Talk:Old Folks at Home

Florida
Does anyone else find it hilarious that a song with such a title is Florida's state song? It's like they knew in advance it would become a popular retirement destination. There must be some Floridian humor centered around this - I couldn't be the first to recognize this - that should show up here if anyone stumbles across it. --BDD 13:45, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

It does seem ironic. I find it the more ironic that the
 * (a) the music never once mentions Florida (the Suwannee flows through Georgia too), and
 * (b) the composer never even visited Florida, let alone the river! --EH 22:25, 14 Nov. 2005 (EST)

DDR Mario Mix
This isnt a big thing but the song in the DDR Mario Dance Mix gamecube game in World Four Stage One, a song entitled "Frozen Pipes" is played and it is based on the song "Old Folks at Home", the plot of this stage is that you are going through a pipe and trying to find the exit, use this if you wish, why not? I posted it here in case the creator of this entry does not wish for this to be on the main page felinoel 00:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Some 18 years later, I'm just about to publish an edit adding Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix to "Other film/TV appearances"—which I'm renaming "Other media appearances"—and it occurred to me I should check the talk page in case there's a reason the list is only film and TV. Since no one ever answered you either way, I'll go ahead and publish. Hhhguir (talk) 08:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Perception of racism
This is a plainly racist song in the conceptions of its racist author and the performance context that it was designed for. Without suggesting more academically sourced resources, obviously none of the contributors are familiar with the most widely accepted recent biography of Foster   Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster And The Rise Of American Popular Culture Paperback – by Ken Emerson https://www.amazon.com/Doo-dah-Stephen-American-Popular-Culture/dp/0306808528,     Foster's entire life and that of his family was tied to the Pennsylvania Dough Face faction of the Democrat party, the most pro slavery, racist political faction in the North. Its most prominent member was President Buchanan who brother was married to Foster's sister. His songs were performed by the Christy Minstrels whose main performance venue was owned by the family of Fernando Wood, the Cooperhead NY politician who advocated that NY City and Long Island join the Southern Secession. Anyone who reads the actual original texts of Foster's songs which abound with the N word [see here the original lyrics to O Susana https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Oh!_Susanna_(original_lyrics)], or the songs he wrote against Lincoln for the Democrats in the 1860 election, or the songs Foster wrote AGAINST the Emancipation proclamation, or the song that he provided music for insulting Black soldiers would not think of him as an abolition, not to speak of the actual song he wrote called "Abolition" mocking and slandering abolitionists. No one who knows his family hid the leading Cooperhead during the Civil War who had been exiled by Lincoln could possibly believe Foster was an abolitionist.

The setting for this song in its cultural context is of an escaped slave longing to return to SLAVERY. This song was written to be performed on the minstrel stage by a blacked up actor imitating an escape slave LONGING TO RETURN TO SLAVERY ON THE PLANTATION. It repeats the standard trope of minstrelsy that slavery was better for Black people and we (I am black) are unsuited for freedom. This occurs in so many of Foster's songs because FOSTER BELIEVED IN SLAVERY AND WAS A RACIST. It is simply ignorance of the establish facts of Foster's life, or the performance context that the song was developed for.

Now if you remove the performance context, if you remove that history, and you erase what Foster believed in, this might be wonderful song. Because of his own alcoholism, and perhaps his persecution because of sexual orientation which may or may not be true, Foster had a miserable life. His larger family lost its home, he separated from his wife after their first child was conceived, lived a miserable life drinking himself to death in NYC in his last years. Many of his songs channel the misery that he faced graphically and poetically. It is rather tragic that he was immersed in a society and a wing of the society that valued justifying slavery and subjecting black people, so that much of his poetry had to be directed toward minstrelsy" Blackbanjotony (talk)

It's really sad that this song is made out to be racist, even though the author himself supported the North and sympathized with black people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the song, aside from the fact that the word "darkies" is part of the original lyrics, and that originally it was supposed to be in fake [Ebonics]. And why is "darkies" a bad word? DOES it carry the same weight as that other "N" word? Maybe one day the word "black" to refer to black people will be banned as well. I heard the music to a musical called "Avenue Q," and I agree. "Look around and you will find, no one's really color blind..."[ please consult the original lyrics to O Susana here https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Oh!_Susanna_(original_lyrics)}

