Languages in LA

I am getting ready to leave my dusty old apartment over the 101 for a shiny new one in a quiet neighborhood in West Hollywood. As can be imagined, I am vibrating with impatience. I found myself, as I cleaned up the old place, singing a song I learned in high school choir class.

The song is an old Negro spiritual, although you aren’t supposed to say Negro anymore so I don’t know what they are calling such things today. Indeed, I think you aren’t even supposed to say they anymore. It’s undoubtedly next on the list of no-no’s now that we are afraid to say you people to anyone unless they’re white.

Anyway, I was remembering as I sang, how my choir teacher, Mr. Highland, instructed us to sing it as if we were black. Well, he didn’t say it that way. He said, “Don’t sing soon I will be done with the troubles of the world, that’s how you would sing it. But you have to sing it how THEY would sing it,” (already you can imagine the trouble he’d get in today.)

“Like this,” he sang, “Soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’… de troubles ob de worl… de troubles ob de worl’….”

I know he meant no harm. He was ardently liberal and was undoubtedly hoping to pay tribute to a tradition. Nowadays, he’d be accused of mocking and blackface, and would be… well, I suppose nothing would happen to him but a stern talking to and a tearful public apology. Then Bill O’Reilly would say something about the matter and a parody of the whole thing would turn up on YouTube and that would be it.

Still, it made me feel old to be singing in my echoing, empty apartment, soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’, and to know my adolescence was another era.