I heard recently from a SiriusXM listener who was bothered by the fact that we seem to play a lot of violent–even brutal–songs. She made the point that there was already plenty of violence in our media and culture, and that bluegrass music shouldn’t be contributing to it.
I replied that I could kind of see her point, and then I did what most responsible DJs in my position do: I quickly passed the buck on to someone higher up (the program director) and went and washed my car. She wrote back, though, and pointed out songs that I had just played myself that very day that she classified as “horrible,” Pretty Polly being just one example.
At that point, I wasn’t sure how best to respond. Saying something like, “In some circles, ripping a girl’s clothes off and stabbing her to death because she wouldn’t marry you is considered perfectly reasonable” didn’t seem like a very sound argument, morally or otherwise. My other comeback, “it may seem horrible to you, but that’s because you’re listening to the words. Stop doing that!” also didn’t seem terribly strong.
How do we justify the fact that some of our songs are violent enough to make your average hip-hop lyrics seem like The Barney Song by comparison? I know that I personally tend to cut songs that are over 100 years old some slack, mainly because I know I won’t ever have to meet any of the people in those songs. But seriously, they’re part of our dark cultural history that people chose to put into song, and isn’t it a good thing that they did? Today it would just be tweeted about, and where’s the art in that? In the case of the song, something musical and poetic came out of something tragic and ugly. In the case of the tweet, something short (140 characters short) and #PoorlyConceived came out of it.
As for new violent songs in bluegrass music, I think you have to judge it on a case-by-case basis. If something deeper isn’t being said than “I killed her for cheating on me,” I’d say we can do a lot better. If it tells a tragic story well, one that involves conflict, mystery, regret, and a moral lesson in there somewhere, then there may be a higher purpose to the song. Or maybe we just like the mandolin break and are only vaguely aware that someone gets killed in it, and that makes it okay (“I like that chord progression. What’s the song about again?”).
The only old murder ballad I just can’t abide is Down in the Willow Garden. In that song, the girl is poisoned, stabbed, and drowned. Talk about gratuitous! I could have accepted any two of those acts, and the whole bloody sabre bit, but come on!
Perhaps what we need to do in order to preserve these songs, yet still be a more positive voice in the area of human relationships, is to rewrite them just a little. I’m not suggesting that we remove the violent verses; we should just alter them to make them a lot nicer. Here are some examples of what I mean.
Since Pretty Polly was brought up, here’s one approach to altering the murdering verse:
Original:
He opened up her bosom as white as any snow
He opened up her bosom as white as any snow
Stabbed her through the heart and the blood did overflow
Nicer version:
He opened up her bosom, she slapped his hand away
He opened up her bosom, she slapped his hand away
“Not too subtle, Willie dear, try that on Linda May!”
Little Sadie:
Original:
Went out one night for to make a little round
Met Little Sadie and I shot her down
Went back home, got in my bed
A .44 pistol under my head
Nicer version:
Went out one night for to make a little round
Met Little Sadie on the edge of town
Had some drinks, went back home
Watched an episode of Game of Thrones
Yeah, maybe not.
I’m not a glorifier of violence in any form, but I do think we’re going to have to leave our old songs as they are. It’s true, they’ll never pass muster in an age when ratings boards factor in “brief smoking” as justification for a PG rating, but I don’t think anyone can seriously suggest that the murder and mayhem in songs like Little Sadie is contributing to the violence in our society. It may be contributing to very poor escape plans, however, which seems to be a common theme in these songs, too.
Down in the Willow Garden is pretty gross, though, you have to admit.
