I heard about this story on the radio this morning and still can’t believe that its true.
When C.D. Hylton High School’s marching band performs during Friday night’s football game, they will be playing a different tune.
This year, the marching band is performing a Georgia-themed halftime show, to celebrate their upcoming trip to perform at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta in December, band director Dennis Brown said.
Until recently, the Charlie Daniels Band song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was in the marching band’s line up of Georgia-themed music.
The lyrics of the song describe the devil’s attempt to steal the soul of a fiddle player in Georgia by challenging him to a fiddling duel.
On Oct. 2, The Potomac News & Manassas Journal Messenger published a letter to the editor arguing that while no one objected to that song about the devil, there would be objections if the band were to play a song about God or other spiritual beings.
After that letter ran in the paper, Brown dropped the song from the marching band’s program.
McLean [the author of the letter in question] said he did not intend his letter to be criticism of the school or the song.
This is stupidity on two levels. First, there’s the stupidity of the guy who wrote the letter to the editor to begin with. Comparing overtly religious music with something obviously comical like “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” is absurdity. Removing the song from the band’s program because of that letter, however, is absurdity on stilts.
This is America circa 2005.
Update 10/16/05: Today’s Washington Post has further details about this whole stupid story.
