Civil War songs clash with modern senses
Re-creators playing music from period minstrel shows stick with jarring lyrics
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — With their slouch hats, whiskers and timeworn instruments, members of the 2nd South Carolina String Band look and sound like a Civil War camp band. And while they play “Oh! Susannah” and other familiar fare, they don’t shy from other historical songs with inescapably racist overtones that may offend some modern listeners.
The aim of these musical re-enactors is to accurately re-create music that soldiers from both the North and South enjoyed around battlefield campfires at Gettysburg, Antietam and Bull Run. Along with “Buffalo Gals” and “Dixie,” they perform lesser-known songs in the exaggerated dialect of blackface minstrels from that tumultuous era when slavery was breaking apart.
“A-way down in de Kentuck’ break, a darky lived, dey call him Jake,” Fred Ewers sings on “I’m Gwine Ober de Mountain,” by “Dixie” composer Daniel Emmett.
“Angeline the Baker,” a Stephen Foster song in the band’s repertoire, begins, “Way down on de old plantation, dah’s where I was born.” It’s the story of a slave who was “so happy all de day” until his beloved Angeline disappears.
The camp bands don’t perform in blackface and typically shun the most offensive words and lyrics with cruel or violent imagery. Still, it’s a tricky business presenting such racially jarring songs.
The music comes from the minstrel shows that were the nation’s most popular form of entertainment in the mid1800s. Usually featuring white performers with blackened faces, the shows included songs and skits that often lampooned black people and portrayed slaves as happy and carefree.
The minstrel shows produced some of America’s most beloved songs and contributed to jazz, bluegrass, country and folk music. Blackface minstrels also helped popularize the banjo, an instrument with African roots.
Some scholars and musicians question whether a Civil War reenactment is the best place to hear such songs performed.
The 2nd South Carolina String Band seeks to present the music as true as possible to what was played in the camps.
“We are performing, not lecturing,” said banjoist Joe Ewers, Fred’s brother and the band’s chief spokesman.
“We need to talk about our history openly and honestly, and the sooner we can do that the better,” he said.
But some say more sensitivity is needed. Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a black string band inspired by early African-American music, cringes at hearing renditions of songs from a time when many blacks had no voice because they were either enslaved or struggling to survive.
“There is a part of me that absolutely squirms in my chair when I hear that music being done so earnestly,” Giddens said.
Ewers said there’s no better setting for the music than a Civil War scenario. The band’s outfits, instruments and musical selections — including the occasional jarring lyric — are meant to faithfully represent a group of musically inclined Confederate soldiers or a traveling minstrel troupe.
“We explain that we are trying only to provide a glimpse into mid19th century life and that the material we are presenting should in no way be considered representative of our own personal views or beliefs,” Ewers said.