Joan Baez - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down song seems to capture USA southern hurt over USA civil war

As the flurry of posts I put up on the Charlottesville, Virginia, USA tragic rally which was mainly dominated by white supremacists and neo Nazis, came to a close, I was reminded of an attractive but haunting melody song that I used to listen quite often on car FM radio during my stints in New England, USA in the second half of the 1980s, on a Boston "Easy Listening" - hope I got that correctly - FM station. The song was about the USA 1860s civil war from the South perspective. The song also mentions the name of Robert E. Lee, whose statue removal plans in Charlottesville were the ostensible reason for the rally! I have to say that I loved listening to that song though I did not know that much about how deep the wounds were of the USA civil war even in the 1980s then! Note that in my stay in New England, USA I was living in and consulting/working in places which had very few non-whites, and almost no African-Americans.

I think what is clear to me is that even today in 2017, a significant number of white Americans in the Southern part of the USA (that was part of the confederate rebels side under their General, Robert E. Lee, against the north of the USA, in the 1860s civil war) feel that hurt. They are proud of their "Southern" heritage and have great nostalgia about pre-1860 Southern USA. Whether such views are just/appropriate or not in 2017 is another matter. Emotionally, some not-insignificant in number white Americans today are deeply attached to their Southern heritage and are deeply resistant to changes in anything related to what survives of their Southern heritage.

Here are videos of that song:

Seems to be recorded version: Joan Baez - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ksYL26lZE, 3 min. 27 secs.

Same song but Joan Baez sings it live, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnS9M03F-fA, 3 min. 8 secs.

Comments

Archive

Show more