Project 5: Banks of the Ohio

I found our conversation in class about the palatability of murder ballads to be particularly interesting. On one hand, the sound of "Banks of the Ohio" is pretty--almost whimsical--but on the other, the lyrics are vile and elicit a visceral negative response. The juxtaposition of imagery of violence and love is jarring, but is (for better or worse--likely worse) a juxtaposition that underlies not just this song but much of our language concerning love. The love is war metaphor is fairly well-rehearsed, but more fundamentally, the implicit metaphors we use to describe love seem to be somewhat violent: one pursues a love interest, one conquers another's love. Within this context, the song's theme is less surprising. Surely, what makes it seem so unpalatable is it's vividness in describing the murder and its casual conflation of love with entitlement and violence. My main struggle in my assignment this week was trying to access a mental state capable of writing something so heinous, to try and understand just from whom a song of this sort could come.

With the above in mind, I still don't feel I have authority in answering whether music of this sort should be sung. I do not understand how the genre of murder ballads developed, but the idea of community members proverbially joining hands around songs of this sort to sing is discomforting. Conversely, songs of this sort do spur impassioned discussion. Whether this alone is a merit in the songs is unclear to me.