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Category: African Americans

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Turkey in the Straw

Posted by: Stephen Winick

It’s not often a fiddle tune becomes controversial, but that’s happening this week, thanks to a blog post by Theodore R. Johnson, III over at National Public Radio. Johnson discusses a well-known tune, with many versions in Library of Congress collections, and raises interesting and important issues, so I thought we might feature the piece …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

The Animals Marched In Two By Two: More Songs About Noah’s Ark

Posted by: Stephen Winick

In my last post, I discussed the more serious side of songs about Noah’s ark. As I mentioned, though, there are other songs too, often with more celebratory messages–or even silly ones.  We’ll look at some of those Noah songs in this post. Celebratory songs tend to focus on the joy felt by Noah when …