New 50th Anniversary Edition of “Country Music USA” Book Asserts Country Music “Has No Center”
For 50 years now, Bill C. Malone’s tome of country music history called Country Music USA has been an authoritative and detailed history lesson and reference manual for country music, paralleled in quality and scope by few other works. It’s country music’s biography, starting with country’s very beginnings in primitive folk, and ranging all the way to the present day in the book’s nearly 700 pages.
Coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the book, the University of Texas Press has commissioned a new edition. The latest volume also comes as the precursor to the country music documentary world famous filmmaker Ken Burns has been working on for the past few years, and is expected to finally release in 2019 via PBS. Ken Burns and fellow filmmaker Dayton Duncan used Bill Malone’s Country Music USA as the basis for the documentary, so people who’ve either read the book before or want to know what they may expect from the film can use the book as a precursor, or as a tour guide during its airing.
The newest edition of Country Music USA also includes a new 13th chapter called “A New Century.” Tracey E. W. Laird, whose written histories of Austin City Limits and The Louisiana Hayride and is a professor of music at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, was seminal in composting the new chapter. The chapter before called “Tradition and Change” covers country music from 1985 to 2000. But instead of picking up where the book left off in the year 2000, this new chapter feels more like an essay on the current affairs of country, and specifically how the genre should be viewed in today’s polarized political environment, and during a time where genre lines have never been more blurred.
Tracey Laird seems to understand and articulate the significance of how political polarization has become caustic to the environment of country music. Early in the chapter she states, ” ‘Us’ versus ‘them’ plays out in media discussions of country music as much as it does in politics. The result is a kind of hardening of ideological arteries, a political senility that threatens the processes of compromise that have grounded US democracy since its inception.”
However the new chapter as a whole works to frame country music in a political context and emphasize contentious talking points as opposed to attempting to override them and focus on the music itself, with any political developments handled as asides and addendums as they normally would be in a historical music work unless it was expressly about the politics of music.
Explaining what has happened in country music over the last 18 years seems to never cross the author’s minds. Kenny Chesney’s rise to a stadium act is not mentioned. Taylor Swift is simply a footnote. Aside from delving into the Dixie Chicks debacle—and even that is referenced more in the present tense as opposed to its natural order in the country music timeline—the new chapter zeroes in on just the last few years in country music, and specifically how it fits into today’s polarized society.
During the last few years, the most significant event in country music was unarguably Chris Stapleton’s 2015 CMA Awards where he shocked the country music world by winning New Artist of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and Album of the Year, along with launching himself into unequivocal superstardom via his performance with Justin Timberlake. Here 3 1/2 years later, Stapleton’s Traveller is still the mainstay record on the country music album’s chart and one of the best selling in any genre. Chris Stapleton is selling out amphitheaters and arenas left and right, and has become the most decorated present-day performer when it comes to awards and RIAA certifications. He’s even now landed a #1 single on radio with “Broken Halos,” which was his final realm to conquer.
But instead of framing modern country in Stapleton’s moment, the newest chapter of Country Music USA chooses Beyonce’s performance with the Dixie Chicks the following year at the 50th Annual CMA Awards to set the narrative and bookend the entire chapter on country’s latest era, expressly for the rich narratives involving race, gender, and genre this new chapter desires to broach.
The new chapter once again attempts to frame Beyonce as being snubbed by country industry awards for her supposed country song “Daddy Lessons” from 2016. Though the song was never sent to country radio, making it ineligible for certain awards, and includes very questionable country music attributes to begin with, the insinuation is if Beyonce wasn’t nominated, let alone allowed to win country music awards for a non-charting album cut on a hip-hop record, the only explanation for such an egregious act would be the inherent distaste for a black female performer pervasive throughout the country music culture and industry.
Along with other misnomers with this train of thought, it also remains an incorrect assertion that Beyonce was snubbed by country music at all, since the CMAs gave Beyonce the longest performance slot on the organization’s 50th Anniversary presentation, and paired her up with the Dixie Chicks, which also erodes arguments against the CMA and country music for discriminating against women and artists of left-leaning politics. At their biggest presentation in a half century, the CMA Awards made a African American hip-hop performer and a once-rebuked female trio their centerpiece. Nonetheless, the new chapter of Country Music USA works to make the moment a wedge issue and an illustration of country music’s “whiteness” instead of the moment of unity it was meant to be.
