One of the curiosities for me as a University of Florida undergraduate who loved all things Gator was this question: Why aren’t we singing the fight song? Why are we just rhythmically clapping along to the tune? Urban Meyer, to his everlasting credit, apparently asked the same question and changed that glaring error.
To a degree.
Now, we sing the chorus. Which obviously makes no real sense standing on its own, thus begging the question – why the heck can’t we, and don’t we, sing the first stanza?
In the column I provided an example of the old-school fight song being performed in a symphonic arrangement:
If you listened closely, you know it's a great fight song, with one caveat. I also gave a link to what clearly is the tune our fight song was modeled after -- the United States Military Academy's On, Brave Old Army Team.
So, what was the caveat? In the column I argued the fight song had one anachronistic line -- For Dixie's rightly proud of you -- that should immediately be changed to For Florida's rightly proud of you. That's the way I sing it now, and have for years. With that change, we could go back to singing what is a classic fight song without shame or controversy. The University of Miami routinely played Dixie at their football games until their University president banned it in 1968. We obviously stopped singing our fight song, for what was probably similar reasons, in the 1970s.
The upshot? Fix that one word, then go back to singing the true fight song with gusto.
There's a number of videos making the rounds of Fall Commencement this year at Grambling State University in Louisiana. It's ummmm, uh, well -- the fact of the matter is, you have to see it to believe it:
Video 1
Video 2:
Wow.
I am so incredibly conflicted by that video. I love the celebration, the collective party (and that "Neck" tune has become EXTREMELY popular with almost all black college bands these days and the fact of the matter is that I love it, too) but -- Grambling !!! -- this makes a mockery of the graduation exercise.
How in the hell does the administration at Grambling not understand that?
What the hell are they doing allowing the band to play "Neck" at graduation !?!
Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries !!!
So many folks these days can't quite seem to grasp the necessity of not only boundaries but the wisdom of the all-important social conventions of time, place, and manner. In short: decorum. I say this all the time to friends and acquaintances when we're bitching about the sorry state of so many kids these days. This video, however, says many folks in my generation and niche culture (adults in their 40s and 50s who are either administrators at black colleges or married to folks who are) can be faulted for being just as guilty.
Damn.
The problem, of course, isn't limited to black culture (although I honestly can't imagine a white university having this kind of problem display at graduation -- a different kind of problem display, yes, but not this). It's just that "Neck" bubbled up out of black culture and, well, sadly it has to be admitted that there's something very familiar about this kind of excess.
That said, check out the problem they have at LSU with the playing of "Neck" at their football games. They, too, have fallen in love with the song and their irreverent kids have changed the lyrics from "heyyyyyyyyyyyy ohhhh, talking out the side of your neck" and "neckkkkkkkkkk, you talking out the side of your neck" to something quite, quite different:
Once again, boundaries. Once again, decorum.
As for the song that inspired the college compositions, here's the version released by Cameo:
The college stuff is much better, wouldn't you say? They took a very catchy riff, played it up, and left all the rest alone. It may be stretching things beyond all genuine comprehension but I suspect (wish?) there's a broader decorum lesson found in the musical process by which an average, at best, song was transformed into something quite memorable via the contemplation -- in part -- of time, place and manner restrictions.
It's a beautiful, peaceful morning in creation for me on this Memorial Day 2013 and I'm of a mind to share a few generic photos that are representative of the day but also a song that's quite famous in the black community. It's a love song to the nation, arising out of the Christian tradition, from Black America; it's a song about gratitude, perseverance, faith and dignity generated by a people who made a way out of no way. A can-do people. A song, unfortunately, that is steadily being bastardized into a song of grievance, bitching and moaning.
The song, however, is so beautiful, so magnificent, it will surely survive this unfortunate descent which is endemic to our times.
First, the photos of Memorial Day. My U.S. Army pride wants to highlight the best of the best military honor guards -- the Army's Old Guard, forever on duty at Arlington National Cemetery:
The solemn entrance
The steady approach
Representative of all who served, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Not just another holiday, it's a very special day.
Very.
Special.
Next, my Florida Boy pride wants to highlight Lift Every Voice and Sing -- not a separatist or black nationalist tune by any means. Properly understood, it's a love song to the nation. These are the words of the writer himself, James Weldon Johnson, of Jacksonville -- principal of the first black public high school in the State of Florida:
A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children. Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.
