"My Old Kentucky Home"
David Lieberman
contexts for Foster's work. I would like to elaborate, if I
could, on one point taken at issue.
By suggesting that it might be time to "retire" works in which
themes offensive to our moral sensibilities are unredeemed by
any sort of intelligent consideration of their impact (as they
are in "Huckleberry Finn") I am not, I hope, proposing the
eradication of history.
Works in which this is the case -- that is, those that endorse
or naively continue racist mind sets, yet which retain some sort
of aesthetic (as opposed to historical) significance should, I
think be "retired" from purely "entertainment value" use. Of
course, we must retain a sense of their historical significance --
such works should continue to be a part of our social awareness
even as we take a more critical view of their content.
I am prepared to concede that in the case of "Old Kentucky Home"
such may not be the case -- although we may want to argue over
the role a certain amount of white "paternalism" may play in
Foster's well intentioned efforts to "humanize" the image of the
black in his music.
I think it might also be worth asserting that there are cases in
which it is entirely appropriate to tear down monuments erected
by previous generations, as has been repeatedly demonstrated
in recent years in various Eastern European nations. Monuments
to themselves are erected by holders of power in all kinds of
societies -- some less legitimate than others. I cannot fault
a people who prefer not to have an image of Josef Stalin towering
over their town square for the rest of eternity.
Yet the act of tearing down a statue is not tantamount to denying
Stalin's role in the history of the community in which his image once
stood. That he must be remembered is certain, that he will be remembered
very likely, that he deserves a place of honor in perpetuity, appearing
daily before the eyes of people who have reason to resent him, rather
doubtful.
Americans have no Stalin -- but we do have a responsibility to remain
clear-eyed about a shameful inheritance. As long as black Americans
are constrained to live in environments that degrade and demoralize,
it is insensitive of the rest of us blindly to glorify exactly those
aspects of our history in which their current anguish is founded. Waving
confederate flags and playing Dixie at college football games are examples
of this insensitive behavior; it seems possible to me that clinging to
certain songs that _may_ have perpetuated stereotyped attitudes -
perhaps even unconscously - is another.
David Lieberman
dlie...@ucs.indiana.edu
Deane L Root
request for a version of Kentucky's state song lacking the offensive word
"darkies." The responses are as telling as the song itself about the
nature of the problem.
The most recent published article on this issue is "Fostering Racism? 'My
Old Kentucky Home' composer still controversial," by Ed McNamara, staff
correspondent, _New York Newsday_ (Sunday, May 8, 1994), Sports page 5,
the day after the Kentucky Derby. If you can't get a copy electronically
or in a newspaper archive, send me a message with your snail-mail address
and I'll send you a photocopy.
In my position as Curator of the Stephen Foster Memorial at the University
of Pittsburgh, I'm probably as aware of the sensitivities surrounding
Foster's songs as anyone can be. I even hesitated to take the position
when it was offered in 1982, out of prejudice against lyrics that seemed
to contradict my personal philosophy. But research in the collection--
arguably among the most thorough for any American cultural figure of that
era--has led to some startling discoveries that fly in the face of
conventional wisdom on Foster and his lyrics.
Space in this medium forbids elaboration. See my article in _American
Music Research Center Journal_ vol.1 1991 pp. 20-36 on "The 'Mythtory' of
Stephen C. Foster or Why His True Story Remains Untold," my unpublished
paper on the political reasons behind Foster's portrayal as defender of an
"Old South" read for the Sonneck Society conference at Baton Rouge in 1992,
and the December 1993 article "Rediscovering Stephen Foster" in _A.B.
Bookman Weekly_. (Photocopies available from me on request.)
To respond directly to the MLA-L messages: Yes, many versions of "My Old
Kentucky Home" exist, in print and orally. The words were changed by act
of the legislature of Kentucky to "the people". I asked Dennis Brutus-- a
poet, leader of the anti-Apartheid movement to ban South Africa from the
Olympics, and professor of Black Studies in the United States--about the
word "darkies," and he said he doubted it had a negative meaning when
Foster first used it; when Mr. Brutus was growing up in South Africa in
the 1940s the term was used ubiquitously without negative connotations
among blacks and whites alike. I am unaware whether the etymological
research has been done to show when the word acquired meaning as a negative
epithet, but it was already being used that way on unauthorized editions of
Foster's song in the mid-1850s. That it has strongly demeaning
connotations today is correct; that it had them when Foster wrote his song
is debatable. What is clear from the Foster archives, however, is that
Foster did not intend the negative meaning; rather, he was trying to
engender pity and compassion for people bound up in what seemed at the
time a hopeless burden. ("Gay", of course, meant acting trouble-free, and
had no hint of sexuality.)
David Lieberman's first comments are helpful, but he commits one
historiographical error: a distinction that may be clear to us--"clearly
racial (and racist)"--can not be assumed to have occurred, much less been
clear, to either the composer/lyricist or his audiences 141 years ago when
"My Old Kentucky Home" was first published. His second message
("'My Old Kentucky Home' clearly endorses the vilest connotations of
racist terminology") compounds the error; neither Foster nor the
song endorse any such thing; some uses or interpretations certainly
do so. Therefore the argument is not over what Foster wrote, but how the
song is understood today. The country may be the same, but the society is
altogether different. And every listener interprets the song in a personal
way: yes, some homosexual listeners _are_ quite aware of the politicized
interpretations of the word "gay" in this song. Foster may have been
innocent of politicized intentions for both these words; today's singers
and listeners cannot avoid them given the widespread use of the two words
when the song is performed.
To "retire the song" would be like removing a public statue erected in
another generation. Let's not obliterate the past (it would be suicidal
for librarians even to suggest such a thing), but let's also recognize that
culture changes, and that we respond in the present.
I'm contemplating a new edition of the _Stephen Foster Songbook_, in print
continuously from 1933 to 1978 by the Foster Hall Collection here and
distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies to schools around the
globe. The issue of original language versus terms that would convey to
modern audiences what Foster intended is the biggest stumbling block.
Perhaps the real problem for us at the end of the 20th century is that a
version acceptable to us today hasn't been disseminated widely or
popularly enough.
And by the way, Florida has a similar problem with Foster's "Old Folks at
Home." Complaints there are similarly an opportunity for educating and for
responding with information to counter reactionary attacks on historical
figures and artifacts.
Deane L. Root
Curator
Stephen Foster Memorial
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
(412) 624-4100
Marty Rosen
I have difficulty fathoming the means by which "My Old Kentucky Home" (or,
say, _The Merchant of Venice_) is to be removed from use as pure
entertainment--unless the plan is to sequester them by force in some
inaccessible archive of artifacts lacking anything but purely historic
interest (a notion impossible for me to conceive, gustibus notwithstanding).
What arbiter will distinguish between the aesthetically significant work that
can't be censored and the trivial one that can? The very act of arbitration
in these matters might be anathema to most of us (and deciding that Foster or
whomever is trivial sounds rather like Jesse Helms on Mapplethorpe).
In any event, I don't apologize for being opposed to the bowdlerization of
art (or even things that some decline to view as art).
Marty Rosen