“What did it mean the the new century’s most sensational pop music performer, an African American woman, to appear on the CMA Awards, a context still so closely associated with whiteness?” the book asks. “Despite historical, artistic evidence of the deeply tangled roots of ‘hillbilly’ and ‘race’ music, as it was christened in the beginning, whiteness continues to define country music. Still, black artists challenge that organically with their oeuvre and repertoire … Nevertheless, whiteness continues to remain a defining trait at the center of twenty-first-century country music identity.”
Though none of this is untrue, it comes across like an accusation. Country music has always been an art form predominately performed and enjoyed by Caucasians. That doesn’t make it inherently racist, any more than hip-hop, jazz, and R&B would be considered racist because they’re predominately black forms of art. Nonetheless, country music’s “whiteness” most certainly is presented as an issue that must be resolved in this new Country Music USA chapter.
Of course country music owes some of its roots to black entertainers and art forms, and in the annals of history, including this Country Music USA book, perhaps this wasn’t underscored sufficiently. But this doesn’t call for an overcompensation by portraying Beyonce as an important figure in 21st Century country music, or in some way a victim of the genre’s intrinsic whiteness. Beyonce never had any business in country music to begin with. The idea that she did was a media construct built by Beyonce Stans integrated into the journalism pool of entertainment media.
Six months before the CMA Awards, a writer for the Associated Press asserted, “The song could even qualify for CMA’s song of the year or single of the year awards if it charts in the top 50 of a Billboard country singles chart by the end of June, which it hasn’t yet. And there’s no requirement for being known as a country artist for Beyonce to be nominated for female vocalist of the year.” This set the table for Beyonce fans to feel slighted if the CMAs did not nominate or award the hip-hop superstar with country music’s highest accolades of a given year.
Even Tracey Laird in this new chapter uses words like “sensational” to describe Beyonce, and called her appearance on the CMA Awards a “striking performance” as opposed to the more austere language most of the other musical subjects of the chapter are described in.
Beyonce released a song that some portrayed as country, and the country industry graced her with an opportunity and invitation to their premier awards show, and built their performance schedule around her. That is the alpha and the omega of the issue. Any slights upon Beyonce are built around unrealistic expectations for “Daddy Lessons.” Even if you shelve the argument of whether the song was country or not, it still had to face fair competition with every other song and artist for consideration of country industry awards, and from songs and artists who were actually native to the genre.
Aside from Beyonce—who isn’t even a country artist—and The Dixie Chicks—who haven’t released a record in 12 years—the other artist the new chapter of Country Music USA seems to quizzically focus upon is Brad Paisley. Though Paisley is certainly a relevant character in modern country music, and does make a somewhat decent test case for the warring of the classic and contemporary in the modern context, his influence on the genre in the present tense is minuscule compared to artists such as Florida Georgia Line, Sam Hunt, Chris Stapleton, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, even newcomers like Kane Brown and Luke Combs, or even more independent artists like Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson.
Sturgill Simpson is broached in the new chapter as well, and to a fair degree in unison with his influence in the last few years. But a fourth focus of the chapter that comes out of left field is foul-mouthed country music comedian Wheeler Walker Jr., who by the grace of a #9 debut on the Billboard Country Albums chart—a regular occurrence these days for mild east Nashville Americana acts in this singles driven market—is given undue credit as a worthy test specimen of where country music is today in regards to independent stars.
Blackberry Smoke and Aaron Watson would have made much better examples of country music independents rising up to buck the system by scoring surprising debuts on the Billboard country albums charts. Both earned #1’s instead of a #9, and were the first and second independent acts to do so in the modern era. But broaching the subject of Wheeler Walker Jr. in Country Music USA seems more tied to wanting to deliver a line third person from a live review in No Depression.
Writing a review of a Wheeler performance in Seattle during summer 2016 for ‘No Depression,’ Mike Seely once again asks the implacable question: “What is ‘real’ country music? The question itself is worth mocking, and I actually think that’s what Walker’s doing.”
This dovetails with the underlying theme of Country Music USA‘s new chapter, which instead of filling us in upon the doings of country for the last two decades, actively looks to question the integrity of the institution as a whole, attempts to get the reader to interrogate what country music really is, asserts the opinion that all the cross genre collaborating and the erosion of authenticity is natural if not healthy, and frames the genre as being inequitable if not downright racist against African Americans, without offering any substantial counterpoints to the idea Beyonce deserved CMA and Grammy Awards in the country genre.