This is a beautiful song to hear, and it absolutely does not make black people look bad in any way. This song is about missing home, not about keeping slaves, or treating black people like crap. I think it's kind of sad how they're just going to trash it as Florida's song.220.220.209.199 (talk) 12:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If Foster supported the abolition of slavery and fought for the North in the Civil War, how come his Wikipedia page makes absolutely no mention of this uncited, unsupported claim? If this claim were true it would certainly be notable and worth mentioning.  I spent a few minutes Googling biographies of Stephen Foster, and they all make mention of him moving to, living in, and dieing destitute in New York from 1860 to 1864.  No Civil War battles were fought in New York.  The complete lack of evidence to support the claim coupled with the presence of significant evidence casting doubt on even its possibility of being true should be enough to remove it from the article.  Can anybody cite any sources to back up this extraordinary claim?--MuséeRouge (talk) 20:07, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I cannot find evidence that Foster was pro-slavery or that he was part of the abolitionist movement as a member, but we do know some things about him. He did not allow caricatures of slaves on the covers of his music. He eventually abandoned the Ebonics dialect in his music. His "Old Kentucky Home" ALSO WRITTEN IN THE VIEW OF A SLAVE has evidence that it was written to supplement the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was a book that was a rallying cry of the abolitionists. "He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion. In his own words, he sought to 'build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.'" (Dr. Deane Root, Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Center for American Music). It is very unfortunate that in the modern era people have misinterpretations of his songs. Old Folks at Home is a song originally meant to express LONGING FOR HOME, FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, AND FRIENDS, and that yes, even "darkies" had the same emotions "whites" had, they were not mindless and incapable as a race as some thought at the time. It is NOT a song which is meant to degrade African Americans or to give the impression they liked being slaves, which is a later interpretation that was brought on this song much later after Stephen Foster died. If you want a comparison for the meaning of this song, try to think of this. An immigrant in the early 1900s comes to America, leaving everyone else behind. His homeland is poverty ridden and plagued, but even that immigrant still misses the place he grew up and his family, despite that "home" being much worse than where he finds himself currently. It is this emotion that Foster is trying to portray. W.E.B Du Bois stated on this song: "Old Folks at Home is legitimately considered an authentic song of the Negro race, who have adopted it to express their own emotions."


 * In other songs written by Foster, he also tugs on this same emotion. In "Old Kentucky Home" it is a similar theme. It shows that, being sold and sent to the sugar cane plantations he is far now from his parents and brothers and sisters and friends, and now must die far away from the only "home" he ever knew, farewell and goodnight to his old home. Frederick Douglass, another prominent African American said of Old Kentucky home, "They awaken the sympathies for the slave in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish." For the song known as "Old Black Joe", Foster again tugs as these emotions, but this time he is old, reminiscing and longing for those old times and those old friends, despite knowing that he should has no reason to long for those times in slavery.


 * Today, it seems those ignorant of the meaning of these old songs would be very pleased in butchering them of their "offensive" terms. A terrible side effect of this censorship is that the songs lose their original meaning, and in some instances doing more harm than good. For instance, Old Kentucky Home, when removing the words "Darkie" to "People" now causes modern listeners to simply think it was a song for a white man yearning for the old Antebellum South, which does not in any way help the listener gain sympathy for the slaves or their emotions, as the original lyrics does.


 * Stefen Foster's songs were very popular in the African American musical scene, just as it was in White culture. Many of his songs have been sung by African American musicians, who did actually understand the meaning. "I suspect that Stephen Foster owed something to this well, this mystery, this sorrow. 'My Old Kentucky Home' makes you think so, at any rate. Something there suggests close acquaintance with my people..." - W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues (1941)75.73.114.111 (talk) 10:08, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Words and music?
The article doesn't say whether Foster wrote the music as well as the lyrics. Valetude (talk) 13:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It is generally understood that if only one person is credited with a writing credit for a song, then that person wrote both the music and the lyrics. In this case, the infobox explicitly states that he wrote both the tune and the lyrics, while the text of the article credits him as the writer. If the lyrics were written for a traditional tune, it would be noted (see What Child is This? as an example).  Horologium  (talk) 21:43, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Horo, missed that one (a little easy to miss, perhaps?). In those cases where someone is both composer and lyricist, readers might be interested to know in which role the author was generally more notable. Valetude (talk) 22:17, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Original lyrics
A New York Times article is cited to indicate that Foster never really considered using the Pee Dee River in the lyrics (i.e. his brother suggested it and he immediately rejected the idea). However, at http://gulahiyi.blogspot.com/2009/12/way-down-upon-pee-dee-river.html you can see a photograph of Foster's handwritten draft manuscript of the lyrics, in which Pee Dee appears and is then underlined with Swanee written as a replacement. The New York Times article therefore appears to be incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.5.239 (talk) 15:34, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps I should say that the New York Times article is cited in a misleading way. The NYT article actually mentions the draft manuscript with the changes. The Wikipedia article summary is what makes it sound as if Foster never considered Pee Dee, when in fact he wrote the lyrics completely with Pee Dee and then changed them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.5.239 (talk) 15:39, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

✅ I just added a phrase in the text to clarify this point. — Molly-in-md (talk) 13:18, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

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W. E. B. Du Bois
I can find no passage in The Souls of Black Folk that resembles even slightly the assertion about DuBois's interpretation of the song. And I note that no citation is given. I suggest that the relevant sentence (currently the second sentence under "Lyrics revisions") be deleted or stringently amended. Wfbrooks (talk) 02:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)