Ethnomusicology

The Duck Dynasty scandal is getting a lot of attention for family patriarch Phil Robertson’s homophobic comments during an interview with GQ magazine, but he’s also getting attention for something he said in the same interview implying that African Americans were not unhappy with their lot during the Jim Crow years.

But overlooked by most commenters is the radical claim Mr. Robertson makes, that, if true, would revise the entire history of American folk music and Southern culture:

In his comments remembering his early life in pre-Civil Rights era Louisiana, he said,

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Hmmmm. Really? What were they singing, then? Italian Opera? This raises a whole new area of scholarly inquiry!

Quack!