The new chapter starts off by saying, “In the twenty-first century, the question of ‘what’s real’ in country hovers over general trends, like the one critics of contemporary stars like Luke Bryan or Sam Hunt dub ‘bro country.'”
Then at the end, the chapter concludes, “…the Recording Academy nor any other media entity gets to decide what is and what is not country music. No gatekeeper guards the center because there is no center.“
Such rhetoric is commonplace in entertainment media these days, and not shocking or unhealthy unto itself. It is a fair to question what should be considered “real country,” especially in the modern context. And yes, no single institution should get to decide what is or isn’t country. Also, any institution should constantly be evaluating if it is equitable to all people, regardless of race, gender, political affiliation, or sexual orientation, especially given country music’s history.
But a book whose express purpose is to convey the history of country music and place its importance in the greater cultural fabric of America arguing that you can’t define what is real in country music, while also saying country music “has no center,” is an affront on the genre itself. It’s the purpose of books like Country Music USA to help define the center of country music, not to argue that it has none, rendering the genre a shell.
And every institution, whether it’s an awards show or a website like No Depression or Saving Country Music has a right, if not an obligation to assert their opinions of what country music truly is to the marketplace of ideas. It’s up to the marketplace itself to decide what is true or not, and not up to a country music history book to render such healthy discussions meaningless because there will never be a right answer in an author’s estimation.
This new final chapter to Country Music USA feels like an intrusion of academia, and a polarizing act of political action. It seems part of a greater movement at the moment to integrate country music in a manner in which forces outside the genre see fit, like accepting Beyonce to the point where she should hopscotch actual country artists committed to the genre for awards consideration because she releases one song some people consider country. And if country music is unwilling to accept pop stars winning its top awards, it should be chastised as an artifice of white America. But if country music succumbs to this integration from other genres, this is what would render it meaningless or without definition, aka the “no center” argument. That is why it is so important to argue what real country music is, regardless of the outcome.
This is all especially concerning since Country Music USA is the basis of the new Ken Burns film on country music, which will reach a much wider audience than this final chapter, and like all Ken Burns films, be referenced by many generations to come as a master work of country music history.
Hopefully Ken Burns labors to help define what country music is as opposed to asserting it has no definition, or even worse, agreeing it has no center. Because of course country music has a center and definition, even if what they are is up for debate, or open for interpretation. Otherwise country music wouldn’t be the cornerstone of American culture it is, which is the reason an important figure like Ken Burns would labor to make a multi-part documentary about it, or a 700-page history of it would be commissioned for it.
Furthermore, to millions of people, country music is how they define themselves, their families, their roots and personal histories, and their communities. And without that knowledge and strength of identity, these people would do like all living things do when their roots are severed—they would wilt and shrivel. Then we have much bigger problems than just a bunch of bad country music to listen to.
Of course country music has a center. The center is the people of the country. They may shift, and their tastes and styles may change, but country music is their story. And it’s important it’s told properly.
Black Boots
July 1, 2018 @ 6:24 pm
I didn’t know Maren Morris was an author, too. Absolutely incredible!
Mike Honcho
July 1, 2018 @ 8:19 pm
I’ve never seen a cowboy wear black boots unless he was at a funeral or wedding. You a pirate?
Black Boots
July 2, 2018 @ 3:12 am
Wedding singer
gabman1234567
July 1, 2018 @ 6:41 pm
While I was reading this article I thought to myself, “the center of country music are the people of middle America.” Something that I’ve thought for a while now is that if rural America is shrinking in population and changing, then the music of rural America will be impacted by that change.
Mike W.
July 2, 2018 @ 10:17 am
Country Music once represented the poor & working class of America. Now it represents the suburban middle-class that is all-too eager to drink $8 Starbucks lattes and drive around in their SUV’s. The reality is that the problems faced by the poor/working class whites and the problems faced by poor urban dwellers are pretty much the same. Poverty, drugs, a lack of affordable housing, etc. are not unique to the coasts or middle of this Country.
The issues with Country music, at least for me, largely stem from the lack of interest in singing material that appeals to these poor/working class Americans, regardless if their backyard is concrete or patchy, yellow-ish grass.
Johnny Falcon
July 1, 2018 @ 6:42 pm
Would you reccomend the rest of the book?
