This afternoon I played music at an outdoor venue in San Francisco. I played an old song “Tennessee Waltz”. An Africa American came to the stage and said something , I could not totally understand what he said, I can smell he might drink a little. Finally, I figured out that he said the “Tennessee Waltz” is a racist songs because he kept talking about slavery. The person kept interrupting my performance and finally one of the surrounding restaurants’ worker and security guard to ask him leave. I was planning to play Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna”, “Beautiful Dreamer” and others, but I decided not to play because those songs may be sensitive too. Anyone can help me to understand what America old time songs I should not play that may hurt people’s feeling?
Well, I’m not an American, and our culture is different, but…
Boring about what hurts some drunken idiot is always a bad idea, no matter if he is black, white, or purple with yellow stripes. Today he is hurt with some old sond, tomorrow he well be hurt with your new and shiny boots, next day - with long hair… Alcohol makes people unadequate, have that in mind when weighting your reactions.
There are many songs with controversial backgrounds. Many Irish songs describe wars/battles. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be played… As long as you aren’t being racist yourself, it is usually fine to play such songs.
Good point! And yeah, as long as you know where you stand, what’s the problem with a melody? And I think in America there’s less of that stuff… I mean, maybe if I played the Battle Hymn in Deep Georgia someone would get pretty mad, but on the whole I don’t thik it’s much of an issue. Ireland could be diffeerent shrug Sometimes you do need to be sensitive. But not very often.
The Tennessee Waltz isn’t especially racist, either in words or music.
It was written by western swing pioneers Redd Stewart and Pee Wee King (aka Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski) and recorded by Roy Acuff. Any or all of these gentlemen might have been racist, but none of it’s expressed in the song:
I was waltzing with my darlin’ to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see.
Introduced him to my loved one and while they were waltzing,
My friend stole my sweetheart from me.
I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz.
Now I know just how much I have lost.
Yes I lost my little darlin’ the night they were playing
The beautiful Tennessee Waltz.
Other western swing classics like The Yellow Rose of Texas* are considerably more racist.
*The couplet
She’s the sweetest rose of color
This soldier ever knew
veers a bit in connotation when sung with the word “darkie” instead of “soldier”, as has been the case. No idea which version was the original, but I suspect that the “…of colour” part matches the latter rather than the former version.
Many people seem to associate anything of a “Dixie” origin with
racism. If you want to be sure, try Googling for the songs you
might want to play. Wikipedia articles are often good for a quick
overview, and will often mention controversy that exists.
If you want to play a song despite controversy, you could try to
work in a historically-enriching introduction. Now you’re teaching people about historical beliefs. “Whew, glad we got
past that sillyness, etc.”
That’s a fairly ingracious way to look at it; I think it’s more likely to say, a man with a (valid) psychic wound from growing up black in a racist nation, and was unfortunately impaired enough to be pointing it at a proxy target which had no real part in his resentment.
This is the kind of situation I usually resolve by saying “I didn’t know that; thank you very much, I’ll certainly look into it…” He goes away feeling like his perspective got acknowleged, even valued, and I get to avoid any more hassle.
I’d even do a little looking into, much as the OP did here. Who knows? Maybe he’s right and I’ll learn something.
I think an important thing to take from this is also to make sure you know what you’re singing/playing. Many times, especially in pop culture and the old standard nursery rhymes or folk tunes we hear the words so much that they no longer hold any meaning; we just repeat them without wrapping our minds around their meaning.
In all fairness though, some of these old songs use some pretty imaginative metaphors or illustrations that would require the listener/singer to have some extensive background knowlege or first-hand experience to understand the intended meaning.
In this case the lyrics seem to be pretty simple. They tell a pretty straight forward story of love lost. While I wouldn’t say it’s impossible that this itself was a metaphor or sattire of some sort, it doesn’t seem as such to me.
I think one of the best responses for a situation like this would be as s1m0n stated:
This not only (hopefully) appeases the individual but will show your gracefullness and maturity as a stage personality. A response such as this would be more likely to diffuse any further drunken ramblings… at least further angry drunken ramblings.
Dude. Simon. Are you serious? Valid psychic wound? Unfortunately impaired? He was drunk by his own choice. Fortune had nothing to do with it. Perhaps he does feel deeply about some wrongs that were/are committed. Is this type of boorish behavior going to do anything to change people’s opinion of him specifically, and Black people in general? If he were to claim that toilets were a white man’s invention and duke one out on the sidewalk would you also excuse that behavior?
And how do you tell somebody, “I didn’t know that; thank you very much, I’ll certainly look into it…” when you’re blowing into a whistle? The guy was drunk, he’s probably not looking for any compassion or acknowledgment. The guy was rudely interrupting a performance. I find it hard to believe that that statement would have ended his rude behavior. Have you ever been around drunk people? Come on.
As a manager of 10 years, I must say that I’ve been around Black people quite a bit. I can tell you that those who have a major chip on their shoulder are the laziest, sketchiest employees I have ever had. Those who were trying to work their way through life and make something of themselves(like any white American) were the best employees I’ve had. From the description, this man seems to fall under the chip on shoulder category. And society is trying to atone for perceived wrongs* done. EEO, scholarships, etc.
*Slavery was not considered wrong at the time. How anybody can even consider that we shouldn’t have committed slavery is beyond me. It had been done for thousands of years (and still being done to a degree, today) so how would we know better? Slavery was outlawed in the 1860s, we don’t do it anymore, now let’s move on, shall we?
As for the ‘valid psychic wound’ thing, when are people going to start taking responsibility for their actions? Blaming others gets you nowhere in life. Hard work does.
Whether slavery was an acceptable way of living or not, the things that were done to the human beings in captivity were cruel and unexcusabel no matter what you call it.
Slavery may have ended in 1860 but racism and bigotry did not. Without knowing this individual we cannot possibly know if he did or didn’t have a valid psychological wound. I agree that it would not excuse him from his behavior but the way you react to said behavior can potentially make a difference on whether it worsens right then or diffuses.
You’re applying modern thinking to events that happened hundreds of years ago.
I wholehearted agree that we should learn from the past. But to say that actions of the past are inexcusable is just incorrect. Only if somebody knows better is something inexcusable, and ignorance ran rampant back then.
Yes, there is still racism and bigotry here today. But Black people do more to perpetuate certain stereotypes than anybody else. How about in DC where Pizza Hut refuses to deliver to Black neighborhoods? What, are white folk coming into the area and robbing the pizza guy? Hardly.
