However, if you don’t pay attention, at least to some extent, to the origins and circumstances surrounding a tune (or event), you miss much, including the warnings that prevent repetition of such stupidity, illustrations of human nature, the wonderful fact that something lovely can come out of the ashes of a destructive force, and that enjoyable things sometimes get used to promote propaganda precisely because folks want the joy they associate with the thing (in this case the tune), and don’t want to have to think very deeply about what it actually means, or meant. So they tend to get defensive when you point the light source at the prickly truth. In another long entrenched tradition, the messenger becomes identified as the problem and the uncomfortable truth again gets shifted from focus.
I go along with these EXCEPT Bocephus…
…he ain’t his daddy!!!
And Scheky, you wrote what I wanted to, but was afraid that would push this to the other board. And there are people here that say the term “states rights” is “code”, so I really didn’t want to get into it all again.
This was Virginia’s state song or something very similar when we moved here. It was a real eye openner for me. The state canned it back in the late '90s but I guess at one point children had to learn it in school through the '80s. My gran dads were on opposite sides during the civil war so I don’t listen to Dixie plus the war was only in '22 so things are still a little tense sometimes.
Carry me back to old Virginny.
There’s where the cotton and corn and taters grow.
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time.
There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.
There’s where I labored so hard for old Massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn;
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.
Carry me back to old Virginny.
There’s where the cotton and the corn and taters grow;
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time.
There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live till I wither and decay.
Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
There’s where this old darkey’s life will pass away.
Massa and Missis have long since gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore.
There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more.
Carry me back to old Virginny.
There’s where the cotton and the corn and taters grow;
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time.
There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.
They say one reason Unitarian Universalists are said to be such bad singers is that they’re always reading ahead in the hymnal to see if they agree with the words of the song.
Jim, busking is busking which is usually playing music for money, no? What ever tunes you get request for, play.
Dixie, what ever!
After you see the money go in the cup, hat, instrument case, or what ever you’re collecting the moola in,
or if someone else gives you a nasty look,
there’s no law that you can’t tack on “Marching Through Georgia” as a finale to appease your inner political muse.
Our state song…That’s the one I had to learn in school in the very early '60s. Even then, this kid knew that those words and sentiments were just wrong. I wonder if they made the black kids learn that too? Talk about outrageous… (I don’t know because my school was all white.)
Wow. “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginny” was written by a black man. I wonder
if he would have found it ironic that it was adopted as the state song. I had
heard that the state was holding a songwriting contest to find a new state
song. Now I see why.
