That “fun warm-up song”? You might want to check it

I’ve seen several online videos recently of choirs using simple, fun songs as warm-ups. It looks harmless enough. But some of these songs have dubious content, which I’m sure the choirs weren’t aware of. Even so, it’s our responsibility to check sources thoroughly. There are loads of songs in foreign languages available through music publishers or picked up in workshops. Many published songs come with very limited information about their sources or meaning — if any at all. Some are simply credited to “Africa”, for example. Others have long, poetic translations that bear little relation to the actual lyrics and say nothing about cultural context. Some songs have been in general circulation for years via organisations like Girl Scouts or summer camps — often the result of misheard, misunderstood or completely invented information. One such song is Epo I tai tai, a song of New Zealand Māori origin (see the New Zealand Folk Song website). I saw a version online recently being used as a…