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Content advisory: this contains very personal, possibly contentious, potentially offensive material about religion and its place in the current cultural and political landscape. I'm not looking for a fight. I'm not looking to be convinced I'm wrong, or to be vindicated by other people's experience. I'm mourning a personal loss. (most of the performer links lead to different songs from the ones I'm talking about)
I've told Emma about this. I've lost a big chunk of my heritage just recently. I grew up listening to old scratchy records, some of them older than my father, largely from the South (black and white). The soundtrack of my childhood was the Carter Family, the Ernest V. Stoneman, the Skillet Lickers, Ma Rainey, of course Bessie Smith, and Memphis Minnie, Bob Wills, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Rodgers, and I could go on and on but the point is just to express the range. I remember my mother asking my father how come I sounded like Maybelle Carter whenever I opened my mouth (I wished I sounded like Sarah instead, but there it is). We had a great big speaker (one, this is before most people had stereos, and the old records were all mono), and I practically climbed into it, picking at the woven straw that covered the friont while I sang along with the Blue Sky Boys. (that link leads to "Are You From Dixie?" -- if you're suffering from the same problem I am, you probably shouldn't click this. On the other hand, if you worship fine mandolin technique . . .)
A lot of those songs are highly religious. Some of them were really, really reactionary, but in the political landscape of my youth they seemed quaint rather than threatening. These days, because of the aggressive, highly organized, and increasingly effective war that the religious right is waging against the world, I can't sing some of my favorite songs, and I turn the radio dial when I hear music that should make me nostalgic -- honestly, if I hear even a certain singing style or a certain kind of instrumentation, unless I very quickly recognize the song to be one that doesn't make me sick to my stomach, I'll turn the radio off.
I can't hear Uncle Dave Macon singing "Shall We Gather at the River?" without remembering that at least half a dozen of his songs were direct attacks on learning and science, and without realizing that the import of that song and others like it -- "Diamonds in the Rough," "Bringing in the Sheaves," "Where the Soul Never Dies" -- is that the state of this world and its future do not matter because the elect will leave it all behind and go live with their god who made this jewel and then sanctioned its destruction.
I can't hear "Amazing Grace," even, though it was one of my favorites to sing at the sink when the kids were growing up, even though the story -- that the man who wrote it had been the captain of a slave ship, and had come to realize how horrible it was, and quite, and become religious somewhere in the process --that story used to seem so sweet to me. Now I hear it, and I hear smugness in the voices of the people who sing it (don't bother telling me that there are some upstanding freedom fighters who love to sing this song. This isn't about that: it's about my own state of terror).
Honestly, it all sounds like the Horst Wessel song to me at this point. All of it. Even Blind Lemon Jefferson singing "See that my grave is kept clean." Even Doc Watson singing about old Daniel (you can see a bit of Pete Seeger listening in that video), or Mary and Martha, or Paul and Simon. Especially Dock Boggs singing "Oh Death."
It's an extreme reaction, but I'm looking at a hideous, hideous thing, dressed up in traditional values, threatening to make The Handmaid's Tale look like The Poky Little Puppy. (and what the hell, Wikipedia? how is that more notable than Nick Mamatas?) I was raised to embrace everybody's culture, to celebrate the best of everybody's values and traditions, to tolerate different world views. It all seems so luxurious now, with respectable politicians coming right out and saying out loud in so many words how little they value my people and my land, how much they hate people like me. And by people like me, I mean: Women. Mothers. Working people. People who don't make a lot of money. People whose jobs enable other people to work and go to school and live better lives. People who need health care in order to live productive lives. Non-christians. People who work to defend the actual living world we're in.
Fortunately, "Life's Railway to Heaven" is not a complete wash -- there's still the labor version, "Weaver's Life is Like an Engine." (which I cannot find on youtube, naturally) However, if I should hear the instrumental intro, am I going to stick around for the probably trauma, on the off chance that I'll get to hear the good old voices reminding me that there are times and places where the USian working class thinks for itself and has opinions that are not vile and slaved to the interests of the richest of the rich?
I've told Emma about this. I've lost a big chunk of my heritage just recently. I grew up listening to old scratchy records, some of them older than my father, largely from the South (black and white). The soundtrack of my childhood was the Carter Family, the Ernest V. Stoneman, the Skillet Lickers, Ma Rainey, of course Bessie Smith, and Memphis Minnie, Bob Wills, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Rodgers, and I could go on and on but the point is just to express the range. I remember my mother asking my father how come I sounded like Maybelle Carter whenever I opened my mouth (I wished I sounded like Sarah instead, but there it is). We had a great big speaker (one, this is before most people had stereos, and the old records were all mono), and I practically climbed into it, picking at the woven straw that covered the friont while I sang along with the Blue Sky Boys. (that link leads to "Are You From Dixie?" -- if you're suffering from the same problem I am, you probably shouldn't click this. On the other hand, if you worship fine mandolin technique . . .)
