Controversial Classes

I seem to be taking all the controversial classes at Early Music Festival, and so far we have spent more time talking about the controversies than actually singing. In my Negro spiritual class, we discussed the appropriateness of being the oppressors singing the music of the oppressed. Now while I have never personally owned slaves, I had ancestors who did, so this topic is relevant to me. I mean, I'm the kind of person who couldn't hire a maid for pay to do my dirty work for me, since it seems so unfair, but clearly my ancestors on my mother's side were not above owning other human beings. (On my dad's side they had no money and weren't even in this country until long after slavery was illegal.) Then another course I am taking is on minstral shows, as in blackface, so you can see why that would be controversial. I am learning the original words to songs like "Turkey in the Straw," and they aren't politically correct, to say the least. Apparently they had minstral shows in England well into the 80's so this isn't some ancient phenomenon from our grandparents' era. I'm not sure why these topics fascinate me. One of the people in both classes with me is Chinese so he is like a neutral observer: neither part of the oppressing group nor the oppressed one. In that I kind of envy him.

Famous Hat