When I was in elementary school back in my country, my music teacher taught us a lot of Stephen Foster’s America folk songs and all the students liked the songs very much. Forster songs are very good for harmonica. I came to US over 20 years. Once a while, I asked young persons here and found out that almost no one knows Stephen Foster. I am very surprised.
One day I talked to a middle aged person, he knows Stephen Foster’s folk songs. But he told me do not play Stephen Foster’s “Old Black Joe” due to the racial issue and may get into trouble to play the song. I am confused and I wonder that might be the reason that people here don’t mention Stephen Foster at all. Any other Stephen Foster’s songs I should not play?
I think most people in the States know at least a couple of Foster’s songs – “Camptown Races”, “Oh Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home” are standards, after all – but it seems like most young people have no idea they were all writen by the same person. Sad, but pretty much true of every pre-1900 composer of popular songs. (Indeed, speaking as a 30-something fairly knowledgable about pre-1950 music, I’m not sure I’d know who Foster was if he wasn’t a distant relative of some sort.)
I think most people in the States know at least a couple of Foster’s songs – “Camptown Races”, “Oh Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home” are standards, after all – but it seems like most young people have no idea they were all writen by the same person. Sad, but pretty much true of every pre-1900 composer of popular songs. (Indeed, speaking as a 30-something fairly knowledgable about pre-1950 music, I’m not sure I’d know who Foster was if he wasn’t a distant relative of some sort.)
Some of Foster’s songs are set in the context of slavery, but there’s nothing in them which should be particularly offensive, unless references to the conditions and culture of the slaves be considered offensive. I.e., he did not romanticize the institution of slavery as such, although he obviously loved the black culture which happened to develop among a people who were enslaved.
Hi KC. When I was in elementary school (1960’s) we sang a lot of Stephen Foster songs (at least the popular ones). I don’t think they get heard in school these days, so younger people don’t know who Foster was. I don’t know the melody to Old Black Joe, but, I’d guess there’d be no problem playing the tune on a harmonic. Who’ll know what you’re playing? I would recommend a nice one called Hard Times.
I hope you can make it to the Nov 8 C&F gathering. These guys have got to hear you play trad Chinese music on your Burke (as well as on your collection of harmonicas). We can do Hard Times as a duet (whistle and harmonica) and I’m sure someone will sing and play guitar. (John Palmer, at the very least- hint, hint)
Tony
Ahem, excuse me. As probably the most popular composer of minstrel tunes, wasn’t Foster partly responsible for the disgraceful stereotypes of African Americans that persisted way into the 20th Century? Isn’t ‘The Old Folks at Home’ explicitly about the nostalgic longing of the ‘darkies’ for the comfortable certainties of slavery days?
Thanks for all the people to provide me the information about this topic.
Thanks, Tony, I plan to attend the Nov 8 C&F gathering. I love the Foster’s “Hard Time”. The first time I heard this song when I was watching PBS’s “Civil War” documentary film by Ken Burns 10 (?) years ago. I was really moved by this beautiful and haunting song but I didn’t know Foster was the writer of this song then. Only two years ago, I bought a CD and realized that Foster was the songwriter of the “Hard Time”. I only learned to play a portion of the “Hard Time” on harmonica. I am going to practice with the CD everyday from now until Nov. 8th. I am looking forward to play harmonica/whistle duet on “Hard Time” with you.
Searching for the lyrics to “Old Folks at Home” just now, I found this webpage, with some background on the song, and a cute list of interpretations of the song over the years (near the bottom): http://www.pitt.edu/~amerimus/ofah.htm
Very interesting. I wasn’t aware that the song had been written as early as 1851. Some recent writers on American folklore still regard Foster’s post-civil-war output as reflecting a blind spot regarding slavery. This site clearly suggests that it was the performers, not the composer, who had the blind spot. Does anybody have any compelling evidence to the contrary?
Louis Armstrong is reputed to have recorded a viciously satirical version of ‘Old Folks’. I’d love to hear it. Of course, minstrel sterotypes would have been painfully real to Armstrong. It’s deeply ironical that he himself was regarded, late in life, as an Uncle Tom.
I saw a documentary on Stephen Foster on Public Television a few months ago. Their take on his work is similar to that of the posted link, that he repeatedly broke new ground in treating African Americans with respect.
It’s beginning to look as though Rinseard was right. If so, some highly influential writers on American folklore have some serious homework to do. And some serious apologising.
Here is an interesting site about Foster. There are a couple of paragraphs about his slavery attitudes about a third of the way down the page, betinning with “Rather than writing nostalgically…”
Nevertheless, Foster did write songs in the dialect that was current in the minstrel shows of the era and contributed songs to the Christy Minstrels, one of the most popular minstrel shows of the times. Eventually he was influenced by the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. According to one web site his original draft of the song My Old Kentucky Home made reference to Uncle Tom. This was one his first minstrel songs not written in dialect and displays effects of a slave being sold away from his family and friends to cane plantation further south.
The longing for place, security, happiness and peace portrayed in “Old Folks at Home” echoes profound, universal, psychological and spiritial longings as poignantly as any song ever could. No wonder it was the most popular song ever published in its day.
Who could ever forget Alfalfa singing Beautiful Dreamer?
During my abortive attempt to learn the piano as a child, I had a Stephen Foster songbook. I remember learning Camptown Races, Oh Susanna and Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair. Old Black Joe does not ring a bell, though. I was too young to be thinking about the social context of the songs anyway.
No song about ‘darkies’ is gonna survive in America today.
A lot of our musical heritage is missing.
Al Jolson was maybe the most popular pop
singer of the first part of the 20th century.
It’s as if he never was. He was a Jewish fellow,
he was in a movie The Jazz Singer, in which
he plays a Jewish cantor’s son who wants to
sing jazz. But Jolson sometime used to sing in blackface,
and he sang sentimental songs pretending to
be black. Bye bye. (When I went to college
in the 50s at the Univeristy of Vermont,
performances in blackface at school were
common.) Sonny Boy is his one song
remembered today, I think, because it figured
in the movie Jacob’s Ladder.
the whole minstrel tradition seems to have
been erased from history, almost as if it
never was. The one relic that survives is
the Griffith’s movie The Birth of A Nation,
which is a lenghty glorification of the KKK.
You bring up an interesting question, Jim. Is the minstrel show tradition an important enough part of our musical and cultural heritage that we should preserve and remember it at the expense of those who find it incredibly offensive? Personally, I don’t think so.
I can’t feel that bad for Al Jolson. He had to know there was someone being offended when he sang Mammy.
I would recommend a nice one called Hard Times.