The legacy of Pittsburgh native Stephen Foster is not yet dead, even though the American… The legacy of Pittsburgh native Stephen Foster is not yet dead, even though the American songwriter has been for 144 years.

Pitt’s Center for American Music and the Allegheny Cemetery, where Foster is buried, hosted the annual commemoration of the date of Foster’s death – Jan. 13, 1864.

Friday marked the 86th year of the celebration.

Guitarist Joe Negri, Deane Root, director of the center and a professor in the department of music, and the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh conductor Thomas Douglas performed Foster standards at Pitt’s Stephen Foster Memorial in the afternoon, and children from St. John Neumann School choir sang tunes at the cemetery in the morning.

Devoted Foster fans came from all over to attend this year’s commemoration, despite Friday’s rain.

Michael Hill drives in from Ohio every year for the event.

“Since Foster was such a modest person himself, I’m sure he would be pleased with the low-key nature of the event, although the body of work he produced during his short life is certainly worthy of celebrating on a much bigger scale,” he said. “His ability to create simple but elegant melodies that are instantly recognizable all over the world is, I think, unique.”

Foster was a Pittsburgh native, born on the Fourth of July, 1826, and raised in Lawrenceville.

He is considered to be the founding father of the American pop song and the first songwriter to standardize the verse/chorus format.

“Today we’re recognizing the roots of Pittsburgh and of American music,” Kathryn Miller Haines, associate director of the Center for American Music, said of the ceremony.

During his relatively short lifetime, Foster composed 280 songs and wrote most of their lyrics. Though most of his well-known works fall into the parlor music and minstrel genres, he also wrote hymns, orchestral and patriotic music and wartime songs.

His most famous works include “Oh! Susanna,” “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Camptown Races.”

Foster is one of the only known songwriters in American folk music canon, Haines said.

Foster’s songs have impacted life in America since their first publications. When he released “Way Down Upon the Swanee River” in 1851 under the title “Old Folks at Home,” national railroad companies advertised train journeys to see the mystical Suwanee River, jump-starting the tourism industry in Florida, according to Haines.

But, as far as we know, Foster never set foot in the South, Haines said. Besides living in Pennsylvania, Foster lived in Cincinnati for a short time and in New York near the end of his life.

“Way Down Upon the Swanee River” – currently the official state song of Florida – is one of two state songs written by Foster. Kentucky claims Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” as its state song.

But this may change soon. At noon last Friday, Florida announced a new candidate to replace “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” in response to claims that Foster’s lyrics are racist, according to the Associated Press.

This is the third time Florida has attempted to change its state song in three years, Haines said.

In the original lyrics, written prior to the Civil War, Foster referred to black people as “darkees” and wrote his lyrics in what music scholars refer to as “negro dialect.” But those lyrics were changed during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to be less offensive. The original lyrics are no longer sung and do not exist as part of the lyrics to Florida’s song, Haines said.

“Our understanding of meaning has changed. Word meanings have changed,” she said of Foster’s original lyrics. “He wasn’t looking to offend people, it just happened to be the language that was used during the day.”

She added that Foster was not known to be racist, and his best friend in Pittsburgh had run an abolitionist newspaper.

Foster regularly wrote about love and loss in the antebellum period, composing melodies and lyrics in response to the deaths of his mother and sister as well as soldiers during the war.

Despite their often-depressing subject matters, his songs still are well-known folk standards because they have been passed from generation to generation, she said. In Japan, it’s mandatory for children to learn Foster’s songs in school, Haines said.

And every major American musical movement has included re-recordings of the songs. Bob Dylan recorded his version of “Hard Times Come Again No More” in 1992, and James Taylor redid one of Foster’s most well-known tunes, “Oh, Susanna,” for his Sweet Baby James album.

Foster’s music also has been recorded on every sound recording medium, from the Edison cylinder and the phonograph to today’s CDs and MP3s. His music was first introduced into pop culture by traveling minstrel performers, including a group called the Christy Minstrels who often dressed in drag and played an instrument called the jaw bone, where the player would rub an animal’s rib bone over the teeth of a cured horse jaw.

Foster died at the age of 37 with only 38 cents and a small slip of paper in his wallet, which possibly held the lyrics to a future song.

The Stephen Foster Memorial, which stands on Forbes Avenue in front of the Cathedral of Learning, was built in 1937 from private donations, a large chunk of which came from Josiah Lilly of Eli Lilly and Co. Pharmaceuticals.

The Center for American Music keeps an extensive library and museum of Foster’s works and personal artifacts inside the Stephen Foster Memorial, Haines said. The Center is currently working to modernize Foster’s songs and transfer his entire collection to digital format.