Does "Joshua fit de battle ob Jericho" offend you too?

I joined the hojskole choir today, which ended up being about nine people strong. I joined the choir today because I was getting tired of playing the piano by myself whenever I had any free time. So I thought, "be social, AND play music". So this was a good thing, and we did some warm up exercises and stretched and then tried singing a song or two that the choir had learned last semester. One of these songs was the American spiritual "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho", but it had obviously come out of a Danish songbook, which maybe was the reason that the whole song was spelled in a peculiar, old-fashioned "black" dialect. On the one hand, I thought, there were some activists that tried developing a written version of the dialect most african-americans were speaking at the time as a sort of means for solidarity, but on the other hand, listening to a bunch of Danish people imitating a really archaic sounding written interpretation of black speech is kind of offensive, like blackface routines are offensive, or this kind of asexual, big breasted black nanny character is offensive; mostly because it goes with an underlying ignorance or lack of respect or mockery of black people. What do you say? Are you with me on this one? Maybe I just get annoyed when we sing American spirituals in Denmark because they get lumped together - like we just "sing a little gospel" when we want to "cut loose", when really these songs are just as versatile as other songs, for example we could be singing it in a gospel way, or a New Orleans kind of way, or as a slow ballad or with a lot of harmony or whatever, but they're all just lumped into this one category and treated like some odd novelty.

I've been really tired lately; yesterday I took a really long nap, but I just seem to have less energy. I spent a lot of energy today trying to be furious with myself for spending about fifty dollars on fabric on accident for a skirt I designed, that I may or may not even end up bringing home with me because I already have too much stuff to put in my suit case.

Tomorrow I have Danish as a Second Language all morning and Staged Photography all afternoon, followed by probably me playing the piano, and then later working on a ring I'm making in jewelry class if the workshop is open.

So good night!