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139

What songs does your local Ice Cream Van play? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

90 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Ours plays the 1979 hit Music Box Dancer which is weird because it's definitely not public domain.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQzA8NTuLA

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Apparently that turkey in the straw one is super racist- or rather the lyrics of the version that took off and led to ICT fame. I swear ours still plays it.. I’ll have to listen closely next time I happen to hear it.

The first and natural inclination, of course, is to assume that the ice cream truck song is simply paying homage to "Turkey in the Straw," but the melody reached the nation only after it was appropriated by traveling blackface minstrel shows. There is simply no divorcing the song from the dozens of decades it was almost exclusively used for coming up with new ways to ridicule, and profit from, black people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps I'm naive. I looked up the lyrics and found one spot in them where, yes, for sure, that's racist. However, it's akin to Enie meenie miney moe, where a slight change could make the song suitable again.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-you

I already posted the relevant bit above. The history of this song in ice cream trucks was absolutely racist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Something isn't meshing with my app, or whatever. I swear I saw your comment but it disappeared and the one I replied to remained.

Ok, so we are both right it turns out: Turkey in the Straw is as I described (one racist passage), but was used as the tune for the ice cream truck song which was a bajillion times worse, Holy cow.

Fuck things were bad back then.