I hear the choir
of angels singing...
No,
I hear their angel voices calling*...
Oh, no
it's just my tinnitus
both serendipitous and duplicitous.
Ol' Black Joe, retitled Poor Old Joe is one of (white sentimentalist) Stephen Foster's very popular, badly-written, and nauseating songs about black people. This one is probably the worst because it is a pseudo-Spiritual. They all, however, have great tunes, and include Way down upon the Suwanee River (Southern Georgia) and Old Folks at Home ..... I seem to remember also from my childhood Camptown Races, Old Dog Tray (which I wept over), My Old Kentucky Home...
Paul Robeson sang it rather creepily.
Listen here to a rendering from the 1920s.
One of Mr Foster's black servants was called Joe.
*I was sure that my childhood version in the Stephen Foster Songbook had in the chorus:
"I hear their angel voices calling"
but most sung versions have "I hear their gentle voices calling" because, of course, there can't be black angels!
The most famous angelic tinnitus was that of an Alsatian teenager who became known as Joan of Arc.
The devilish genius of Christianity is the promise,
at the very least, the hope of a gorgeous afterlife
(Jesus Saves)
which helps greatly to keep people
'in their place', especially as slaves.
3 comments:
It's very good that you mother has taken these small - but for her immensely important - steps towards self-liberation. (I'm not sure about Jung's rather religious doctrine of 'individuation'.) I watched my mother change slowly from British Imperialist to General Sceptic. Of course, I had helped by giving her Jean Genet to read!
Ah yes, the neighbours... What they might think is so much more important than what I think...my reputation...how could I look them in the face...
PS My own reactivity against norms was not intellectual but emotional, and often because I didn't like the faces of the many people who tried to normalise me. This has had its disadvantages in my life, since I tend to trust and like people whose faces I like...a bit like falling for e-mail scams!
PPS
I think you might like this splendid Rachmaninov concert:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023f3c
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