WeenieCampbell.com
Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: Slack on December 22, 2017, 08:13:57 PM
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How I learned to fiddle my way through America?s deeply troubling history.
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Thanks to Peter McCracken for linking this on facebook.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/the-music-i-love-is-a-racial-minefield/
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Great article. Thanks for sharing it!
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When I do songs with unacceptable lyrics, I simply say upfront that this is a problem for those of us who perform old-time music. I usually tell the audience that when I say negro or colored man, the original performer did not--they can figure out the rest.
In my case, the unacceptable lyrics come from the blues tradition, which poses an additional dilemma: Do I stay true to the vision of the African-American artist as originally recorded or do I censor the language? I figure that the best thing in most cases is to tell people I'm changing the language. In "Bourgeois Blues," for example, Leadbelly liberally sprinkles around the n-word, and I make sure that the audience knows where and when I'm changing the language. For Charley Patton's "Pony Blues," on the other hand, I simply omit the stanza that makes a pretty harsh distinction between light-skinned and dark-skinned black women.
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As a clergyman and a performer I find this to be challenging.
If the song has disparaging terms or racial slurs I change them. However if it employs a dialect like Gullah I sing in that dialect.
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Unless your performance is intended to be a history lesson (which is appropriate in some situations), I don't have a problem changing some lyrics to their modern-day equivalent. For example, changing "yellowskin" and "brownskin" to "redhead" and "brunette" in some songs seems to have approximately the same meaning, using the current language of the day.
Regarding the n-word, it seems clear that it didn't have the same meaning it does today, especially when used by African-Americans, so it doesn't seem wrong to swap that out for a different word.
I tend to make more creative edits with lyrics about domestic violence since that's more than just a matter of evolving language and connotations of words. I usually find it necessary to change the meaning entirely, or at least lighten the tone, or even flip it so the singer is the victim (a tactic I might or might not have learned from Spinal Tap).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrKqBlZdOTk
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Hi there !
Yes, I wouldn't feel all that comfortable singing Robert Johnson's lyrics "I'm gonna beat my woman, until I get satisfied", in front of an audience !
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I've always sung "I'm gonna love my woman, until I get satisfied"