Offensive lyrics- edit?

Subject: RE: Offensive lyrics- edit?
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 12:21 AM

The way I see it, I am a citizen of the free world, and if I don't like lyrics, I can change them. It's my time and my breath, and if a song spreads attitudes I disapprove of, I don't intend to help it.

Subject: RE: Offensive lyrics- edit?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 02:44 AM

There's a good version of Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel on Bluegrass at Newport by Tex Logan, Eric Weissberg & The New Lost City Ramblers. It doesn't have any racist language. (Though a couple of lines of the verse starting "Ham and cheese are getting pretty scarce, down where I've been boarding" or words to that effect are completely blurry.)

It's a hard one, this. Do you sing songs that are designed to sneer at subjugated people, even if they have a nice tune? For instance, would you sing Croppies Lie Down happily? This is a song mocking the 'croppies' (damn leftist liberals who were murdered en masse after the 1798 Rising in Ireland)? The playing of this song caused a massacre at least once.

Oh, Croppies ye'd better be quiet and still
Ye shan't have your liberty, do what ye will
As long as salt water is formed in the deep
A foot on the necks of the Croppy we'll keep.

Subject: RE: Offensive lyrics- edit?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 04:47 AM

Interesting quote there from 'Jordan am a hard road':

Oh, Croppies ye'd better be quiet and still
Ye shan't have your liberty, do what ye will
As long as salt water is formed in the deep
A foot on the necks of the Croppy we'll keep.

Is the line about salt water part of an old expression for a very long time / eternity?
It's just that it echoes the sentiment in 'Bugeilio's gwenyth gwyn'
Tra bo dwr y mor yn hallt (while sea-water remains salty)

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: Offensive lyrics- edit?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 05:25 AM

Is the line about salt water part of an old expression for a very long time / eternity? I don't know about 'old'. I understood it that way on first reading just now.

I think what is appropriate/acceptable depends on the context of the performance. If the intention is to entertain the audience then the verse would only entertain someone who shared the prejudices of the character. If it's to give people an insight on the times then putting offensive words in the mouths of the bad guys is a standard dramatic technique.

Minstrel songs come up here regularly, both directly and through analogy as a warning against prejudice. If they don't go into the written record then the warnings might be forgotten. Written song collections have some characterstics of a museum whether that is the intention or not, and good museums do not hide the horrors of the past.