I decided what song I’m going to start my History of 20th Century American Popular Music class with

Content warning: this post includes offensive imagery. One of my tasks for the next two weeks is to put together my syllabus for NYU’s new music history class on 20th century American popular music. To start the semester off, I wanted to find a song that spans many styles and eras, and that lays the thematic foundation for what comes after. I decided on “Old Folks At Home” by Stephen Foster, also known as “Swanee River.” This song was written in 1852, but it had a significant presence in the zeitgeist throughout the 20th century, and Secondhand Songs lists a couple dozen of recordings from this century too. It’s Florida’s state song, because of course it is. They did replace the word “darkies” with “brothers” in 1978, though, so that’s nice. When you look at the cover for the sheet music on Wikipedia, it raises some questions: First of all, why “Ethiopian melody”? This just means that it’s meant to be sung by a blackface minstrel. And why does it say “written and composed by EP…