{"items": [{"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281570951956895", "anchor": "fb-281570951956895", "service": "fb", "text": "no.", "timestamp": "1346854741"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281573148623342", "anchor": "fb-281573148623342", "service": "fb", "text": "\u2026
One view:
http://bible.cc/matthew/15-11.htm", "timestamp": "1346855270"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281578281956162", "anchor": "fb-281578281956162", "service": "fb", "text": "I have this dilemma about \"The Baffled Knight\", http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch112.htm, in which the woman tricks the man and doesn't get raped, but which ends by exhorting to men to rape when the opportunity strikes rather than delaying. You could just leave the last verse off, but it kind of needs an ending.", "timestamp": "1346856299"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281579858622671", "anchor": "fb-281579858622671", "service": "fb", "text": "I agree with BDan, but I'm not sure where I draw the line. I enjoy songs about religious beliefs I don't have, and to some extent I can enjoy songs and books that have old-school sexism (but only sometimes). But encouraging rape as a specific act feels different.
There are so many songs out there that aren't hurtful. Let's choose some of them, or choose not to sing the hurtful parts. E.g. I was raised with \"Walloping Window Blind\" that stopped with them arriving at the island. It already has nine perfectly good silly verses - it doesn't need the two racist ones at the end.", "timestamp": "1346856605"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1346857596"}, {"author": "Becca", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281588185288505", "anchor": "fb-281588185288505", "service": "fb", "text": "Thanks for bringing this up. The fact that people still regularly sing songs with messed up lyrics about women and people of color is why I don't participate much in the folk scene. Including songs with objectionable and alienating lyrics for their \"historical value\" is one thing that prevents this community from moving away from male- and white-dominance. Historical value can be preserved in songbooks and recordings, and in groups of friends who don't care about things that matter. Kbye.", "timestamp": "1346858248"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281588995288424", "anchor": "fb-281588995288424", "service": "fb", "text": "I see both sides of this coin, but I come at the filk/folk sing question from a slightly different angle:
Song circles are about community. They're not (mostly) about demonstrating your prowess as a singer; we have concerts for that. Sometimes they're about showing off the cool new filk you wrote, or a neat song you discovered, but ultimately in my experience, they tend to be about sharing community with the other people in the circle. As with sessions in the Celtic music tradition, the tune/filk/song is the vehicle by which the community builds itself.
With that in mind, I see this question as less about individual rights and more about community support. Should a given singer have \"the right\" to sing whatever song they want? Probably! But they should also acknowledge the responsibility that choosing those songs places on them. If you know that a song is going to hurt people in your community, and you choose it anyway, maybe that's your right, but you also need to own the fact that you're explicitly valuing your participation over theirs. Maybe that's a choice you feel comfortable making; maybe it isn't.
One of the comments on BDan's post makes a rather dramatic point and basically says \"the hell with you--tell me to stop singing a song and I'll tell you to shut up and I'll keep singing\". That seems more along the lines of \"it's my right to sing whatever I want\". But I feel like there's a line somewhere in there, and we cross it at our peril. I suspect most people would encourage me to stop if I said \"I'd like to sing something from one of my favorite late-20th-century American singers\" and then started in with \"Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks / Lick on these nuts and suck the dick / Get the fuck out after you're done / And I hop in my ride to make a quick run\". Even though that's written by Dr. Dre, who probably sold more records than Woody Guthrie and is therefore, by one standard, a more successful singer.
My point is that you can make lunatic arguments about personal freedoms in a song circle, but you have to notice that your choices affect the spirit of the thing, and that standing on personal rights is not sociable. If being sociable is the point of song circles (as I think it is), it might be better to choose other songs. It's not like picking songs that don't overtly encourage rape condemns you to a horrific 40 years in the wilderness of singing nothing but Kum Ba Ya and I'm A Little Teapot. There are lots of good songs.
