Stephen Foster's LOU'SIANA BELLE - Tom Roush

WARNING: In using the original lyrics, this song may be offensive to some people. Like it or not, songs such as this one are part of our history. If this 1847 minstrel show favorite was not so 'politically incorrect,' I'm sure that it would still be popular today. Like many of Foster's works, "Lou'siana Belle" disappeared into obscurity when minstrel shows met their demise. The most popular minstrel troupe that performed this song was known as the "SABLE HARMONISTS." Unlike many minstrel troupes of the day, the 'Harmonists' were comprised of black Americans not white's in 'blackface.' I replaced each piano break with a fiddle playing the piano part. It's musical structure resembles that of a 'hoedown.' This could be the most 'politically incorrect' hoedown in history!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Civil
• War
• Music
• Banjo
• folk
• music
• minstrel
• songs
• Americana
• Louisiana
• slavery
• history

[Upcamehill]

What is so incorrect with this song. I don't see any curse words or "Nigger" in the song.

[MusicOfTomRoush]

@Upcamehill Some folks go off the deep end when the word 'massa' is mentioned in a song.

[mtsumusic]

No one who gets offended today at the word "massa" has never had a master, never worked on a plantation, and probably never even picked cotton.

[MusicOfTomRoush]

@mtsumusic You're absolutely right!! I'm astounded that many want reparation for the suffering of distant relatives who were slaves. I'm quite sure that somewhere in my family tree, someone was a slave even though they were white.

[mtsumusic]

@MusicOfTomRoush Besides, Robert Fogel, who was a Nobel Prize winner, argued in his book that slaves in the South had it better than free Negroes in the Northern states in his book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery.

[MusicOfTomRoush]

@mtsumusic I can believe that. Negroes were given their freedom but without many rights. Many people in the North may have not have believed in slavery but that doesn't mean that they welcomed Negroes with open arms either. There was plenty of racism in the North.

[sradefarras]

Tom I think you´re a great artist. I also think if people were to just enjoy the music and think of it as a way of experiencing how people lived, felt and sang in the old days, they shouldn´t get offended by its political incorrectness. We simply cannot judge people of yesteryears by our own standards. I´d like to see it as a way to be grateful -- that from such incorrectness in the past, we were able to correct them now in the present. Who knows what the future will be correcting ?

[mtsumusic]

This music is also just too great to pigeon-hole like so many legislators do. It always turns the argument on its head to say that Foster was from Pennsylvania and lived in Ohio...nowhere in the South. Black people should be amazed and appreciative that any white people thought highly enough of them at that time to write a song in their dialect and from their point of view, even if for entertainment purposes. My favorite song is "Old Folks at Home."

[MusicOfTomRoush]

@Lubbockrebel Thanks! Foster wrote and published over 260 songs but due to 'politcal correctness,' less than 20 of them are heard or even heard of today.

[Lubbockrebel]

You do a really great job on songs we don't get to hear anywhere else.