Johnny Cash performs a heart-wrenching cover of Nine Inch Nails 1994 song “Hurt”. Replacing the angry sound of the original with a tired melancholy Cash’s version “brought it to a huge new audience in 2003” (Minay). Personally, I believe that Cash’s version is best appreciated through its music video, filled with flashbacks from the past “we see the aging singer in the near-derelict ‘House of Cash’, where he had lived from 1968 onwards, with the lyrics evoking images of his life and losses” (Minay). Here we glimpse images of Cash’s empire of dirt, as everything he built falls into decay and ruin as the singer reaches the end of his life. A lesson to us that we all grow old, and all our accumulated possessions with us.

Johnny Cash Cover (Music Video)

          Lunney contrasts the two versions in her article Nine Inch Nails Vs Johnny Cash – Which Version of Hurt Is Best? saying “NIN’s version speaks primarily of self-loathing, self-harm, and drug addiction while Cash focuses on the universal feeling of pain and deep sadness that makes you hurt.” It is perhaps in this contrast that each song finds its audience, with Nine Inch Nail’s version resonating with those journeying through self-harm and drug addiction, while Cash’s version speaks to the melancholy that we all sometimes feel.

          One of the only changes to the lyrics I noticed in Cash’s version was removing the profanities and replacing them with Christian imagery, such as the transition from “crown of shit” to “crown of thorns”. This shift in imagery reflects Cash’s more hopeful sound as opposed to Nine Inch Nails more destructive sound. Cash draws on the Christian imagery common in his genre to leave listeners with a feeling that behind the hurt there might be a purpose and a chance for redemption. Through this the songs meaning changes from talking about a hopeless pain to a hopeful one, opening it up to resonate with a wider audience. We all feel pain though life, and we all look for hope in those moments, a part of the human experience that this song connects with.

          Personally, I appreciate both versions of the song, but find myself listening to Cash’s version more often. It’s the kind of song that I find I want to listen too on rainy days, through melancholy moods, or break up blues. Hurt is a song that plainly acknowledges that sometimes life hurts us, but Cash’s rendition leaves us with a peculiar sense of hope, that if we are listening to it we are alive and we still have time for things to get better. If Cash leaving us this song at the end of his life embodied anything it would be a stoic reflection on memento mori, the practice of remembering that we will all die so that while we are alive we use the time we have to truly live. This is a cover that I would recommend anyone have in their library, it is the song to listen to on the low days, reminding us that higher days are still coming. It’s a song about pain, that leaves us with a sense of hope. I first heard this song in 2014, and it is one that I have not forgotten.

Bibliography

Minay, Michael. “Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’ Remains A Timeless Classic With An Unforgettable Video.” LADbible. September 12, 2017. http://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/celebrity-music-johnny-cashs-hurt-remains-timeless-with-an-unforgettable-video-20170912.

“Nine Inch Nails Vs Johnny Cash – Which Version of Hurt Is Best?” Louder Than War. June 01, 2013. https://louderthanwar.com/nine-inch-nails-vs-johnny-cash-which-version-of-hurt-is-better/.

Posted by Daily Stoic on June 27, 2017. “”Memento Mori”: The Reminder We All Desperately Need.” Daily Stoic | Stoic Wisdom For Everyday Life. May 18, 2018. https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori/.

          Johnny Cash performs a heart-wrenching cover of Nine Inch Nails 1994 song “Hurt”. Replacing the angry sound of the original with a tired melancholy Cash’s version “brought it to a huge new audience in 2003” (Minay). Personally, I believe that Cash’s version is best appreciated through its music video, filled with flashbacks from the past “we see the aging singer in the near-derelict ‘House of Cash’, where he had lived from 1968 onwards, with the lyrics evoking images of his life and losses” (Minay). Here we glimpse images of Cash’s empire of dirt, as everything he built falls into decay and ruin as the singer reaches the end of his life. A lesson to us that we all grow old, and all our accumulated possessions with us.

Johnny Cash Cover (Music Video)

          Lunney contrasts the two versions in her article Nine Inch Nails Vs Johnny Cash – Which Version of Hurt Is Best? saying “NIN’s version speaks primarily of self-loathing, self-harm, and drug addiction while Cash focuses on the universal feeling of pain and deep sadness that makes you hurt.” It is perhaps in this contrast that each song finds its audience, with Nine Inch Nail’s version resonating with those journeying through self-harm and drug addiction, while Cash’s version speaks to the melancholy that we all sometimes feel.

