Fake Twang: How White Conservatism Stole Country Music

[orangecrush]

This reflects a larger problem: The story we tell of ​“Rural America” in this country is a largely white story, and the rebranding and proliferation of country music to fit a universal rural audience inevitably whitewashed its diverse history and ignored the fact that much of the rural south is anything but white. Take, for example, the life-story of the most American of instruments. What we call a banjo today is an amalgamation of West African gourd instruments that made their way here in the hands of forcibly enslaved people brought to the U.S. in its colonial infancy. Once an instrument of the most oppressed rung of American society, the banjo gained national exposure when racially demeaning black-face minstrel shows toured the country, singing and playing music from the southern cannon by way of parody, inadvertently creating a national craze for the instrument. Decades after this fad had waned, the majority of banjo players that were documented by the folklorists of the 1930’s and on were white players in the upland South, where rugged isolation and poverty had preserved aspects of vernacular banjo traditions rooted in their distant African origin. This selective documentation created the lasting and baseless connotation of the banjo with rural whiteness, ignoring the nuance and reality of the actual meeting between European melodic structures and the rhythms and mechanics of West African music.

As a result of this whitewashing, our culture has largely surrendered country music to the domain of white conservatism. This association creates an understandable view of country music fans as right wing militants, blind patriots and adamant racists or, more generally, celebrators of nostalgia and rigid whiteness―in short, an image that garners suspicion and mistrust from coastal contemporaries and rightfully wary minorities.



What we think of as ​“traditional country” did not originate with white conservative men — far from it. And yet, as a consequence of marketing, that is the dominant perception people have of the genre: That it’s not made for everyone and that it stands not for combating disenfranchisement but for preserving it.




https://inthesetimes.com/article/country-music-southern-accent-conservatism-confederacy-ken-burns-blues



Great article.

I live in red rural western Pa..

The same people who brought us Fox news and the Sinclair network have bought 90% of the radio stations in the U.S., and have syndicated them.

This includes most country stations. Anyone who rocks the boat doesn't get played.

The Dixie Chicks were a perfect example.

They have created a total immersion alternate reality for the republican base.

The power this has over the minds of the lemmings can be seen from the events of January 6th.

Calls of alarm to the democratic party have gone unheeded.

No bills to break the media monopolies.

No attempts to restore the fairness doctrine.

On January 6th, we started reaping the rewards of this head in the sand posture.

[hlthe2b]

1. Commercial "country music" has little of what made it the music of the people, long ago.

There are a lot of factors to blame for it--just as there is for most genres of music today, but the politicization of it has certainly been a big factor.

[underpants]

2. And New Country is a pandering lifestyle selling mess

Horrible.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. That's why us cool kids listen to Americana/Roots rock

BTW, popular country music these days doesn't have banjo ... like, hardly ever.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. If It Did...

...it'd probably be a looped sample!

[DBoon]

5. reminds me of what Elvis did to Rock and Roll

"ignoring the nuance and reality of the actual meeting between European melodic structures and the rhythms and mechanics of West African music."

[Ron Green]

6. The Nashville Product is a phony thing.

It’s light rock with a fiddle, steel guitar and a George Jones wannabe, waxing nostalgic about a white patriarchal world.

Hewing to the roots is a more complex and difficult thing, and although there are some admirable practitioners today (Gillian Welch comes to mind, and Rhiannon Giddens is pretty awesome) the money is still, as always, with the Philistines.

[Chainfire]

7. If they stole country music, don't report them.

[Cosmocat]

33. X2

The twang literally pains me ...

[Hestia]

8. Banjo was appropriated from SE Indian Tribes in US - Choctaw, Chickasaw, and I think Seminole

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World - The NA influence in popular music including the NA roots of early pioneers of the blues and jazz and how NA helped define the evolution of the folk-rock era that took hold in the 1960's & 1970's.

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World reveals the untold story of the Native American influence on popular music. The film travels deep into the South, guided by Pura Fe (Tuscarora/Taino), Alvin Youngblood Hart and Cyril Neville (Choctaw) bringing to light a missing chapter in our history books: How Indigenous music was part of the very fabric of American popular music from the beginning, but the Native American contribution was left out of the story, until now.

It's easy to confuse the banjo with slavery but actually the original slaves in the country were NA tribal men who kept running away from the plantations. Finally slavers took the tribal men to the Caribbean where they were brutally treated.

Blacks, who were brought to the South, ran away and mated with the NA women who then had mixed children. It's why to this day that blacks from SE US claim NA blood from the various tribes in the area.

