[Tradjazz] Florida retires state song with lyrics that offend ("Old Folks at Home, " AKA "Swanee River")

[Jon-Erik Kellso]

interesting-- this was in the paper a few days ago:

 Florida retires song with lyrics that offend
 By Carol J. Williams
 Los Angeles Times
Article Launched: 01/07/2008 01:32:50 AM PST

 MIAMI - Whenever Floridians sing their state song at sporting events,
school recitals and inaugurations, voices trail off in the third line
of the chorus as the politically correct singers skip over or mumble
the most offensive of its lyrics.

   "Old Folks at Home," the official Florida ballad that voices an
 illiterate slave's nostalgia for the Suwannee River, has been a
source of embarrassment and discord for decades for its allusions to
"darkeys" and "longing for de old plantation."

 The song, written by Pennsylvanian Stephen C. Foster in 1851 and
adopted by Florida 84 years later, soon might be consigned, though,
to the dustbin of the outdated. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist nixed
the song from his inauguration a  year ago, giving critical mass to a
campaign under way since the  1960s civil rights movement to replace
the ode commonly known as  "Swanee River" with one that is more
reflective of modern Florida.

 The Florida Music Educators Association has been conducting a contest
 - "Just Sing, Florida" - for a new state song since April. A panel of
 music teachers listened to 243 entries submitted over six months,
paring down the potential winners to 20, then to three. The new song
will be announced Friday, and two state lawmakers intend to submit a
bill to make that winner the official replacement for Foster's.

 "There just comes a point in time when you need to make a change.
We're not throwing the old song away; we're just retiring it," said
state Sen.Tony Hill, a Jacksonville Democrat. "It should go into an
archive or a museum where people can see that was the Florida of
1935. But it's not the Florida of 2008 - a darkey longing for his
plantation."