Prometheus 6

In the same article as above, I read,

"Yes, even with its love for the vehicular and alcoholic, country western is the best place to start to learn a little something about what it means to have a family, to struggle making ends meet, to own a gun or a pickup truck, to support our troops unquestioningly, to enlist in the military and fight our country’s wars and to generally be very proud of what America stands for . . ."

This explains succinctly why I have never liked country music and why Blacks vote so differently from whites. The extremism of whites ("to support our troops unquestioningly . . . and to generally be very proud of what America stands for . . .") just isn't shared by most Black people. How can you be "generally proud" of America when you can't even share the same drinking fountains?

Now, some Black people I know like country music, but not for the reasons cited above. They like country music IN SPITE OF the characteristics cited above.

Nuff said.

Like a lot of popular music, modern country is primarily corporate driven.  The people who determine the overall content of most popular country songs don't give a shit about the folks who endure the trials referenced in these songs.  Throughout its history, country music has tapped into some socially progressive strains that lie at the backbone of other great forms of American music.  Nashville, however, typically short-changes artists who deviate from its socially conservative money making formula.  Johnny Cash, for instance, alienated a lot of country music fans when he recorded songs about the trials and injustices inflicted upon Native Americans in the early 60s.  In his collaboration with an establish country icon like Hank Williams Jr., however, Cash delighted the Nashville establishment by performing the song "Kaw Liga" in which Indians are depicted as racist caricatures. 

For a good depiction of how elites control the masses by tapping into Red State culture see the movie A Face in the Crowd. The movie is a brilliant satire written by Bud Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan, the same team which produced On the Waterfront.  Spike Lee cites this movie as one of the main influences for his movie Bamboozled.        

...schaudenfreude.

"Please, please, let me explain"

"..OFFicer, I promise you...."

Yeah, I feel the same way every time I read how meth is speading in middle America. And middle Europe too...something about middles, I guess...

[...] But if you enter, if only vicariously, into the country music culture, you have to swallow along with your enjoyment some stances and attitudes that might give you pause (or might not, depending on who you are).

It’s a man’s world, even though a large number of the stars and superstars are women. In this world it is men who have the responsibilities and therefore the opportunities to default on them and then write a song about it. In those songs women, especially wives and mothers, are venerated, but it is the kind of veneration reserved for forms of behavior – patience, forbearance, steadfastness, chastity – the singer can’t quite get the hang of. Songs sung from the perspective of a woman are often angry; they are about betrayal and the hard road every woman will inevitably travel: “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman” (Tammy Wynette); “Here’s to the liars and the cheaters and the cold mistreaters” (Danielle Peck).

It’s a Christian world (and for “Christian” read “low Church Protestant”), where invocations of Jesus come as naturally as waking up in the morning. Think of it as Christian radio with all the sin left in. The religion is fierce and deep, and its consolations acknowledge the pain and trouble to which they are a not always adequate response: “God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good.”

It’s a white world. Not racist; there is no minority bashing; there are just no minorities. (Yes, I know about Charlie Pride and Cowboy Troy. Point made.)

It’s a patriotic world, given to flag-waving militarism, and distrustful of foreigners and their ways of life.

It’s a world without ethnicity (except for the southern trailer-trash kind), and everyone’s name sounds like two or three bitten-off anglo-saxon syllables: George Strait, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Johnny Cash, Randy Travis, Vince Gill, Trent Tomlinson. Many of the names could be reversed and they’d still work fine: Travis Randy, Tritt Travis, Paisley Brad, Gill Vince, Tomlinson Trent.

It’s a “classist” world, with the favored class being lower middle, and the disfavored class being any with pretensions. “They raised her up a lady / But there’s one thing they couldn’t avoid, / Ladies love country boys” (Trace Adkins, or is it Adkins Trace?).

And it is a world that knows everything I have just said about it, revels in it, and puts it all into the songs. Never has a popular music scene been so self-referential. The singers caress the history they spring from, rehearsing the litany of the great singers – Hank, Dolly, Patsy, Waylon, Loretta, Willie, Tammy – whose ranks they hope to join. (Another link to the pastoral; a pastoral poet always begins by invoking a long list of predecessors.) [...]

"Country Roads" from Stanley Fish's "Think Again" New York Times blog