Trigger
July 1, 2018 @ 6:51 pm
Yes I would. I read the book years ago, but all I have read of the new edition is the last chapter and am currently working my way through the rest of the material that has apparently been updated here and there as well. It’s not the most exciting book on country music. I prefer biographies and autobiographies because they tend to be jucier (probably because they’re a bit embellished), but this book gives you a great round view of what country music is. Would have loved to see a more broad take on the last 20 years because they’ve been so active and important to what country music is today.
Moondog
July 1, 2018 @ 7:09 pm
say goodnight Gracie….the fat lady is singing…traditional country is a lost art in the popular format and Hank 3,Shooter,,Whitey,Wayne Hancock, Jamey Johnson, Isbell,Sturgill, Childers, and the last savior Jinks won’t put a dent in the machine that rules the roost…might want to try to save the people and change the people that are calling the shots on Music Row first…….otherwise …. deal with the business as usual
DJ
July 1, 2018 @ 7:35 pm
“The newest edition of Country Music USA also includes a new 13th chapter called “A New Century.” Tracey E. W. Laird, whose written histories of Austin City Limits and The Louisiana Hayride and is a professor of music at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, was seminal in composting the new chapter.”
…………….
I never cease to be amazed and disappointed at the absolutely stupid turned out by our centers of alleged higher education-
From wikipedia-
The current mission of the college, adopted in 2002, states: Agnes Scott College educates women to think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times.
………………..
Think deeply? Intellectual? LOL- that disphit wouldn’t know either under any circumstances.
The pretentiousness of intellectual posers is what creates dunderhead empty suits with their psuedo-intellectual bullshit.This is indicative of the gov’t mandated self-esteem programs called education having failed miserably- sadly, education is simply a passing on of knowledge, and with no “thought” involved this is the kind of crap people actually are paid to pass on- I can’t express vehemently enough the disdain I have for idiots like the contributor.
She probably “thinks” 2 + 2 = 5.
Think deeply? I call bullshit if the above article is indicative of thinking taught there.
Mike Honcho
July 1, 2018 @ 8:22 pm
Most people are educated beyond their intelligence.
C
July 1, 2018 @ 8:50 pm
I love the saying “the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know.” People who think they know everything have no capacity to learn because they think they already know it all. You can be the most educated person in the world and still have things to learn. That know it all way of thinking is ridiculous and only leads to people becoming isolated in their own reality from what is actual reality.
JB-Chicago
July 2, 2018 @ 8:07 am
The more I know, the more I know what I don’t know
I know nothin’s free
And there ain’t no guarantees………….
Pure poetry
The Original WTF Guy
July 4, 2018 @ 9:37 am
“The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Ulysses McCaskill
July 1, 2018 @ 8:12 pm
Honestly, the quote in the very top margin of this website has become frighteningly applicable to our culture. I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I’m now of the opinion that the past and current assault on honest and authentic music in favor of “formulaic cannon fodder bullshit”, as Sturgill so eloquently put it, is part of a larger assault on individuality, liberty, and creativity in an effort to effectively control the populace and nullify our opinions on anything of any importance.
If you dont’ believe me, just go ahead and turn on country radio. Just do it. It’s hard to deny it’s not part of something larger than we ever imagined at work trying to break the will and perseverance of humanity as a whole.
This is scary and we should all be vigilant against it going forward.
Fourth Blessed Gorge
July 2, 2018 @ 3:16 pm
Well, I’ve always seen the so-called “bro-country” phenomenon as a rather transparent attempt to cater to a crowd that’s “outgrown” rock and roll and that finds “country” too regional and “hillbilly”. It’s country-twanged lite-rock with lyrical themes focusing on basic “working class” escapist fantasies, like drinking, beaches and sex, easily-digested backyard BBQ background noise…formulatic, easy to follow, instantly forgettable. The music industry doesn’t have the wiggle room it once did so they’re focused squarely on signing and promoting artists who can shift units and pack stadiums with catchy jingles and “summer anthems”. Originality and experimentation is off the table as far as they’re concerned, what matters is getting Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack to buy those CDs and drop $200 a ticket on the “big concert events”. A genre aimed squarely at a demographic with disposable income is naturally going to milk a successful phenomenon for everything its worth until the well has been pumped completely dry.
I say support your local and or “underground” artists as much as possible and ignore what they’re forcing you to listen to as if it doesn’t even exist. I haven’t listened to commercial radio in decades and I couldn’t tell you what “tops the charts” right now.
