a worker and a very decent chap
He even smokes a pipe and wears a taxi-driver's cap.

Don't know in today's climate whether he would be more abused for praising Stalin or pipe-smoking.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: pavane
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:11 AM

Hey, that's the first time I ever saw a reference to 'Ahmed and Abdullah'. I do have a copy on cassette tape somewhere - TOTALLY BANNED in Saudi, where I got it. I can understand why, too.

I understand the kids here were told to sing Baa Baa GREEN sheep, which makes total nonsense of the whole song. There are plenty of black sheep to be seen here in the Welsh hills, but never a green one.
I can't see anything derogatory in the song, either, whether about sheep or people.

And I did see a story recently about one poor unfortunate who was fired for using the word 'Niggardly'.

Quote from World Wide Words:

Despite the similarity in spelling, this word has no connection with nigger, the one word which these days it is almost impossible for white Americans to say or write publicly.

At the beginning of 1999, David Howard (the head of the Office of Public Advocate in Washington, DC) used it during a discussion with a black colleague in describing a budget allocation which he considered to be inadequate. He was reported as saying: "I will have to be niggardly with this fund because it's not going to be a lot of money". In large part the uproar came about because the word is not especially common: even Mr Howard said that he had learned it while studying, rather than by hearing it used. Misunderstandings and misapprehensions are much more likely under such circumstances.

The adverb form niggardly, miserly or stingily, was formed in the sixteenth century from niggard, a miser or stingy person. In the Wycliffe Bible of 1384 it was spelled nygard; earlier still it can be found as nigon, and another form nig also existed. We are pretty sure this was borrowed from a Scandinavian source, because there are related words in several Germanic languages, for example, the Old Norse hnøgger, meaning "stingy". So it has nothing to do with nigger, which comes via French nègre from Spanish negro, ultimately from Latin niger, meaning "black".
(end of quote)

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 04:33 AM

Hello Mo,

"Who says the frogs were male? Nothing in my version says it."

Exactly.....it was a life style hang-up of the person who said it!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 01:11 AM

Gunga Din

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:54 AM

I wonder if we've overshot where Art was going with this thread?

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 09:29 PM

Rapaire-
Sure it does. But it has all those PI words. Like Year of the Jubilo, a staunchly abolitionist song.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: meself
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 09:29 PM

Ah yes, the faithful brown man who takes any amount of abuse from his white master and keeps smiling .... Just like good ol' Uncle Tom - nobody ever objected to him, did they?

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:54 PM

"Gunga Din"? Really? I always understood that to be a comment upon the humanity of the water carrier in the face of the racism and imperialism of the British.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:50 PM

Kipling, passim, but especially "The Betrothed", "Mandalay", "The Female of the Species", "The White Man's Burden", "Gunga Din", "The Ladies", "Pharaoh and the Sergeant".

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: kendall
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:47 PM

The house next door to mine's been sold to niggers, is, on the surface, very racist, yet if you examine the lyrics, you see that the song contains many of the stereotypes about blacks, that are just not true. So, what it actually shows is the ignorance of the singer.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Mo the caller
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 04:38 PM

Who says the frogs were male? Nothing in my version says it.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 04:30 PM

Venus in Furs!!!!!

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: oldhippie
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 04:09 PM

I still break up at Kinky's "Waitret, Please Waitret".

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Bert
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 02:32 PM

There's...

Little Yellow Coon
Glad we had a nice quiet day

and all the stuff on the 'Exit Visa' such as

I'm proud to be a Saudi from the Wadi
Ahmed meets Abdulla in the Market place (Oobaldi)
and thwelve days of Ramadan.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Geoff Wallis
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:49 PM

Just wondering how some of Kinky Friedman's songs are regarded bearing in mind his continuing campaign for the governorship of Texas?

'Asshole from El Paso' ('I'm just an asshole from El Paso, a place where sweet young virgins are deflowered') and 'They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus' spring to mind.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:45 PM

CChucky, did you know that for a long time -- and possibly even now, I don't know -- the National Park Service would not permit re-enactments at Yorktown and Gettysburg because they did not want guns on the battlefields??

Now, if they could only apply that as a current policy to a number of places I could name....

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:38 PM

kat...as to "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" ..why, it's obvious why it is racist...she was only driving 6 white horses! ☺.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:35 PM

Oh the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky Home
In summer the darkies are gay

I remember singing this at a Derby Party only to be reminded later by my date that there were several black people in the group. Hell, I never even thought about that line until that moment. Talk about racism through osmosis.

How about Kinky Friedman's Get your Biscuits in the Oven and your Buns in the Bed?

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:05 PM

I was once told that I couldn't sing "Five Little Speckled Frogs" because they were male frogs.....a good friend from the Caribbean was also told she couldn't sing "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Her response was, "Well, if I can't sing it....who can?"

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 11:46 AM

Charley, you are right. Did you know that there are some people that do not love their fellow man? I HATE PEOPLE LIKE THAT.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: oldhippie
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 11:41 AM

The best thing about "Okie From Muskogee" was it got rewritten as "Hippies From Olema".

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 11:18 AM

There will be equally suggestive or expicit songs aimed at slave-owners, various overlords, bosses, mill owners, etc., and some probably contain coded language to conceal the fact. Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates is one source. Others would be more openly contemptuous. What do we know about those? If most of the contributors on this thread are white, what have we done to look beyond the center in which we reside?

SRS

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: topical tom
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 10:17 AM

A very old song "If The Man in the Moon Were a Coon, Coon, Coon..."