The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.
Note that there wasn't an agenda beyond celebrating the birthday of the first Republican president. A president, by the way, representing a political party first organized around the political principle of eliminating slavery. Thus, the love song of affirmation to the nation. Thus, the generation of a song of perseverance, faith and dignity in the face of rigid segregation and discrimination.
But it most assuredly was not, and is not, a song of grievance, bitching and moaning. And I quite rightly revere it. Here are the words:
(song) Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise, High as the listening skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won.
(song) Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet, Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered; Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last, Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
(prayer) God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou who hast by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. (song) Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand. True to our God, True to our native land.
The poetry of the song, the heartfelt affirmation of it, the respect to God Almighty -- just beautiful! Our God is the Triune God and our native land is not Africa (that's our ancestral homeland), our native land is the United States of America.
Now, for a representative example of the gross bastardization of the historic tune, take a listen, and a look, at this:
Although not performed with my understanding of the old-school style (where the six lines of prayer are collectively read as a communal prayer, and not sung), it's still a beautiful rendition of the song. But quite obviously visually politicized in the extreme, correct? You couldn't miss, could you, the image of the man with whip marks all over his back just as the "harmonies of liberty" line was being sung.
Huh?
Did you see Abraham Lincoln at all? Curious, and historically ignorant. How many positive images of white people? Odd, and historically wrong. I see black troops from the Civil War but no white troops. Shameful. It has all the markings of too-clever-by-half academicians or political partisans of the left-wing.
Wifey was watching the ending of "Undercover Brother" on VH1 earlier this week while getting ready for work. We both laughed at some of the stupidity of the film, and after it ended something called "VH1 You Oughta Know" came on. Interesting looking woman, interesting sound -- okay, who the hell is this?
The song was obviously You Will Find Him Next To Me, or something like that. But -- WHO. IS. SHE !!!
We had to know, so we waited for the end of the video.
Emeli Sande?
Who the hell is that? You ever heard of her? No? Me neither!
I never watch Saturday Night Live any more and haven't for at least two decades but a friend showed me this clip from the show last weekend and I loved Justin Timberlake's obvious professionalism and JOY performing a recent single I'd never heard, Suit & Tie.
Nice song, better performance. I personally love the urban Southern soul vibe in the delivery.
As of the morning of this posting, the video below has nearly 2 million views so it's quite likely that you've seen or heard of it but I sure hadn't. A local family here in Tallahassee (the Derek and Courtney Whitis family) put on a dazzling Christmas display and it won a national award last year from ABC's Good Morning America program. Take a look:
Toujours Prêt !!!
Yep, that was beautiful! I'm gonna have to drive by and see it in person tonight.
I'm still smarting from that extremely disappointing election night victory by Obammy. Last weekend, while traveling all over the Great Sunshine State, I kept hearing a song that had some problematic lyrics but a sound that kept grabbing hold of me. I had never heard of the singer (Frank Ocean) or the song (Lost) before a couple of weeks ago but that didn't matter. The song proved to be irresistible and I had to surrender to it.
Miami, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Spain, lost Los Angeles, India Lost on a train, lost
Might just be a guy thing, who knows, but here 'tis:
Yeah, it's simple. But it works. And it's my guilty pleasure this week.
The sun is shining on this conflicted day and helping me to deal with a bit of a funk. When I feel like this I often try out some music to help the kid fight through it. Right now, I'm listening to a little bit of some classic Nina Simone. How about some "Feeling Good," hmmm ???
I saw an article yesterday in the London Telegraph, I believe, that said this would have been an absolutely great theme song for one of the films in the 007 James Bond franchise and I agree, bigtime.
Now, if only the Mighty Gators can just pull out a victory today over those Bengal Tigers from over yonder in the Luzianne Bayou.
Come on Big Orange and Blue. You can do it, baby, you can do it!
It seems as if I've been extremely busy for about a year now and I'm still processing how little I blog about anything these days. As I've written before, I blame Twitter. Today, I have a bit of a reprieve. And I happen to be obsessing on an artist I love -- Melanie Fiona. She did a song a few years ago that blew me away, Give It To Me Right, and after hunting down multiple versions of that song on YouTube today (click here to see an interesting version from German TV) I stumbled upon her doing Roberta Flack's classic, Killing Me Softly, at some German radio station in Hamburg one year ago. Check it out:
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