Swanee set to go down the river

"Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, far, far, away ... oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary, far from de old folks at home." Some of the officially manuscripted lyrics of "Swanee River", the tale of a homesick slave which became the official anthem of the state of Florida. But is it politically correct?

A black Democrat state congressman, Willie Logan, said yesterday he would table a bill to replace it with "a song about what Florida is, not what it was." He proposed a song contest among schoolchildren to come up with a new anthem. "The song is about something we shouldn't be proud of in Florida," Mr Logan said. "It's about a slave who felt alone, disenfranchised, homeless. It has no place in 1997 as a song representing our state."

He said he had been influenced by moves in Virginia to retire its official song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia", because of its reference to "darkeys" and "old massa".

Democratic congressmen defended "Swanee River" as part of Florida's history and said it had more pressing problems, notably creating jobs and improving education. In recent years, most people have sung the word "brothers" instead of "darkeys" when the song is performed at state functions.

It was written in 1851 by a white man, Stephen Foster, of Pittsburgh. He had never set foot in Florida but wrote his lyrics in what he considered the slave dialect. The name came from the Suwannee River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico at Suwannee town.

The song was a hit in the latter part of the 19th century, credited with drawing settlers to a little-populated state known then for swamplands, sandbars, alligators and mosquitoes. "The song is about human dignity," said Deane Root, a music curator at the University of Pittsburgh. "How all of us have a need for a home and all of us have cherished memories, no matter how painful our life has been. I was offended when I first heard the word ("darkey") but I learned it had no negative or derisive connotations to Foster or in popular culture at the time. It's like the word `gay' in the past."