Larry Mayo wrote:

> One that really made my jaw drop was "If the Man in the Moon
> Was a Coon."

> [ Vaudeville song titles like this were so popular that the
> [ genre ultimately got the name "Coon Songs" !   -- Robbie

On my last tour of the Musical Wonder House in Maine, Mr. Konvalinka
made mention of the many tunes he has collected for his cylindrical
record players of various makes that he doesn't dare play for most
people.  At my request, he did play one called "Take the Nigger to
the Woodpile".  Although I don't recall any of the lyrics, the title is
still something akin to getting a bucket of ice water in the face.

There were a number of similarly racist paraphernalia he had collected
over the years.  When I made mention of my sister-in-law's penchant for
collecting things like this (Patricia Turner -- a black black-studies
professor at U.C. Davis) he pulled out a turntable toy: a black figure
of the type Pat labels "the golliwog" -- round black head, goggly white
eyes, big blood-red lips -- which was designed to be attached to the
side of a disk record player so that its feet barely touched the
record.

The rotation of the record made the figure dance in an erratic way.
Presumably it was meant to dance to tunes like the aforementioned.
I sent some pictures of the thing to Pat.


Douglas Henderson wrote:

> MMD readers might like to know the extent to which revisionism has
> taken place concerning racial references.  At a major concert in
> downtown Boston -- where "Linnmania-Marseillaise" -- a 1989 Pianola
> composition -- was first debuted, I also introduced a 1933 Duo-Art roll
> (played on Peter Neilson's Brewster upright pedal player); this was
> Otto Cesana's "Negro Heaven" -- a 'Symphonette'.  (It was released in
> an Ampico edition as well.)
> ... ...
> Fast-forward to the '89 Boston Pianola concert.  I had to explain
> "Negro" -- now an insult in some circles -- when that was a perfectly
> acceptable word in the composer's time.  The black organization, NAACP,
> refers to "Colored People" in its title ...  and so on.  To this day I
> couldn't understand what the 'fuss' was about, concerning "Negro Heaven"
> -- since the musical arrangement is one of the best ever created
> commercially for the a Pianola.

This brings up the whole issue of political correctness, which is an
unfortunate one in America.  I feel strongly that people, of whatever
color, should not _default_ to assuming a racist interpretation of
something -- but playing that "racism" card has been so successful in
lobbying, advertising -- even in the courts -- that that is the way
most of us are now wired.

"Negro" never was a racial epithet, it is simply a discarded appel-
ation used by black people who seem to have a penchant for renaming
themselves at periodic intervals.  "Negro".  "Black".  "Person of
Color" (how this is better than "Colored Person" is still a mystery
to me) and finally "African American" (a word whose unwieldyness and
inappropriateness was amply illustrated by one TV announcer who
introduced Archbishop Desmond Tutu as "that great African-American ...
er ... African".)

Each of these words has apparently developed a negative emotional
connotation over time which black leaders have decided to deal with by
renaming them away rather than building up a strongly positive image in
one word (the verbal voodoo implied in this attitude is interesting but
decidedly off-topic on this list).

But none of these words has ever had the negative power of "nigger".
Your Pianola people over-reacted to "Negro Heaven".  But their reaction
would _not_ have been inappropriate for "Take the Nigger to the
Woodpile", which is about the most obnoxiously-named tune I've ever
heard of.

> Having dispensed with a short discussion of what I knew about
> the composer (and his dark skin color), I began playing the roll,
> _which was the 'important' thing anyway_.

Our methods for dealing with these things are decidedly limited.
We can ignore this music, which loses us a bit of unpleasant but
_important_ history.  We can rename the tunes -- which is much worse,
it retcons history, literally rewriting it.

Or we can use it to illustrate history, as you did.  I feel that that
is appropriate.  It is not ideal -- it does, in fact, take attention
away from the music and the instrument in order to address an entirely
unrelated topic -- but it is better than the alternatives.

> I think those who are offended by the titles/pictures/music of
> the past should (a) study-up on social history and better yet,
> (b) sit back and enjoy the music (which is often very good).

And give thanks that as a society we have progressed to the point
that most people would _agree_ with them that such a title might be
offensive.

Larry Smith