My good friend Eric posted a piece in his blog today about “Connecticut seeking to ban violent songs from being taken into school”:http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2007/02/bombs_bursting_.html. This got me thinking, and I posted my thoughts as a (yet to be moderated) comment in his blog. I reproduce them here:
At last, we can get all of these terrible and violent songs out of our schools. But why stop at the national anthem, which (as you note) slips past the definitions they set forth. Let’s consider “Ring around the Rosie”, which has long been sung by children in our public schools. I recall learning (interestingly, in 6th grade in public school) that this song is believed to be about the black plague (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_O’Roses). The ritual dance accompanying the song is thought to evoke the image of death, after making a sneezing-like sound (depends on country of usage) – “ashes, ashes”. Certainly, a song about a collective, violent death has to fail their standards.
Even better, let’s finally get rid of “Yankee Doodle”. “Mind the music and the step, And with the girls be handy.” Dirty. In the version taught to American schoolchildren, a “macaroni” is “. . . a dandyish young man with affected Continental mannerisms” (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle). Is this the model we want our impressionable young men to follow? Do we really want them to think that by sticking a feather in their hat, they can achieve the height of fashion? Certainly that must violate community standards.
Hidden in every song, from the psalms to our national refrains, are mockery, violence, sex, or just a little something that offends somebody. Seems like it would be better to give kids the skills they need to ferret out the good from the bad, and thus become music critics. But I digress .