Maybe there's a place for song circle that explicitly welcomes questionable songs. There's some element of \"reverse discrimination\" here, but I feel like it comes back to that question of \"what is the purpose of singing in groups?\" If the purpose is to share community, you should work to notice how the songs you select affect others in the community--and if they're uncomfortable, make a different choice next time.", "timestamp": "1346858400"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281597245287599", "anchor": "fb-281597245287599", "service": "fb", "text": "This gets to the very heart of what the hell the \"folk community\" is trying to accomplish. Music performed in the folk community can be generally divided into two categories: music taken straight from various sub-altern communities and re-appropriated into a privileged context, and a kind of contemporary acoustic pop-music that invokes those historic circumstances, but is written for a privileged consumer audience. If you're interested in invoking the idea of a nostalgic imagined community to soothe an alienated constituency of suburban post-moderns then you'd better stick to the pop-music genres that cater to this ideal.
If, on the other hand you're interested in delving into the historical trajectories that created and speak thru the many genres of music that are badly called \"folk music\", you're gonna find a lot of things that are painful, violent, unsanitary, offensive, and speak of poverty and brutality.
If presented and shared correctly, this music can force us to come to terms and acknowledge the circumstances that created the need for such songs and with the many strands of our social life that are painful. In fact, that is why lots of this music survived in the first place.
Appalachian ballads speak of incest, forced marriage, blood vendettas, rape, and violence. These songs were sung in those communities as a way to vivify and come to terms with those events. Sea shanties were the 19th century hip-hop. Sailor crews were inter-racial and the sea was a major escape route for slaves. A huge portion of authentic shanties talk about slavery, white oppression, and use racial slang. Many more shanties speak of venereal diseases, being robbed/cheated of pay, of drugs, whores, and poverty.
What we do with this music becomes an ethical question. How to give voice to this music without condoning or cheapening the wide variety of social oppression found in these various genres is a complex question that deserves serious consideration, but let's not have our jumping off point for this discussion be pot-boiler censorship.", "timestamp": "1346859887"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281602145287109", "anchor": "fb-281602145287109", "service": "fb", "text": "Just to clarify to Hollis, the \"no\" was a glib response to the title of Jeff's article.
I think this is a serious question and the presentation of violent material deserves a thorough
conversation which is what I hope will occur here.", "timestamp": "1346860907"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281603148620342", "anchor": "fb-281603148620342", "service": "fb", "text": "This could cut attendence at Sacred Harp singing considerably.", "timestamp": "1346861141"}, {"author": "Phinneas", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281604438620213", "anchor": "fb-281604438620213", "service": "fb", "text": "I can't say what people should or shouldn't do I just know personal rather it be a religios or secl;er song I can't sing lirics I don't belive, my brain refuses to take in the info & I mentily shut down", "timestamp": "1346861453"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281606598619997", "anchor": "fb-281606598619997", "service": "fb", "text": "Ben, I think that your points resonate about the purpose of singing music from other times, and there's definitely a place for that. I'm just not sure that song circles are that place.
You write that, \"if presented and shared correctly, this music can force us to come to terms and acknowledge the circumstances that created the need for such songs\". Definitely! In a teaching context, that's fantastic. But I think we'd get a lot of disagreement about whether song circles are intended to be loci for teaching. The song circles I've been part of typically don't value spending time talking--so they aren't available for processing, discussing, chatting, debating, or any of those other things. They're typically about singing only.
If that's the context, how can the vigorous debate and discussion you propose happen without changing the song circle into something fundamentally different?
As a sometimes-musicologist and exponent of traditional music, I agree wholeheartedly that there's value in learning what songs say about their home cultures and times--and our own. I think we can learn a lot by giving voice to that music, as you say. But I keep wrestling with the question of whether that's the point of song circles, or whether they're more about people feeling comfortable sharing participatory music. If it's more about the participation, I fall back on my earlier comment that social awareness needs to play a role in song selection... and that if a song is making people uncomfortable, that may be a choice to avoid next time.
