{"id":5795,"date":"2021-10-25T20:17:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T01:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=5795"},"modified":"2021-10-25T20:17:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T01:17:13","slug":"minstrel-songs-the-whitewashing-of-lyrics-and-erasure-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2021\/10\/25\/minstrel-songs-the-whitewashing-of-lyrics-and-erasure-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Minstrel Songs, the Whitewashing of Lyrics, and Erasure of History"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Oh Susanna<\/span><\/i> is a song I personally remember singing in my childhood, during daycare, summer camps, and elementary school. So, when I learned in class that Oh Susanna<\/em> is a song written for minstrel shows in the mid 1800s and has extremely racist origins I wanted to do a deeper dive on the history of minstrel songs that are still sung today, and learn more about why said songs have had such an effect on our culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first thing that I learned when researching was that<\/span> Oh Susanna <\/span><\/i>was one of the first popular \u2018American\u2019 songs to be published- there were over 100,000 copies sold, where before no song had sold more than 5,000. Many articles I read stated that minstrel songs had been considered in the early 1800s to be America\u2019s purest or singular musical contribution to the world. This is obviously not true. But, the fact that minstrel troupes and songs were published internationally and minstrel shows were extremely popular forms of entertainment led to this genre of music having a great impact on American culture. An article written by Dr. Katya Ermolaeva on the history and impact of songs such as Oh Susanna<\/em> and Camptown Races<\/em> states, \u201cMinstrelsy left an indelible mark on the American music and entertainment industries\u201d. The first ever film with sound in America, <\/span>The Jazz Singer<\/span><\/i> (1927), was a story of a singer who wanted to work in a minstrel troupe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why are these songs are still taught and sung by people often, and why were they so popular? The answer to that question is complex, but I would like to focus on a singular issue- the whitewashing of their lyrics. Oh Susanna\u2019s<\/em> original lyrics include racist slurs and is written in a stereotyped black dialect common in minstrel shows of the mid 1800s. Ermolaeva explains how, throughout the decades of the 20th century, due to the civil rights movement and growing social justice movements, minstrelsy and blackface became more and more unacceptable in society. But, instead of being removed entirely from songbooks and soundtracks, minstrel songs and stereotypes merely became more and more subtle. Ermolaeva discusses such a change in the context of the minstrel song also still popular today: I\u2019ve Been Working on the Railroad. \u201c <\/span>The mythologizing of \u201cI\u2019ve Been Working on the Railroad\u201d as a tune celebrating American values has continued into recent decades. When Smithsonian Folkways reissued Seeger\u2019s recording in 1990, the <\/span>liner notes<\/span><\/a> touted the \u201cdemocratic passion\u201d of folk revivalists to include the \u201cmusic of working-class Americans\u201d as part of the \u201cnational cultural conversation.\u201d The Black Americans represented in \u201cRailroad,\u201d however, barely had any rights as laborers in railroad camps and arguably <\/span>still lack basic rights<\/span><\/a> as Americans today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that minstrel songs are still sung and accepted as unproblematic additions to the\u00a0 \u2018American music canon\u2019 is incredibly distressing. I would like to finish this blog post with Ermolaeva\u2019s words, which I think speaks to our responsibility to work towards never letting these songs with their racist pasts exist unchallenged. Ermolaeva states, \u201cRemoving minstrel songs from children\u2019s music programs will not undo the damage already done by blackface minstrelsy. Their removal, however, would serve as an acknowledgment of the damage wrought by these songs and a pledge to no longer promote that legacy. Our children won\u2019t know the difference now, but one day they will be grateful for our efforts to rid their classrooms \u2014 and their childhoods \u2014 of racist songs…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Citations<\/span><\/p>\n

Ermolaeva, K. (2019, November 7). <\/span>Dinah, Put Down Your Horn: Blackface Minstrel Songs Don\u2019t Belong in Music Class<\/span><\/i>. Medium. <\/span>https:\/\/gen.medium.com\/dinah-put-down-your-horn-154b8d8db12a<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Oh! Susanna<\/span><\/i>. (1848). The Library of Congress. https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/resource\/sm1848.441780.0\/?sp=1<\/span><\/p>\n

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, August 14). <\/span>Oh! Susanna<\/span><\/i>. Wikipedia. <\/span>https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oh!_Susanna<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh Susanna is a song I personally remember singing in my childhood, during daycare, summer camps, and elementary school. So, when I learned in class that Oh Susanna is a song written for minstrel shows in the mid 1800s and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-1vt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5801,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions\/5801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}