   Decidedly racist.The only part I recall is the chorus:

          If the man in the moon were a coon,coon, coon
          What would you do?
          No strolling around the park at night,
          No courting in the bright moonlight,
          If the man in the moon were a coon, coon, coon.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 07:41 AM

Newman is the unparalleled master of double-layered meaning. But God's Song is bleak no matter how you interpret it, and is bound to upset a lot of religious folk, though at least it's non-denominational. (Worth the price of a ticket to hell just to hear Etta James sing it.) And Sail Away (ditto). Spaw, don't forget the smart-assed New York Jew. We wouldn't want him to feel left out.   

Historically speaking, Mister Banjo is now pretty taboo. Shame, because I always liked the rhythm in it when I was a kid and we sang it in school with nary a thought.

I have a book of Handel arias published in 1910 by a prestigious London classical-music firm which is still in business, and the back outside cover (where they always used to advertise their other wares) is proudly emblazoned with - I don't even feel comfortable typing this but here's what it says - "Ten More Nigger Tunes". We have at least made some progress as a society in the intervening century.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: cetmst
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 07:08 AM

Then there are songs that start out with good intentions and come up with some questionable lines. I've been bothered by singing "There'll Be No Distinction There" and coming to the line "and we'll all be white in that heavenly light." I'm sure there are other examples.

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:38 AM

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, when considering the raw material--perform a song as originally sung and risk offending those who are the butt of the joke and those who recognize the nature of the song and wish it to vanish; perform a revisionist version and risk offending those who despise the bowdlerization of the work and who know that to not tell history the way it happened is to risk repeating the mistake in some new way in the future.

There will be no one or two or even a few answers to this. Someone will always be offended. The best you can do is offer warnings to those with delicate sensibilities and not overplay your hand when approaching material that is no longer sanctioned by the dominant culture. There are scholars and performers who can bridge those gaps. I'm thinking of a performance I heard last year when the BBC's Lucie Skeaping visited Texas for a brief lecture on broadside ballads. The nature of that lecture and performance didn't get into the kind of material we are discussing here (except for some bawdy stuff, and there are always some who will be offended by that). But her scholarship and demeanor, of understanding good humor, I think can serve as an example. And this is said in the context of the discussion started by Art, who like Skeaping, has the background to cover it.

That said, I suspect there are some performers who, if they aren't confident enough to approach it in a large way, might consider not moving into that territory. Doing it in a nervous way will only chum the water for critics.

SRS

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:24 AM

Initially, I was just going to say that the initial definition of non-PC material was way broader than mine. All the outlaw ballads, for example, don't ring "non-PC" bells in my head. Maybe they are ethically challenged, yes, but that depends on (1)the circumstances and (2) the ending. From what I know of John Wesley Hardin, for example, he was pretty much an open-and-shut psychopathic SOB whom I would not invite home for dinner, and the Dylan song to me is a laugh, content wise, though I love it musically. On the other hand, if "Cole Younger" ends with

The robbing of the Northfield Bank
Is a deed I'll never deny,
But which I will be sorry of
Until the day I die,

then I've got to say that that is a "moral tale."

What I really want to say now, though, cues off Rapaire's last post.

I once did a couple rather formal debates on Civil War issues--Did the South have a right to secede? Was slavery the cause of the war? Stuff like that. I was a Union dude, and was opposed by two very well informed "Confederates," who were very articulate gents. After one debate, I heard an African-American woman in the audience say that she never understood the whole slavery thing completely until she heard my debate partner give the Southern viewpoint.

Unfortunately--and if I'm reading between the lines correctly, Rapaire is saying this too--it's difficult to find people willing and able to present the nitty-gritty of some of our past history. (I had another Civil War show cancelled because the local Moms Against Guns didn't want to see soldier re-enactors with weapons.) But to return to the main point, SOME (tho' not all) "politically incorrect" stuff can be made into a great teaching vehicle.

Chicken Charlie

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 12:07 AM

Kat-

There are certainly mildly bawdy verses to "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" but I've never run across a racist verse. "She'll be wearing pink pajamas when she comes" just doesn't rise to "politically incorrect" in my book.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 11:35 PM

My father acted in minstrel (as well as in other types of theater). And I agree about revisionist history: there was good and bad and you have to take one with the other. Harriet Tubman was more than balanced by the slave catchers, Frederick Douglass with those who forbade slaves to learn anything.

To make historical re-enactment a true re-enactment a lot of politically improper -- not to say repugnant -- things would have to be done. My brother and I thought once of getting a cart, a couple of barrels, and a couple of long handled shovels and becoming nightsoil removal specialists in a reproduced village of great historical importance (things changed and we didn't need to do that particular protest).

When Colonial Williamsburg re-enacted a slave auction some years ago the local NAACP objected. I abhor slavery, but I disagreed with the NAACP on that one. SHOW people the bad, show them the politically incorrect.

How otherwise will they know??

Subject: RE: Art's Politically Incorrect Songs - workshop
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 01 Mar 08 - 11:30 PM

I still sometimes sing "Bright Silvery Light Of The Moon" in public but I choose carefully the venue, state beforehand that it isn't very PC and that I didn't "WRITE" it. So far I've gotten a lot of laughs and no negative feedback but no doubt someday somebody will take offense. Sometimes I think that the PC pendulum has swung too far and is limiting free speech, but I am also a strong believer in equality. However humour wins over bombast so at times I may push the limits a bit. Racism I will fight against and real gender issues as well. Religious dogma will find less sympathy in my heart.