Culture Watch

Washington, D.C. activist, punk rocker, and subversive knitter Jenny Toomey croons Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" on The Executioner's Last Songs, a new collection of eerie, gruesome songs from Bloodshot Records. In Toomey's rendition, it's easy to imagine yourself as Miss Otis's forgotten lunch date: Waiting at a table for two, you've already ordered tea, straightened your linen napkin, and read every line of the menu. "Where is she?" you wonder.

It's as if Toomey has entered the restaurant to tell you the news herself: "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today, madam/ She's sorry to be delayed." Hers is a prim voice for delivering such chilling news in a tearoom: "Last evening down on lover's lane she strayed/ When she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone/ She ran to the man that had led her astray/And from under her velvet gown/ She drew a gun and shot her lover down." It's a sparse, matter-of-fact revelation of lust, lost honor, fury, murder, and vigilante restitution, delivered in a quiet, deadly voice.

Like "Miss Otis Regrets," the tunes on The Executioner's Last Songs—a benefit album for the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project—subtly disturb lunch dates and complacent music listening. They also undermine America's cultural acceptance of capital punishment as a civilized and appropriate form of justice. The 18 "death" songs—written by the likes of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Bill Monroe—are sung by Steve Earle, the Waco Brothers, Rosie Flores, and Neko Case, among others.

That sentence is the title of historian Bill Malone's new book about country music (the subtitle is Country Music and the Southern Working Class). Before that, in 1981, it was the title of a hit record by country music neo-traditionalist Ricky Skaggs. In 1951, it was recorded by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. But long before any of this, it was (and still is) a common piece of folk wisdom among lower-class white people, especially in the South.

For many people of other regions or social classes, the saying may sound odd, counter-intuitive, and even un-American. In America, we're often told that "getting above your raisin'"—transcending the circumstances of birth—is the main point of existence. If Abe Lincoln had stayed in the log cabin, who would care? If Elvis had become a sincere but flat-broke folk singer, we wouldn't know his name. Americans don't buy stories about virtuous poor boys who stay poor, and we're offended at the suggestion that there might be something wrong with individual self-realization. The impulse to rise above our origins is buried deep in our national DNA. Immigrants have always come here to escape poverty and persecution and become rich and powerful. The right to perpetual self-invention might as well be enshrined in the Constitution.

The heretical wisdom embodied in "Don't get above your raisin'" suggests that roots, family, communal identity, and solidarity are all more important than individual striving or success. This is a way of thinking that most American intellectuals would associate with "traditional" or "pre-modern" cultures. But Malone, a professor emeritus in history from Tulane University, is also a good old boy from East Texas who knows that the preference for group loyalty and solidarity has lived on in modern America among rural people and blue-collar workers. In Don't Get Above Your Raisin', he argues persuasively that, in the last half of the 20th century, country music, which expressed the daily concerns of white Southern working people, broke out of the Southern region to become the cultural voice of America's white working class.

My son hates social studies. No matter how much I drill him on the subject, he could care less about James Madison, the Bill of Rights, the abolitionist movement, or even more-contemporary figures like Arthur Ashe. This is more than unfortunate; it's a problem.

That's because he's a fourth grader attending public school in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And at the end of the school year, he and every other fourth grader in Virginia is going to be tested on the subject, with an emphasis on the history of the Old Dominion.

The problem isn't the subject matter; it's the way that it's presented. There's little or no attempt to engage his imagination. Facts alone don't begin to tell the story of why these figures are important and why we should know who they are, much less admire them. I also know that this disconnect between history and the imagination is far from universal. His cousins, who are the same age, don't have this problem. They live in Mexico City, a place where art and history seem inseparable. Because they can see and even touch the history of the place they call home, they are more apt to want to read about it.

It's also true for me. I remember when I first saw a reproduction of Diego Rivera's (no relation) painting of Emiliano Zapata, the leader of peasant and indigenous forces during the Mexican Revolution. Rivera's painting, which conveys both Zapata's peasant origins and his nobility, made me want to learn more about the revolutionary leader and the times that produced him. It grabbed my imagination and the rest of me soon followed, so much so that a reproduction of the work hangs in my home.