My Old Kentucky Home problem

Subject: RE: My Old Kentucky Home problem
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 May 12 - 02:18 PM

If properly introduced, no verse in song expresses the never-ending back-breaking, mind-numbing soul-destroying labor of slavery better than Foster's third verse, as he wrote it.

The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darkey must go:
A few more days and the trouble all will end
In the field where sugarcanes may grow.
A few more days for to tote the weary load,
No matter 'twill never be light,
A few more days till we totter down the road,
Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

Subject: RE: My Old Kentucky Home problem
From: GUEST,Lefty
Date: 04 May 12 - 03:05 PM

I propose substituting "victim of classist, capitalist oppression" for "darky", audiences really connect to it, expecially if I sing all six stanzas of "The Internationale" first.

Subject: RE: My Old Kentucky Home problem
From: Tootler
Date: 04 May 12 - 06:35 PM

It should be sung as written, without apology but maybe with some explanation.

If you read all the words of the song, you can see what Foster is getting at. Yes he starts off with this rose tinted view, but at the end of the first verse he starts to take it apart and the real crunch comes at the end of the second verse when he writes

"The time has come when the darkies have to part,"

surely that can only refer to slaves being sold and the group being broken up, quite likely families are broken up in the process.

Then, as Q says, he then goes on to describe the unremitting toil that was the slave's lot.

The song is, in fact, a powerful indictment of slavery.

Sing it as written and if the PC lot complain, give them a copy of the words and tell them to read them properly.

Subject: RE: My Old Kentucky Home problem
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 04 May 12 - 07:47 PM

Exactly

Subject: RE: My Old Kentucky Home problem
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 05 May 12 - 03:23 AM

Maybe it depends on the context? In normal folk-singing context, the Garrison Keillor version sounds pretty good, and will work fine until it's the norm for black people and white to marry and have children, and until the colour of your skin is no more remarkable than the colour of your eyes or your hair.

In specifically historical contexts, the Stephen Foster words are appropriate, illustrating a long-gone time when one group enslaved another.