          One of the only changes to the lyrics I noticed in Cash’s version was removing the profanities and replacing them with Christian imagery, such as the transition from “crown of shit” to “crown of thorns”. This shift in imagery reflects Cash’s more hopeful sound as opposed to Nine Inch Nails more destructive sound. Cash draws on the Christian imagery common in his genre to leave listeners with a feeling that behind the hurt there might be a purpose and a chance for redemption. Through this the songs meaning changes from talking about a hopeless pain to a hopeful one, opening it up to resonate with a wider audience. We all feel pain though life, and we all look for hope in those moments, a part of the human experience that this song connects with.

          Personally, I appreciate both versions of the song, but find myself listening to Cash’s version more often. It’s the kind of song that I find I want to listen too on rainy days, through melancholy moods, or break up blues. Hurt is a song that plainly acknowledges that sometimes life hurts us, but Cash’s rendition leaves us with a peculiar sense of hope, that if we are listening to it we are alive and we still have time for things to get better. If Cash leaving us this song at the end of his life embodied anything it would be a stoic reflection on memento mori, the practice of remembering that we will all die so that while we are alive we use the time we have to truly live. This is a cover that I would recommend anyone have in their library, it is the song to listen to on the low days, reminding us that higher days are still coming. It’s a song about pain, that leaves us with a sense of hope. I first heard this song in 2014, and it is one that I have not forgotten.

Bibliography

Minay, Michael. “Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’ Remains A Timeless Classic With An Unforgettable Video.” LADbible. September 12, 2017. http://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/celebrity-music-johnny-cashs-hurt-remains-timeless-with-an-unforgettable-video-20170912.

“Nine Inch Nails Vs Johnny Cash – Which Version of Hurt Is Best?” Louder Than War. June 01, 2013. https://louderthanwar.com/nine-inch-nails-vs-johnny-cash-which-version-of-hurt-is-better/.

Posted by Daily Stoic on June 27, 2017. “”Memento Mori”: The Reminder We All Desperately Need.” Daily Stoic | Stoic Wisdom For Everyday Life. May 18, 2018. https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori/.

‘Shuffle Along’ and the Lost History of Black Performance in America by John Jeremiah Sullivan provides a fascinating read regarding the history of the original 1921 Shuffle Along and the 2016 Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. With the only disclaimer being one of positionality, this article being written by a white journalist.

Shuffle Along demonstrated a curious social effect, in which an assault on a people’s presence by an oppressor inadvertently creates a space for their voice to be heard. Blackface while intended as a mockery allowed black performers onto the stage, for “the stage had power in it, and someone who appeared there couldn’t help partaking of that power, if only ever so slightly”(Sullivan) a platform from which their voices might be heard. Their voices still ring out, for haven’t we all heard the tune of I’m Just Wild About Harry, I know I have, whether we can place it or not it is all around us in our media and culture.

Shuffle Along pushed the boundaries of it’s time, taking blackface from a symbol of oppression and using it to expand the spaces available to black performers. At the same time the play pushes the up against the taboo of black sexuality and instead of recoiling celebrates it. This progressive push can be compared to the dance style of patting Juba, a style of black inspired dance with Celtic influences used to entertain white audiences which later evolved into tap dancing. Much like the actors in Shuffle Along patting Juba was a venue in which blacks in blackface gained access to the stage such as the second Juba of P.T. Barnum’s circus (Sullivan).

Shuffle Along, however; did not showcase the first black performers to be successful on broadway, the path was already paved by Bert Williams who together George Walker started pushing back against the racial limits imposed on black performers and breaking into areas of performance previously dominated by white performers. Reflecting back on the title of the article, there truly is a lost history behind black performance in america within our collective memory.

Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed celebrates the legacy of Shuffle Along, tackling the challenge of “[bringing] the show into the future and [preserving] it at the same time and [doing] each perfectly at every minute”(Sullivan) Based only on what I have read in this article, the approach of exploring the shows background seems to have merit. Preserving the framilier songs while telling the story of their creators puts a fresh spin on this to appeal to contemporary audiences while paying homage to the original material.

After reading this article the perspectives offered in Popular Music In America: The Beat Goes On come across as correct, but a shallow correctness at best, where meaning may easily be lost. The textbook is correct that “ministrily would give blacks their first substantial opportunity to enter the entertainment business” (Campbell) and that blackface was used by the white majority as a tool to visually impose their biases. However, the textbook fails to elaborate on the black performers who used blackface as a tool to gain the stage, and from it their voice. Future editions of this book would be far richer if they included a deeper discussion on blackface and the performers who rose despite the opposition they faced.

