Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402190133
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Virginia should revise its state song because "the melody is so easy to harmonize, the range is not uncomfortable, [and] it's in a good singing key," said Hobbs, who is the former music director of historically black Virginia Union University in Richmond.
Hobbs and fellow Richmonder Robert Bluford Jr., a semiretired white minister, are the men behind the scenes of an effort by state Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, to rescue the sentimental song from obscurity.
James A. Bland, a freeborn black from New York, wrote the minstrel song in 1878 about a slave's or ex-slave's desire to return to his birthplace in "Virginny." The General Assembly adopted it - with "Virginia" substituted - as the official state song in 1940, following a lobbying effort by Lions Clubs.
But because its lyrics contain images considered racist today, the song hasn't been performed regularly in public since the '60s. Former Gov. Douglas Wilder targeted it for repeal in his first speech in the state Senate in 1970.
Since the mid-'80s, legislators have tried on a regular basis to throw out or amend the song, or designate a new one in its stead. All attempts failed.
Now a bill sponsored by Marye, a 21-year Senate veteran, could resurrect "Carry Me Back" by changing seven of its 170-odd words.
"The time has come," Marye said. "It's a beautiful song, and it has deep roots and deep sentiment, and I don't see why the time isn't right to go ahead and do it."
Marye's bill, which the Senate approved 35-2 on Feb. 7, should go before a House subcommittee Wednesday. In the past, such bills have usually originated in the House and sometimes passed there. But they've never passed in the Senate, Marye said.
"I think the Senate has changed," Marye said. That sense was one of the reasons he introduced the bill this year.
Bluford, who admits to having a "terrible" singing voice, brought the changes to Marye's attention two years ago. He is a parish associate at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, located on Richmond's Monument Avenue between towering equestrian statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart.
Bluford, who was a campus minister at Virginia Tech in the early 1950s, said he came up with the idea while out driving one day three years ago. He realized the objections have been to the song's lyrics, not the music.
"Obviously, the two words that caused the problems were `massa' and `darkey,' which conjured up images of slavery," Bluford said in a phone interview.
Bluford settled on "dreamer" for "darkey," and "my loved ones," for "old Massa." He went to Hobbs, then in the last of his 25 years at Virginia Union.
"I liked the change of lyrics," Hobbs said. He took them to his choral students, all black and all offended by the original words, for reactions. They, too, favored the changes and recommended some of their own, said Hobbs, now artist-in-residence at St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville.
Hobbs and his Richmond-based African-American Heritage Chorale performed the revised lyrics in the fall of '91 before about 450 people at a high school in a rural county near Richmond.
The integrated audience loved it, Hobbs and Bluford said, and sang along when the chorale performed it a second time.
Hobbs will be bringing his group to Tech on Feb. 27, and they might perform "Carry Me Back" then.
"We're not ashamed of it anymore," Hobbs said. "We think it's wonderful."
Of course, there's no guarantee members of the House will agree. When another amended version passed the House in 1991, black state Sen. Benjamin Lambert, D-Richmond, contended that though the words may be changed, some people would still sing the old, racist lyrics. He repeated that objection this month.
Del. William Robinson, D-Norfolk, head of the Legislative Black Caucus, has expressed a similar concern.
Marye, though, thinks the song will bring Virginians of different races together, rather than drive them farther apart. "Most people today, I think, are sensitive to the feelings of minority groups," Marye said. "Now, there are some that won't be. But if we don't start singing a state song in our schools now, then no one will ever know the song," because it has been nearly two generations since it has been commonly heard.
Bluford said the overwhelming Senate vote surprised him. "I hope the House of Delegates will see it as I see it, as a positive sort of thing, and we can redeem something that had a lot of value to us in the past," he said. "I see a win-win situation here, maybe a healing thing, as a matter of fact."
Keywords:
INFOLINE
by CNB