Cody L
July 1, 2018 @ 8:18 pm
I live in a very small town area, and I work at a small, family operated dairy farm. My boss who is 60 and his dad who is 89 have worked the land their entire lives. They work their asses off day in and day out. While the price of milk, corn, and oats may change, their resolve and stubbornness never ever will. These people deserve to have their stories told for generations to come. What is country cannot be defined by a single Saturday night, but instead by a every day of the week, along with all the ups and downs that come with it. Country music is called country because of people like my boss and his dad. Country music does have a center and it lies with the hard working people all across America!!!! It does not lie in the middle of suburbia or whatever the hell Sam Hunt or Kane Brown sing about. This fact is what makes country music what it is. I really wish people could just accept that, and stop trying to change it to whatever they think they want it to be.
Trigger
July 1, 2018 @ 8:23 pm
Good comment.
Clyde
July 1, 2018 @ 9:44 pm
I hope the Ken Burns documentary negatively depicts the last 20 years of mainstream country. Or largely ignores it.
albert
July 1, 2018 @ 9:55 pm
Interesting article Trigger …well researched and analyzed .
I think country’s centre is defined quite simply as ” three chords and the truth “..which , as a fan and a writer, I’ve always interpreted as ” simple with substance ” . Yes , traditional instruments played by humans is a HUGE part of the sound ( the truth in terms of musical skills ) but the core of the best and most important country music has and will always start and end with ” three chords and the truth “
Black Boots
July 2, 2018 @ 3:17 am
You could say the same thing about folk, punk, and other genres, too.
albert
July 2, 2018 @ 7:50 am
indeed BB …..however ….I think this helps define ” country ” and set it apart , somewhat , from other genres …sonically , at least ..
”traditional instruments played by humans is a HUGE part of the sound ( the truth in terms of musical skills )”
Fourth Blessed Gorge
July 1, 2018 @ 11:49 pm
That Beyonce nonsense again…sigh. As if gracing the genre with her greatness reset the bar and forever re-defined what country music can and should be…please. I realize you’re just quoting excerpts here but IMO to go into a piece about the recent history of country music by focusing on Beyonce’s contributions to the genre and pretending that not being pelted with awards and adoration represents some type of deep cultural failing in the fabric of the genre itself is silly, as it demands that the reader accepts the premise that Beyonce represents the pinnacle of modern popular music which, of course, is a wholly subjective opinion and not fact. It kind of craters the author’s credibility right there and attaches way, way too much importance and impact to what amounted to a brief novelty moment in the recent history of the genre.
albert
July 2, 2018 @ 7:57 am
absolutely FBG ….that Beyonce thing was near – meaningless to anyone but networks and perhaps her label …..a blip …….In fact here in Canada her entire career is much less acknowledged and significant than , it would seem , in the U.S. …so …
I think the fact that she’s even referenced in that book should illustrate how ‘ off the rails ‘ not only country music is but how out of touch pundits are in light of that fact .
Trigger
July 2, 2018 @ 8:22 am
Nobody cared if Beyonce would be considered for country music industry awards until someone told them they should, even Beyonce’s notoriously-rabid fans. Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and others had songs on recent albums that were considered country-sounding by many. Why don’t you hear cries from their camps? It’s because they know country awards are for country artists. The entire controversy is sheer madness.
Fourth Blesssed Gorge
July 2, 2018 @ 3:00 pm
And pretending it represented some sort of huge watershed moment for the entire genre is equally crazy. The recent history of the genre is fascinating enough without embellishments and blatant fanboy-ism regarding an artist who has little to do with the genre in the first place.
Of course “country music” has a center. It’s composed of the fans who will patiently wait for fads and novelty acts to play themselves out as they continue to support the music they prefer. They might not fill football stadiums but they’ll be there, as they have been all along.
Kelly Gregory
July 2, 2018 @ 1:34 am
Surely calling Beyonce a hip-hop artist is like calling Sam Hunt a country artist?
Corncaster
July 2, 2018 @ 2:52 am
For a professor, she sure is ignorant. Her take is typical of graduate students who read “theory” and get all puffed up with a sense of their own importance. They stop looking at the real world and see everything through their new distorted glasses. I’ve seen it time and time again. They’re rewarded for it, too, by their equally blind colleagues. This is why they can’t see what’s happening. Even if they did, they wouldn’t trust themselves to form a unique opinion.