There are a lot of legitimate discussions to be had around food issues, too--and when you see someone eating a cheeseburger, there are a lot of important things to talk about. What does CAFO farming of beef do to the environment? Does it create bacteriological conditions that induce disease, forcing excessive antibiotic use and creating drug-resistant bacteria? What about factory-farmed milk, which sometimes has serious health problems? Should you really be eating that cheese? What if it's made by a local farmer you know personally? How does this change the game? And what about that \"hamburger bun\" that's made out of industrially-processed starches and high-fructose corn syrup? Do people even know what that stuff does to you? Or maybe it's fine. Who knows?
These, too, are important questions, and I share them to (hopefully with a bit of humor) make a point: there's a context in which all of those issues deserve to be discussed. But you might not bring them up when your partner's parents invite you both over for dinner the first time. The situation matters, and not all situations are appropriate for all things.", "timestamp": "1346861992"}, {"author": "Kody", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281612981952692", "anchor": "fb-281612981952692", "service": "fb", "text": "I think it's helpful to differentiate between \"things I don't agree with\" and \"things that are painful, oppressive, and alienating.\" I might sing things in the former category-- I try not to sing things in the latter, and I will ask people to stop if they do.
Reading and singing are, for me, completely different processes in this regard. I might read something I completely disagree with, and actually find abhorrent, because it's valuable in some way for me to understand what it says: in order to understand a historical context, form a critique, etc. But if I was going to read aloud to another person, teach, or otherwise \"perform\" the text, I would take care to give trigger warnings and embed the reading in a rigorous critical process. How often do people do that with songs? I see \"historical understanding\" used more often as a justification than an actual, implemented process of critique and conversation.
I have a profound connection to the things that I sing. I give my breath and body to them, literally. If I am trying to deal critically with hurtful or offensive words, singing them is probably not the modality I would pick.", "timestamp": "1346863487"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281616661952324", "anchor": "fb-281616661952324", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ben: \"music taken straight from various sub-altern communities and re-appropriated into a privileged context\"
This doesn't seem a good fit for what I think of as the first category. Off the top of my head, it doesn't include:
- traditional working class songs from England [1]
- old family songs
- songs that were bowdlerized and taken/collected from working class communities a long time ago, mostly lost, and taken/collected back up more recently (ex: child ballads collected in America)
[1] This is assuming you mean \"subaltern\" in the sense of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(postcolonialism) ; I'm not familiar with the term beyond reading that article now.", "timestamp": "1346864230"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281621451951845", "anchor": "fb-281621451951845", "service": "fb", "text": "@ Kody: I guess it comes down to your view of what the most pressing issue in community singing is in general.
I've never sung a song condoning rape, I never intend to, and I've never been at a singing where that has occurred. I have been at singings where civil rights songs are parodied and turned into a joke, where people become pruriently offended at songs that describe (but do not condone) prostitution, robbery, and violence, and where people parody religious texts. As long as this singing community sings songs from other contexts I think we should do all we can to make sure those songs are presented in such a way that they re-orient the listener towards something of its use, aesthetic, etc. How to do that becomes an interesting question.", "timestamp": "1346865066"}, {"author": "Allie", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281621635285160", "anchor": "fb-281621635285160", "service": "fb", "text": "This is a wonderful discussion! I'd also like to throw in the possibility of queering some of these older, more offensive songs. For instance, I struggle to sit still and listen to the way some folk ballads traditionally sung by men treat women. However, I think when a woman sings them (and does or doesn't change the pronouns), it adds to the meaning and creates maybe a less hurtful way to appreciate the song.", "timestamp": "1346865110"}, {"author": "Ruthan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281622531951737", "anchor": "fb-281622531951737", "service": "fb", "text": "Maybe a counter to Kody's comment: I had murder ballads in mind while I read this, where the singer is (one hopes) not espousing, say, infanticide, or offering a personal account of having done so. But performing a song can be more like performing the role of a villain: where the listener has an opportunity to say \"hmm, I've heard something like this in earnest, not in a song! but this narrator is obviously not someone I agree with! maybe I should examine their statements more closely!