The NA women were/are accomplished musicians who play the banjo in their indigenous music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble:_The_Indians_Who_Rocked_the_World

https://www.rumblethemovie.com/home

Highly recommended movie

[blogslug]

10. That doc was so good!

I watched it twice.

[Duppers]

11. Rumble was excellent!!

Want to know the history of Rock? Then watch:

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World

[Buckeye_Democrat]

13. Except DNA testing doesn't support the NA admixture...

... ideas, generally.

From Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the PBS show "Finding Your Roots":
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/686531998/historian-henry-louis-gates-jr-on-dna-testing-and-finding-his-own-roots
GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. Now think about that. And most DNA companies in the United States will tell you that they have never tested an African-American who is 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa. This is called an admixture test. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. So what that means is that it's the percent of - if you had a perfect family tree, what percent would be from sub-Saharan Africa? What percent would be from Europe? What percent would be Native American?

African-American - I love to joke about this. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. So where does that come from? It comes from slavery. Was this an equal sexual relationship? Of course not. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. When I did Morgan Freeman's family tree, it was obvious through his DNA that he was descended from a white man who was an overseer on a plantation in Mississippi. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. They were buried next to each other. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife...

[orangecrush]

22. Thanks for this post

Spot on.

[dianaredwing]

9. Tag this onto your emails.

Willie is as American country as you can get and the most liberal musician around.

Forgot to say I live in Louisiana and behind football, Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, voting is pretty much what we do. I have a mail in right now to fill a seat. Giving that up is not something most folks will take kindly to.

[Duppers]

12. K & R

[we can do it]

14. It makes me gag.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. Speaking of fake twang, I heard evangelical...

... pastors around here who somehow sounded like they grew up in the Deep South while preaching, but spoke with their native Midwestern accent while my dumb evangelical sister later introduced me to them.

[uponit7771]

17. +1, they love to front shallow characterchures of southerness

[uponit7771]

16. K&R, Its what? 1500 radio stations dedicated to GQP perspective in rural areas & only a few that

... are democratic or have a fair perspective.

[orangecrush]

23. Yup.

[AverageOldGuy]

18. Hank Williams learned to play the guitar . . .

. . . from Rufus Payne, a black blues musician.

Country music disappeared in the early 1970's.

[orangecrush]

27. Truth.

[Initech]

19. I think I would country music. It's just the politics are a major turn off.

Although I will say that pro Trump white boy country rap bullshit can go fuck itself with a rusty bayonet.

[orangecrush]

24. Tractor rap

Straight up white supremist.

[Initech]

28. Tractor rap, I like it!

[Mysterian]

20. This crap they call "country music" nowadays is what they play in hell

I like some of the older stuff but this redneck, shit-kickin', beer-drinkin', truck drivin', phony patriotic "country" garbage of today is the worst music ever made, if you can call it music.

[orangecrush]

25. I call it propaganda.

[Initech]

30. Actually I think country rap is what they play in hell.

If you want to see some really shitty music, there is an entire genre of white people who rap about owning giant trucks, lots of guns, and voting for Trump. Adam Calhoun, Upchurch, and Tom MacDonald are particularly putrid.

[Tommy Carcetti]

21. My general rule of thumb on country music:

If you’re one of the Highwaymen, you’re golden.

Dolly Parton has put out some good stuff as well.

And I like bluegrass folk.

I have no use for most of the modern Nashville scene. A lot of it makes my ears bleed.

[orangecrush]

26. Bluegrass

The music for coal miners to strike by!

[hurl]

29. Windows down, scream along to some America First rap country song, a slaughterhouse, an outlet mall

Another DUer (don't remember who) posted it. This captures how county has been occupied by RW nutjobs.

[Crowman2009]

31. 9/11 ruined country music.

All of a sudden it became uber-patriotic fanatigelical x-tian music 24/7.

[FrankBooth]

32. There are still some big country artists that don't do the patriotic/Bro country BS

A lot of the women in country right now are pretty outspoken - Brandi Carlisle, Amanda Shires, Marin Morris, Kacey Musgraves, even Miranda Lambert (although she's not really into politics.)

Male artists like Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell are pretty outspoken, and definitely not conservative.

Most of the mainstream country acts avoid explicit political references, and are basically like glorified pop stars, with highly cultivated/managed public images. Their music is also basically pop, with steel guitars/fiddle thrown in and some twang to the vocals, but otherwise it could be Top 40.

Country is still one of the most stable music markets, and one of the few that still sells lots of albums, although they are also big on singles (like modern R&B an pop.) Country radio is also really strong, one of the few in that industry that are still prosperous.