JK
July 2, 2018 @ 2:59 am
I thought Daddy Lessons was an okay song, but nevertheless, whenever I hear it it seems to me what Country music sounds like according to the writers of Broadway musicals. High camp. Perhaps Bill C. Malone should’ve bitten the bullet this time and written the last chapter himself, since indeed whatever perspective he has on modern country (which is evidently little) will doubtlessly be more interesting and informed than the haranguing of soupy music academics who treat prose like an intellectual battering ram.
Justin
July 2, 2018 @ 4:35 am
Speaking of Kenny Chesney, I was glancing at his discography a few nights ago and saw that he did a song called “French Kissing Life” on his 2005 Be As You Are album. Just the title makes my skin crawl…and he wrote it himself. I caught a glimpse of a line…”I’m french kissing life square in the mouth.” Barf. I wasn’t brave enough to listen to it, but reviews of it called it “icky” and “unspeakable,” lol.
scott
July 2, 2018 @ 5:51 am
I’m sorry, I kinda quit reading when the chapter writer dropped “oeuvre” in a sentence. Little too pretentious for my liking. You did a nice job, Trig, of not telling the author to go pound sand.
Benny Lee
July 2, 2018 @ 7:19 am
I’ll wait for the Ken Burns film, thanks.
Martha
July 2, 2018 @ 9:17 am
Being such a huge fan of Ken Burn’s work, I believe he will do much more research into the genre than just relying on just one book.
CountryKnight
July 2, 2018 @ 10:20 am
A Ken Burns documentary will not be favorable for country music.
Musiccityman
July 3, 2018 @ 7:19 am
Agreed. His take on jazz was elitist beyond belief. Complete omission of any role played by white or jewish people in the creation of America’s greates art form. I’m calling it now; his country film will be laughaby bad.
Joel Joslin
July 3, 2018 @ 1:40 pm
He gave attention to Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, and others. White jazz critic Gary Giddins was one of the major interview subjects too.
Snuff Shock
July 2, 2018 @ 10:23 am
“Of course country music has a center. The center is the people of the country.”
Yeah, isn’t that the basic thesis of Country Music USA? Country music is just whatever sounds rural people adopted and have endured over time. Seems like a no-brainer.
And while lots of country music institutions (like the Opry) have a long history of anti-black racism, country music itself isn’t really defined by whiteness. I mean, for one obvious example, if you take the blues out of country music then there isn’t enough left to hang a cowboy hat on. And that’s straight from the preceding chapters in Country Music USA.
It makes me wonder how someone could have read the book and make an argument like that…
Steve
July 2, 2018 @ 12:03 pm
This isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but Beyonce is emphatically not a “hip-hop performer.” She’s an R&B and pop singer closer to Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars than hip hop artists like her husband. It’s like calling Luke Bryan a “bluegrass singer” because you once noticed a banjo in a song of his.
Kevin Smith
July 2, 2018 @ 12:21 pm
What a steaming load !
So many decent writers and they get an arrogant, pseudo intellectual who probably has never lived anywhere near heartland America and for that matter never spoken to real country music fans. Curious what this writers qualifications are to be considered an “expert” in country music. What a laugh and sad that this was considered to be a summation of the modern era of country.
Bryan
July 2, 2018 @ 1:43 pm
When I first read the title, I agreed with the statement.
When I read the line comparing the “sets” of fans to politics, I agreed with the statement.
Then the Beyonce stuff reared it’s ugly head again, and i couldn’t figure out what that had to do with anything.
Now we may be arguing semantics here, but I still agree that Country music as a while today doesn’t have a center. What it dos have is two completely opposite camps that, for the most part, are unwilling to move at all towards the other side (see Garth Brooks).
What I’ve read in the comments as to what the “center of Country Music” is; to me is the definition of the Core of Country music. When I hear/read center what immediately comes to mind is common ground, so to speak, not where it started or why it started.
Just the opinion of someone who was for sure educated over his intelligence.
DJ
July 2, 2018 @ 2:53 pm
You’ve made some good assessments- however where it started and why speaks to History- if you don’t know where you came from you can’t know where you’re going- and it’s pretty obvious the dunderhead empty suits and alleged experts need a History lesson in why and where and stop pretending they’re something they aren’t- country music fans- they are fans of adulation and money. Period. They don’t mind and even welcome the criticism as it’s free advertising for the product they’re selling- crap.