\" (This listener's internal monologue lacks some subtlety, but I hope you get the idea)", "timestamp": "1346865314"}, {"author": "Ruthan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281624448618212", "anchor": "fb-281624448618212", "service": "fb", "text": "To be more concise, performing a song with a narrative you don't find agreeable yields satire.", "timestamp": "1346865740"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281625155284808", "anchor": "fb-281625155284808", "service": "fb", "text": "@Allie I agree. E.g. I think the \"ladies' auxiliary\" verse of Union Maid can be done with a certain tongue-in-cheek energy. But I think a female singer is more likely to pull it off successfully than a male one.", "timestamp": "1346865913"}, {"author": "Chris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281634405283883", "anchor": "fb-281634405283883", "service": "fb", "text": "I recently auditioned for the Producers and would have had to sing \"Springtime for Hitler\" in the play. However, a play is a different situation where you're putting on a character and the audience is expected to have an opinion of you.", "timestamp": "1346867829"}, {"author": "Jeannine", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281688025278521", "anchor": "fb-281688025278521", "service": "fb", "text": "And Springtime for Hitler is satire.", "timestamp": "1346879419"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114419844905785700580", "anchor": "gp-1346889719661", "service": "gp", "text": "I do wish someone would write a totally new song to the melody of Bide lady Bide because I love that tune.\u00a0", "timestamp": 1346889719}, {"author": "Molly", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=281746021939388", "anchor": "fb-281746021939388", "service": "fb", "text": "There's a French song I happen to like, at least partly because the artist is rather excellent. The subject matter is an older guy wanting to do things with a 14-year-old girl whether she wants to or not, which I definitely disagree with, but I still like the song.", "timestamp": "1346892499"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=282499505197373", "anchor": "fb-282499505197373", "service": "fb", "text": "Some thoughts...
Performing a song IS about inhabiting a mindset that isn't your own. Anything else is dishonest. Hence the art of singing in general. Ballad singers, being artists, inhabited the roles required of them by their songs without endorsing or relating to those perspectives any more than Lawrence Olivier the man endorsed the character of Richard III.
Even songs that were originally purely functional (sea shanties, work songs, gospel) have to become artistic in our rendering of it. We learn the musical mechanics behind what makes a Prayer-Meeting Shout function, and then we present it in such a way that the whole group inhabits that space. Since we are not in a church and most of us don't come from that constituency, the whole experience becomes an aesthetic enactment. Asking a group to go with you and jump into a song that is rooted in rough, despairing bar-room humor takes people on the same journey one goes thru when one sees a play, but without the proscenium. It's an imminent aesthetic experience that compels us to explore whole swaths of life and the human condition, some painful, some sad, all multi-dimensional and complex.
It is worth emphasizing two points: 1. Songs that describe troubling subject matter are NOT synonymous with songs that endorse that subject matter. 2. Equating the presentation of controversial material with the endorsement of it is the very bedrock of stupid provincialism. Is Nabokov endorsing pedophilia by writing from the perspective of one in Lolita? If we're all human enough to engage with a movie, a novel, or a play about rape, why not a ballad? The music we sing is art and should be treated with all the complexity that art requires.
The claim being made (it seems) is that there's a culture within the folk community that allows people to covertly express their own misogyny, racism, etc. with impunity thru singing songs that are perceived to express such viewpoints. I have to confess, I have never experienced anything close to that. Far from getting closer to the original meaning/intent however troubling it might be, we seem to have quite the opposite problem. We move farther away from the meaning/emotional impact of a song by co-opting songs that in context were meaningful tools of struggle, or expressing pain into some sort of weird, cutesy joke, or by misunderstanding old language, imposing sinister interpretations, and wanting to censure songs that merely describe erotic exchanges, as oppressive, demeaning, etc.
