Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – at one time or another, it’s all been the subject of banned music in the United States.

From Bob Dylan to the Black Eyed Peas to the patriotic hymn ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag,’ censored and controversial music has raised eyebrows in America for almost three centuries.

Small tastes of these tunes were showcased during the ‘Freedom Sings’ show Wednesday night at Goldstein Auditorium, an event sponsored by the First Amendment Center.

Nine musicians played a melange of songs once considered controversial. A plethora of guitarists, a keyboardist and a drummer made up the ensemble of music industry veterans, including several Grammy Award winners. The musicians combined a wide variety of songs to entertain more than 1,000 people in attendance.

Two narrators stood by to preface each song with some descriptions depicting the outrage caused by the music. The history lessons did little to detract from the music, and since many of the songs featured bizarre or engaging back stories, narrations often added to the show.

Still, the music maintained the spotlight throughout the night. The chilling Billie Holiday ballad, ‘Strange Fruit,’ a song about the lynching of a black man in the South – with its haunting opening line ‘Southern trees bear strange fruit’ – began the set.

The performance delved throughout the history of contentious music. Included on the compilation were songs that had been banned, censored, used for protests or even investigated by the FBI for its lyrical content

One of the highlights was a rendition of ‘Precious Lord,’ a favorite of Martin Luther King Jr., according to the narrators. The version opened with Ashley Cleveland somberly belting out the verses as a strong bass line and a steady beat on keyboard played in the background. The performance crescendoed at its chorus. The guitars grew louder as Cleveland howled the lyrics, and drummer Craig Krampf pounded his drum set while wildly swinging his long, white hair.

While many of the compositions focused on serious topics such as Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ and Neil Young’s ‘Ohio’ (a song about four Kent State students who were killed while protesting the Vietnam War), the set also included some lighthearted numbers.

The Randy Newman tune ‘Short People’ earned laughs from the audience (mainly for the famous repetition of the sentence ‘Short people have no reason to live’), and so did a jazzed up, swanky cover of Eminem’s ‘My Name Is.’

The show also presented several medleys: one on war protest melodies and another about songs banned during the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which included songs such as the Foo Fighter’s ‘Learn to Fly,’ Third Eye Blind’s ‘Jumper’ and R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).’

A medley of songs that supposedly implied drug content had the crowd singing along as the band sang ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ and two songs by The Beatles.

The performers never appeared bored as they switched from one song to another. However, to call the show a concert would be misleading. One of the most intriguing parts of the act was the tidbits of history relayed in between each number.

Dozens of high school students from New Jersey attended the performance as part of a program with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and the students seemed fascinated by what popular contemporary songs dealt with censorships issues, such as the Black Eyed Peas ‘Where Is the Love?’

‘That’s such a famous song that mostly everyone knows,’ said Fatima Khan, a high school junior. ‘It’s one of the songs that at least everybody our age should know, and you wouldn’t know it was censored.’

Narrators Gene Policinski and Sonya Gavankar entertained with obscure facts about how many of these songs evidently ‘violated’ the First Amendment.

The most interesting story might have been about The Kingsmen ‘Louie Louie,’ a rock song from the 1960s that’s well-known today for its censoring due to inaudible and allegedly sexual lyrics.

The slurred lyrics sparked a six-city, 30-month investigation by the FBI as they listened to the disk and tried to decipher the lyrics, Policinski said. The inquiry was concluded once the FBI determined ‘this song is unintelligible at any speed.’

Songwriter Jason White described and sang his controversial hit ‘Red Ragtop.’ The country tune became a hit for Tim McGraw, but the song was banned in some areas due to its discussion of abortion.

The narrators used a giant screen to display visuals to accompany the histories. A snapshot of Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley supplemented the discussion of the King. Vietnam War protest photos underscored the topic about the war.

Some of the explanations seemed too long, but most remained amusing. And some of the songs played were only snippets of the entire piece. Also, despite performing two pleasant songs, a cameo by Grammy Award winner and Native American Joanne Shenandoah seemed out of place. The local artist played two songs with Native American themes.

As the show closed with ‘Grand Old Flag’ (a controversial anthem under its original name, ‘Grand Ole Rag’), it appeared the show that has been touring for almost a decade managed to mesh an entertaining night of history and classic music.

‘I was expecting this to be more of a lecture, like, ‘Be good Americans, appreciate what you have,” said Jauveria Ali, a high school senior. ‘But it really was much more artistic.’

Published on November 14, 2007 at 12:00 pm