Cheerful music...

[helen99]

I remember when there was a big flap about I Used to Love Her by Guns n Roses.

Then today I heard Knoxville Girl by the Louvin Brothers, about which there never was the slightest flap.

And then of course there is the Finnish band Värttinä, who wrote a song about a woman who ate her children, and another song with the following lyrics: "I throw off sparks, I tear from my tongue words as twisted as tree-roots. I poke the fire of hatred with my words, I hurl hate back at you. My mood blackens, blacker than the mind of any mortal. My loathing drips blood, my pain slashes, curses, drenches with pus."

Um, All-rightee then. So anyway.

It's funny that people singled out GNR's "I used to love her," when in fact much folk music worldwide (for example, music from Finland and Tennessee) goes where that song never dared to go.

Comments

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

Similarly, I recently acquired a children's-story version of one of the Kalevala. Reading through reviews and the book itself, I kept thinking "wow, this really is more an anthropology footnote than any kind of kid's book! There's suicide and baby-abandoning and dying in the snow and all sorts of stuff spelled out plainly in here." And then, "wait, this is centuries-old fireside tale folk poetry already cleaned up! What sanitized crap have we gotten used to?"

It's funny what we overlook in traditional things we've grown used to, or can look back on as quaint carryovers from a less civilized time. Yet new bloody stories are controversy, or somehow generally accepted as "bad XTREME stories not suitable for most people". People are silly.

[lindsaybits]

It does amuse me that folks get themselves worked into such a tizzy about the scary/naughty/whatever lyrics in popular music, but they never really think twice about folk music. (And of course, now that i'm thinking about it, i can't come up with any examples.)

I think part of it is that we're less inclined to look closely at the things that we're familiar with.

[rangermorgiah.livejournal.com]

Well also, you're never going to hear that music on 98 Rock. I had never heard of the above before reading about it here. I think when something is widely distributed, and people from outside of that culture are exposed to it, then they freak out.

Of course, they still ignore the dark sides of their own cultural legacy, but Axel was just so very clear about it ;)