On the other hand, songs whose lyrics clearly endorse oppressive things need to be intelligently presented, edited, or not sung at all. If someone tries to do that and fails, however, it is an outrageously presumptuous stance to stop the proceedings and call the singer a bigot. I'm disturbed by everyone's eagerness to dawn the mantle of pompous, self-righteous indignation. If you have a problem with the presentation of a song, take it up with the person afterwards in such a manner that encourages dialogue.
Many great works of art endorse offensive perspectives (Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflotte) and can be presented in such a way that thoughtfully draws attention to its troubling aspects without condoning them in a bone-headed fashion. We are then left with the more interesting problem of presenting a song that endorses an offensive position.
We can and should guard against awkward, insensitive, uninformed presentations of more complicated material by choosing a thoughtful approach. The presentation of songs whose whole humor/moral is rooted in an oppressive, atavistic ideal need to be thought thru. They should still be sung, but they either have to be presented at a serious point in the singing, or the words have to be changed to maintain the humorous intent of the song.
For instance, at the end of The Cunning Cobbler, after The Cobbler has slept around, gotten his just deserts, and comes home, he knocks his wife down on the floor and basically says, \"That's the last time I try sleeping around.\" Now, in the original, that constitutes some sort of rough medieval joke, because violence and pain is always funny (punch and judy) etc. That such a situation could ever be considered a humorous punch line makes us cringe, but that kind of cringing can potentially be a positive learning experience, (yes wife abuse was considered funny).
To sing that line today turns a comic song into a tragic tale of implied endemic spousal abuse, poverty, and dashed dreams. If the presenter wants to keep the intended comic effect of the song, s/he has to change the words. But it is totally legitimate to sing the original ending of the song, it just makes it tragic instead of funny. (I always change the ending to the wife knocking him down and telling him not to go out anymore, etc. but that is only one possible interpretation).
Maybe it would be helpful for the people who were offended by songs to give examples of the songs and the circumstances. Perhaps Rebecca Goldberg, Justin, BDan and others could offer some substance to clarify their stances.", "timestamp": "1347042562"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=282511275196196", "anchor": "fb-282511275196196", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ben: if you tag people by name it will notify them, and doesn't always notify them otherwise (Rebecca, Justin, BDan).", "timestamp": "1347045739"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1347047738"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=282549738525683", "anchor": "fb-282549738525683", "service": "fb", "text": "Maybe you should try reading my post again. I don't think you quite got what I was saying...
Also, if you could share with us an example of a time *you* were offended and why, that might help clarify your point of view.", "timestamp": "1347055105"}, {"author": "Chris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=282560808524576", "anchor": "fb-282560808524576", "service": "fb", "text": "The song that always comes to mind for me in this context is \"It's cold outside\" which I have come to refer to as \"the date rape song\". I find the song quite disturbing, though I really like the music. It's a bit of a conflict for me, but I mostly avoid it. I can't imagine a context where it would be good to sing it as a way to show how people used to think that coercing your date to stay and have sex with you was okay, especially since that's still the case in a lot of people's minds.
On the other hand, I do know some people interpret it as the woman wanting to stay, but protesting so as to present a good face to the neighbours. I think her lyric \"say, what's in this drink?\" definitely suggests the opposite, as does the fact that she says she has to go like 20 times. Okay, I just listened to it and heard a lot of stuff that suggests it's not okay. His saying, \"How can you do this thing to me?\" is definitely emotional manipulation. She also asks for a coat and h completely ignores it.
I think it's actually more representative of the situation where the woman doesn't want to stay, but is giving excuses to avoid telling him that she's not interested. It sounds very much like it's just the two of them, and I know that for many women, such a situation isn't physically safe. At the very least it doesn't feel safe.", "timestamp": "1347058148"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1347061358"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/281566315290692?comment_id=282855525161771", "anchor": "fb-282855525161771", "service": "fb", "text": "Of course. If you can offer a specific example of a song, who got offended by it, and why, that might help clarify your point of view.", "timestamp": "1347129924"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1347131975"}]}