Jim Z.
July 2, 2018 @ 2:55 pm
I wonder who picked Laird to write that chapter. she was involved with a mostly photographs book a couple of years back on the Austin City Limits tv show where I found her writing badly in need of an editor while she managed to get several points about the show’s history flat out wrong.
Justin
July 2, 2018 @ 3:45 pm
The center of traditional country music, instrumentation speaking, is steel guitar and fiddle *front-and-center* in the music. Not a token banjo buried under electric guitars like is ubiquitous nowadays. Also, all instruments must be played by real humans. There is room for other instruments, such as banjo, harmonica (remember when mainstream country songs had harmonica? Yeah, it was a while ago), piano, acoustic guitar, upright bass as long as they are front and center, and as long as fiddle & steel songs make up the bulk of the songs in country. Raging electric guitars, drum machines, and computer-generated noises like have been so ubiquitous the past 15 years or so belong in rock and pop, or at least a small place in country.
Lyrically, the “center” of country music is meaningful and tells meaningful stories of real-life people…rural people. Not “girl, you got that delta donk, slide on over in my pickup.”
Justin
July 3, 2018 @ 12:21 am
Speaking of probably the biggest influence on the direction of mainstream country/country-pop in the last 10 years, Taylor Swift…here’s what someone had to say in a comments section here about her in Nov. 2010:
“Who decided she was good? Who decided to give her a chance? How did she get out of her pink bedroom with her canopy bed and onto the CMAs?”
LOL
albert
July 3, 2018 @ 7:03 am
no shit …..how the hell DID that happen . how did that little girl make fools of an entire industry ?
Dobe Daddy
July 3, 2018 @ 7:19 am
The fact that the chapter centers on Beyonce, or even gives her more than a passing mention, is laughable. That tells you all you need to know about the agenda of the author. This seems written for the People magazine crowd who sees everything through a PC lens. They’d be the first to call Alan Jackson a racist for walking out on Beyonce’s performance without consideration of the circumstances, that at the 50th Anniversary CMA even a pop star was the main performer, a statement that country music is some infantile gibberish music for goobers unlike the bright shining star of pop music. Alan Jackson would have walked right the hell out if Justin Bieber was given the same slot.
After having watched the Ken Burns’ baseball documentary, I’m just worried about his narritive myopia. Watching Ken Burns’ Baseball you’d have thought that the Red Sox and Yankees were the only two teams that ever existed. I fear he’ll film the whole documentary through a lens of race relations and paint country music as a form co-opted from every other genre and Frankensteined into some closed door invitation-only hootenanny for ignorant white people. I hope it turns out as a celebration of the form, like Martin Scorcese’s Blues, but I’m not hopeful.
Trigger
July 3, 2018 @ 9:33 am
One thing that really stuck out to me about the Ken Burns baseball documentary is it completely eliminated any mention of the moment George W. Bush went out to center field at Yankee Stadium right after 9/11, and threw out the first pitch, which was a strike right down the middle of the plate. The film delved deep into the impact of 9/11 on the sport (because like you point out, it seemed very NYC-centric), and so there was a segment where they could have highlighted what at the time was one of the most memorable moments of national unity arguably in history. Yes, from there would come the Iraq war, and W would become a much more polarizing figure in history. But if you’re going to tell the story of baseball and 9/11, you can’t gloss over that moment.
To me this showed a concerning political bias. Ever since the Ken Burns country music documentary was announced, I’ve had a fear it’s going to focus on Jamup & Honey, David Allan Coe’s Rated X records, and other instances that are minuscule in the grand scheme of things, but will portray country music in a negative light. Of course there was racism in country music’s history, but it’s important to tell history within a proper context. Beyonce’s involvement in country music was fleeting at best but it was given this huge spotlight in the last chapter. Hopefully the new film take a more balanced and accurate approach.
DaveHessel
April 28, 2023 @ 11:51 am
As we know, everything has a cause and effect. Country music is popular for a reason, like a book about the anniversary of which the article was written above. I mentioned in my essay, you can find it here https://edubirdie.com/examples/cause-and-effect-essays/, that country music was very important to the US population in the 1940s. Based on the Anglo-Celtic folk musical traditions, this music has long been preserved in an almost untouched form. It was very interesting to explore the reason for the popularity of this genre and write a report about it.