OK, I have to chime in here. I'm definitely on the side of "honoring tradition" (within reason), because if we don't, all of traditional music and dance starts to become this homogeneous blob... The tradition is much richer than that! It's not just traditional singing square dance calls, but (maybe even more) applies to traditional songs as well and I'm going to give some license to the term "traditional" here!)..

At Maine Fiddle Camp there is singing going on pretty much ALL the time. Singing around the camp fire at night is a tradition which has been going on for as long as Camp has been in existence. Songs from many traditions, always unaccompanied, and always in multi-part harmony. It's a beautiful thing to be a part of. Last year (or was it the year before) someone started the song "Old Molasses Rum", composed by the late Tom Rowe (a dear departed friend) who was the bass player (and bass voice) in Schooner Fare. The words to the whole song are attached as a PDF file because that's the only way I have them. The "problem" is with third and fourth words believe it or not.. When this song was started at the campfire, a young woman was SO upset at the term "African man" that we had to stop the song and go on to something else. This caused a LOT of stress and I think it colored the campfire sings for the rest of the week at Camp. The young woman's take on this all was that only a person of African descent had the right to sing a song with those words in it.. I personally disagree. Read the lyrics and decide for yourself. We did have a "discussion" about this later but I don't think there was any *clear* outcome.

I'll digress here a little into the realm of pop music. There are a million examples here, but just take the Beach Boys "California Girls".. whew.. Nothing blatant there but these days some would be offended JUST by the fact that women were being called "girls", when you actually listen to the lyrics I'm sure many would have lots of issues.. .. BUT the Beach Boys pretty much revolutionized the use of harmony in pop or maybe all music at that time and while you could argue that people had problems with the lyrics at that time and didn't say anything, still the songs hit the top of the charts and the harmonies were chillingly wonderful.. So what do we do here? Abandon singing or even listening to all old music and,, then what? Lately there is an effort on certain fronts to "change history" but I don't want to do it with traditional music and dance. The richness of the tradition is what makes it so powerful. I often call a 300 year old contra dance and tell the dancers we've been doing this continually for OVER 300 years and that they are part of a continuing tradition the likes of which are rarely found on this continent (and I recognize native American traditions as an exception to what I am saying!!)

I agree with Tom and some of the others.. "Yes always be respectful, not intentionally disrespectful."

nuf said  - bill