A lot of those songs are highly religious. Some of them were really, really reactionary, but in the political landscape of my youth they seemed quaint rather than threatening. These days, because of the aggressive, highly organized, and increasingly effective war that the religious right is waging against the world, I can't sing some of my favorite songs, and I turn the radio dial when I hear music that should make me nostalgic -- honestly, if I hear even a certain singing style or a certain kind of instrumentation, unless I very quickly recognize the song to be one that doesn't make me sick to my stomach, I'll turn the radio off.
I can't hear Uncle Dave Macon singing "Shall We Gather at the River?" without remembering that at least half a dozen of his songs were direct attacks on learning and science, and without realizing that the import of that song and others like it -- "Diamonds in the Rough," "Bringing in the Sheaves," "Where the Soul Never Dies" -- is that the state of this world and its future do not matter because the elect will leave it all behind and go live with their god who made this jewel and then sanctioned its destruction.
I can't hear "Amazing Grace," even, though it was one of my favorites to sing at the sink when the kids were growing up, even though the story -- that the man who wrote it had been the captain of a slave ship, and had come to realize how horrible it was, and quite, and become religious somewhere in the process --that story used to seem so sweet to me. Now I hear it, and I hear smugness in the voices of the people who sing it (don't bother telling me that there are some upstanding freedom fighters who love to sing this song. This isn't about that: it's about my own state of terror).
Honestly, it all sounds like the Horst Wessel song to me at this point. All of it. Even Blind Lemon Jefferson singing "See that my grave is kept clean." Even Doc Watson singing about old Daniel (you can see a bit of Pete Seeger listening in that video), or Mary and Martha, or Paul and Simon. Especially Dock Boggs singing "Oh Death."
It's an extreme reaction, but I'm looking at a hideous, hideous thing, dressed up in traditional values, threatening to make The Handmaid's Tale look like The Poky Little Puppy. (and what the hell, Wikipedia? how is that more notable than Nick Mamatas?) I was raised to embrace everybody's culture, to celebrate the best of everybody's values and traditions, to tolerate different world views. It all seems so luxurious now, with respectable politicians coming right out and saying out loud in so many words how little they value my people and my land, how much they hate people like me. And by people like me, I mean: Women. Mothers. Working people. People who don't make a lot of money. People whose jobs enable other people to work and go to school and live better lives. People who need health care in order to live productive lives. Non-christians. People who work to defend the actual living world we're in.
Fortunately, "Life's Railway to Heaven" is not a complete wash -- there's still the labor version, "Weaver's Life is Like an Engine." (which I cannot find on youtube, naturally) However, if I should hear the instrumental intro, am I going to stick around for the probably trauma, on the off chance that I'll get to hear the good old voices reminding me that there are times and places where the USian working class thinks for itself and has opinions that are not vile and slaved to the interests of the richest of the rich?
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You know what would be really nice?
Putting stuff like this behind an lj-cut. I struggle enough with religion without being reminded that people I like think I'm a Nazi.
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I can understand where you are coming from. I went to Catholicism to get away from what dominionist Christianity did to me, and because I identified very strongly with the social justice thread in Catholicism. I still flinch away very strongly from dominionist-tinged faith, especially when it pops up in Catholic practice. As it is right now, I really, really am at the point where the only service I can stand is a very quiet, very bland meditative Mass.
But I refuse to walk away and give it over to the Shadows.
You aren't alone in your reaction. Others feel the same way. Some of us are mourning what we see done to something in which we still believe, but see perverted even more and more these days.
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By the way, I had the exact same experience you describe on a small scale. At one of my first SF conventions, I fell in with a bunch of filkers. I learned a bunch of songs, including one that had a great tune and words about going out into space. I loved that song; it always gave me chills when it was sung...until I discovered the tune was that of the Horst Wessel Song. Haven't sung it since, though the words are still in a songbook of mine.
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What cured me, I think, was, perhaps paradoxically, learning more about English traditional song and its links with religious song. And many of our finest and oldest songs are religious, and some are just plain weird.
It's a very interesting version of Christianity, for example, that we get Down in Yon Forest from. Or The Bitter Withy. (memorably introduced by Kerfuffle 'so, it turns out that he's the Messiah, *and* he's a very naughty boy'. ) It's an altogether more gnarled and complex religion than the one the US Christian Right is trying to sell you.
The 'the pains of this world don't matter because of our bright hereafter' message reads oddly now to us because our daily lives are so much less tiresome. (I think the great sufferings of life are largely unchanged though; we still lose the people we love). The messages were intended to be comforting rather than uncaring.