"Cakewalk"? Should the club song words be changed?

[David]

This is one case where tradition should win out, I think. The song is 116 years old, only a decade younger than the club itself. Generations have come and go singing along to these words. On what possible grounds would you change it?

K, even if one agrees with your hierarchy of club symbols – which seems reasonable enough, though arguable – there are several problems with your reasoning. One is that the jumper has changed, but not fundamentally, and even the most relatively egregious alterations of the late ‘90s and early 2000s (magpies in light bulbs and the like) are long gone (what might constitute a fundamental lyrical change is debatable, but I suspect dropping one of the eight lines would constitute that). The second, bigger problem is that nobody has provided a compelling reason for why the line should change. You don’t change a century-old symbol that means something to a lot of people for change’s sake, any more than you tear down a cherished heritage-listed building because you want something trendy in its place. Well you shouldn’t, at any rate.

I could be convinced if there were a significant number of people who were actually offended by the line, but of course there aren’t as the slavery/minstrelsy connection is obscure, is not a particularly vexed social issue in Australian culture and, at any rate, the reference is not even clearly negative. As for the boastfulness of the lyric, this is the nature of most club songs and if you get rid of it you start to undermine the point of this curious Australian tradition.

[PyreneesPie]

[PyreneesPie]

[K]

David, I've come to believe that this issue is really not about tradition at all, but I'll leave further discussion on that to a separate post.

In this post, let me put the slavery-race issue into local (i.e. Nick's) context. This topic arose in the "GF Curse" thread, so that in itself is a clear indicator of the primary motivation. It was only after more than two dozen posts on the sub-topic that a poster first raised the slavery-race connection. (I think almost none of those posters has yet visited this thread, perhaps because they are so upset not by "PC" but by "GF" that they are taking a break from anything football-related.)

On the other hand, now that I've seen that connection, I cannot really unsee it. There seems to be a pretty clear link to blackface. There are many people in our society who refuse even to make an attempt to understand why blackface is so extremely offensive to many. Basically they just don't want to know, an attitude I find much more damnable than initial innocent ignorance. On our question, I find it inconsistent to say the word is so distant, so foreign, etc. that this link cannot even be mentioned, but somehow at the same time not too distant, not too foreign, that we might actually want to change it to something, say, less foreign.

No doubt I could write pages on this topic. I'm not sure how useful that would be. It is, as I've tried to emphasize, not the main motivator here. I'll say one more thing for now, though. All this discussion reminded me of "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo". In my childhood, and apparently in the childhoods of both those much older and those much younger, the next line was "Catch a n****r by the toe". I'm pretty sure none of the children I knew were aware of what that word "n*****r" meant. The question shouldn't be "whether the children were racist", but whether it's appropriate in the 21st century to allow that to continue. Apparently, it has now (finally) undergone canonical revision to "tiger", which of course makes no sense at all, but at least is not blatantly racist. Let me end this post here. More on tradition next, perhaps.

[PyreneesPie]

I think some posters may have gone a step too far in thinking that one argument proposed for a change to the last line of the club song is because it's racist and therefore, smacks of of political correctness. K did not say that - just did the research and said it was "linked" to racism, which it was back then. K did not state that it is racist in today's world!! It was certainly linked to racism back then ... the cakewalk was performed by black people taking the pi&s out of white people in the 19th century. Good on them for doing that, but it was well over a hundred or more years ago !!

I feel you're all missing the point and that is the term is completely obsolete and irrelevant to 2019, as evidenced by the fact that it has its roots in the 1800's!!! Even more destructive than that and this is what really worries me, is that it's a complete untruth and totally wrong in today's competitive football arena. Anyone who struts around thinking the winning the premiership is easy is completely out of touch IMHO!!!

I shake my head at why would anyone be so against bringing our club into the 21st century and providing it with one extra competitive edge, but there you go... we all have different perspectives and that makes for an interesting discussion!

[PyreneesPie]

[K]

^ Yep. In the "GF Curses" thread, PPie also mentioned that "Collingwood, Essendon, Gold Coast and Port are the only ones who mention flags or premierships in their club songs". (I cannot off the top of my head independently confirm this.)

I'm getting the impression that some people are just making things up on the fly. I mean, David, where is the evidence that "if you get rid of [boastfulness] you start to undermine the point"? Really? Are you sure that that's the one true point of club songs? (Oh, and I don't know where you got that "116 years" from. GOCF is younger than that; GDG is older than that.)

[stui magpie]

[K]

[stui magpie]

[stui magpie]

[PyreneesPie]

[PyreneesPie]

I have been an avid Collingwood supporter for fifty plus years. When I was young, back at the start of the 1970's, I sang the last line of the club song with great gusto and faith. With the brashness, inexperience and naivety of my years, I actually thought it was true! Plus, back then it was the norm to be arrogant and there were fewer teams to beat, so the chances of that line actually being correct were greater.

Now, many years and many tears later, I know it's not true - it's a complete falsehood that I've been brainwashed into chanting all that time! With the wisdom of hindsight, I have realized that such extreme false bravado is not only embarrassing, but it does a complete disservice to our great club and its current players.

We would all be far better served with a last line in the club song that conveys an attitude of support for our players who are busting their guts to win that elusive premiership. In case people haven't realized, it's damn hard to win nowadays with the AFL trying to equalize the competition and 18 teams in it!!! It's so very far from being a cakewalk.

This year, I'll finish singing the club song with the line of "Oh, the Magpie Army's marching for the good old Collingwood". I'll know in my heart that at least that's true - that we will always support our boys, come what may, as they strive so hard in their incredibly difficult quest for premiership glory.

[K]

[stui magpie]

I'm not ignoring it, just pointing out it's incorrect.

And I'm well aware of the link with Britannia, but the history of Collingwood is as per the link I posted, it was a new club formed in 1892.