Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Folk Songs

Because it came up in correspondence, I'm reposting this from six years ago. My children were raised on some pretty violent and seamy lyrics from the folk music of 16th-19th C. The update to the comments is that there has since been a movie made about Van Ronk.

1 comment:

RichardJohnson said...

It isn't just "raunchy" lyrics that unite songs of today and songs from past centuries. We see in this song that Social Justice Warriors were already fighting the good fight four centuries ago. Tobacco Is An Indian Weed. While contemporary SJWs would agree about the pejorative affects of tobacco, they might take issue with its being called an "Indian weed."


On the Internet, one one often cannot distinguish between statements made in humor and statements made in full seriousness. While the Devil Made Texas was originally intended as humor, I suspect that a lot of contemporary SJWs, while agreeing wholeheartedly with the premise of the song, would fail to see any humor in the song.