Personally I found this article educational as while I had heard of blackface and the tune of I’m Just Wild About Harry I knew nothing about the influence Shuffle Along has had on our culture. In particular I was interested with how black performers used blackface, a symbol of oppression and mockery to give them access to the stage and a platform from which their voices would be heard. Reading this article helped inform my perspective and gain deeper understanding of the oppression black performers faced, and that minority performers still face today. I would recommend this article for those interested in American music history, or the history of oppression in America and of those who pushed back against it.

Bibliography

Campbell, Michael. Popular Music in America: The Beat Goes on. Cengage, 2019.

“John Jeremiah Sullivan.” Wikipedia. July 03, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jeremiah_Sullivan.

Sullivan, John Jeremiah. “‘Shuffle Along’ and the Lost History of Black Performance in America.” The New York Times. March 24, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/shuffle-along-and-the-painful-history-of-black-performance-in-america.html?mcubz=1.

         Whitewashing Blackface Minstrelsy in American College Textbooks by Joseph Byrd provides a overview of the history of blackface minstrelsy in America and a critique of how the topic is examined in many college textbooks. Challenging the way textbooks downplay or distort the history of racism in the entertainment industry. This critical approach is ultimately necessary if one is going to play a part in challenging the racist structures still present in our time.

         Something that caught my attention is my first reading of this article was of how many textbooks misrepresented the history of blackface minstrelsy. Education is central to challenging oppression in any form. Misrepresenting history as many textbooks do is simply an invitation to repeat the mistakes of the past within an uninformed audience. Ignorance is often the place in society in which hateful biases are breed, growing forth into actions. Hopefully with critiques like the one offered in this article more authors and publishers will present a more truthful version of history, that will help us understand the past and work towards a brighter future.

         The article uses the term lumpenproletariat to describe “the primary audience for blackface shows was lower-class urban males”(Byrd). As defined in the Oxford Dictionary a lumpenproletariat is “(especially in Marxist terminology) the unorganized and unpolitical lower orders of society who are not interested in revolutionary advancement” (Oxford Dictionaries). This perfectly describes the audience of the early minstrels whose racial biases were easily stroked by these performances as group-think and racial tensions grew. This deepens our understanding of the genre in that as much as it carried the attitudes of the genre to all levels of society, it was originally intended as crude humor for the uneducated lower classes. However, its message of racism connected to the biases of many Americans and it spread beyond its original demographic. A lesson can be learned for us today, in that tolerating oppression in even the smallest isolated form such as crude humor is inviting it to continue and spread.

          The racist cultural influence of minstrelsy was so pronounced that it even inspired naming laws. The oppressive Jim Crow laws were “laws or practices designed to separate whites and blacks in public and private facilities. Used in Southern states of the United States to preserve segregated schools, transport facilities, and housing, until the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ was declared unconstitutional in 1954”(Oxford Reference). These laws are named after a popular minstrel character named Jim Crow, a “ragged rural hobo” created by Thomas Rice and George Dixon in the 1930s (Byrd).

          Perhaps at its best our textbook Popular Music In America: The Beat Goes On states that “minstrelsy cultivated prejudice and ignorance in some and reinforced it in others”(Campbell); however, while true this is offers a limited understanding at best. In order to effectively challenge racism we need to understand the systems and structures that support it, and we do not gain that understanding from the five delicately phrased and evasive paragraphs this text offers. Ignorance can only be displaced by education. Sadly at the end of the day American textbooks are produced for and purchased by American colleges. This provides an financial incentive to authors to whitewash any history that may be uncomfortable or conflict with their consumers biases. Eventually as critics like Byrd highlight and challenge the ways history is obscured, a clearer view may come to light. For now though it remains our responsibility to be critical, value education, and do our part as informed citizens to build a better tomorrow for all.

Bibliography

Byrd, Joseph. “Whitewashing Blackface Minstrelsy in American College Textbooks.” Popular Music and Society 32, no. 1 (02 2009): 77-86. doi:10.1080/03007760802207882.

Campbell, Michael. Popular Music in America: The Beat Goes on. Cengage, 2019.

“Jim Crow Laws – Oxford Reference.” Social Class and Sport – Oxford Reference. June 16, 2017. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100020789.

“Lumpenproletariat | Definition of Lumpenproletariat in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/lumpenproletariat.