{"product_id":"my-old-kentucky-home-the-astonishing-life-and-reckoning-of-an-iconic-american-song","title":"My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe long journey of an American song, \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003epassed down from generation to generation, bridging a nation's fraught disconnect between history and warped illusion, revealing the country's ever evolving self.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMY OLD KENTUCKY HOME, from its enormous success in the early 1850s, written by a white man, considered the father of American music, about a Black man being sold downriver, performed for decades by white men in blackface, and the song, an anthem of longing and pain, turned upside down and, over time, becoming a celebration of happy plantation life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt is the state song of Kentucky, a song that has inhabited hearts and memories, and in perpetual reprise, stands outside time; sung each May, before every Kentucky Derby, since 1930. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWritten by Stephen Foster nine years before the Civil War, \"My Old Kentucky Home\" made its way through the wartime years to its decades-long run as a national minstrel sensation for which it was written; from its reference in the pages of Margaret Mitchell's \u003ci\u003eGone with the Wind\u003c\/i\u003e to being sung on \u003ci\u003eThe Simpsons\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMad Men\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOriginally called \"Poor Uncle Tom, Good-Night!\" and inspired by America's most famous abolitionist novel, it was a lament by an enslaved man, sold by his master, who must say goodbye to his beloved family and birthplace, with hints of the brutality to come: \"The head must bow and the back will have to bend \/ Wherever the darky may go \/ A few more days, and the trouble all will end \/ In the field where the sugar-canes grow . . .\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eMy Old Kentucky Home, \u003c\/i\u003e Emily Bingham explores the long, strange journey of what has come to be seen by some as an American anthem, an integral part of our folklore, culture, customs, foundation, a living symbol of a \"happy past.\" But \"My Old Kentucky Home\" was never just a song. It was always a song about slavery with the real Kentucky home inhabited by the enslaved and shot through with violence, despair, and degradation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBingham explores the song's history and permutations from its decades of performances across the continent, entering into the bloodstream of American life, through its twenty-first-century reassessment. It is a song that has been repeated and taught for almost two hundred years, a resonant changing emblem of America's original sin whose blood-drenched shadow hovers and haunts us still.","brand":"Emily Bingham","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42828102795491,"sku":"9780525520795","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0356\/3906\/6759\/products\/9780525520795-us.jpg?v=1651600902","url":"https:\/\/littleprofessorbookshop.com\/products\/my-old-kentucky-home-the-astonishing-life-and-reckoning-of-an-iconic-american-song","provider":"Little Professor","version":"1.0","type":"link"}