Say WHAT with Music?

Reflecting on the ambiguous messages of the song "The Greatest Love of All" got me to thinking about the sorts of songs we share with children, and the gap between what we think we are communicating to young learners, and what the songs actually say.
Popular songs often go through a strange transformation that communicates the exact opposite of the song's original meaning. The mournful lyrics of downbeat songs are frequently counterbalanced by up-beat melodies to create a poignant tension. But listeners often take a pass on complexity and go straight for hum-ability, settling for the title or the opening line as the whole of the content. And then they teach these songs to their children.

Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" is not the feel-good jingoist ditty it is usually assumed to be. Guthrie wrote this song after hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" one too many times on the radio. In his frustration over the failure of the Irving Berlin anthem to speak to actual American hopes and fears, he wrote a song that both castigates and celebrates his country. Here is his final verse (usually left unsung):

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Despite its mordant social commentary, this classic song often appears on websites that definitely do not share Woody Guthrie's values. The lyrics are presented alongside exactly the kind of flag waving images he was criticizing, and that moved him to write the song in the first place.

The ever-popular "You Are My Sunshine" is not a sunny song, even though it figures prominently on children's cheery sing-along records and websites. Here are a couple of its many heartbroken verses:

The other nite, dear,
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms.
When I awoke, dear,
I was mistaken,
And I hung my head and cried.

You told me once, dear
You really loved me
And no one else could come between
But now you've left me
And love another
You have shattered all my dreams.

And the lines "But if you leave me / To love another / You'll regret it all some day" almost border on the threatening, more appropriate to a stalker than a children's role model.
Despite lyrics full of inconsolable longing, "You Are My Sunshine" has been regularly featured as a peppy tune in film and in television and radio commercials, including a series of 1960's advertisements for Rinso, the first mass marketed laundry detergent. Oddly enough, "You Are My Sunshine", written in the early 40's, became an official state song of Louisiana in 1977. Maybe the song was consciously chosen to represent that state's emotional gumbo of joy and desperation.

"Oh My Darling Clementine", a favorite song of Scout troops, is an ironic tale of a miner's daughter with big feet who stubs her toe, falls into a duck pond, and drowns. The last verse and chorus are hardly edifying, though probably delicious to an adolescent's sense of humor:

In my dreams she still doth haunt me,
Robed in garments soaked in brine;
Though in life I used to hug her,
Now she's dead, I draw the line

How I missed her, how I missed her,
How I missed my Clementine,
Til I kissed her little sister,
And forgot my Clementine.

In one version, Clementine's father appears to be disturbingly affectionate:

When the day was done and the setting sun
Its rays they ceased to shine,
Homeward came the brawney miner
To caress his Clementine.

In a peculiar make-over, the National Institutes of Health recast the quirky song as:

An Important Water Safety Message

Drowning tragedies happen entirely too frequently for both children and adults, and that is actually the subject of this ballad. Notice that a key point is made in the verse where the singer admits "alas, I was no swimmer". Many water tragedies could be prevented by LEARNING TO SWIM and learning more about general water safety precautions BEFORE going in or very near the water. Swimming lessons and lessons in water safety could save lives, while also ensuring that water sports stay "fun" for everyone.

But the actual appeal of the song is its tongue-in-cheek attitude toward death.

So what does it matter that we sing upbeat songs with dark lyrics to our children? The problem is not that children cannot handle dark material. If that were so, we'd have to eliminate ninety per cent of classic children's literature. In early versions of the Cinderella story, the stepsisters CUT OFF THEIR TOES to fit their big ugly feet into the little royal slipper. See Bruno Bettelheim's book The Uses of Enchantment for more on the value of threatening narratives in children's development.

What matters is that we cannot ask our students to become careful listeners and critical thinkers, who discriminate between text and subtext, between information and propaganda, between cheery lies and dark truths, if we cannot do so ourselves.

Arnold Aprill
Founding and Creative Director
Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE)
www.capeweb.org