---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:53:44 -0800
From: Michael Gurstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [stuff-it] FW: Dixie Chicks,
part of tradition of progressive country music
Well worth a read, especially the second article.
MG
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: February 18, 2007 5:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Dixie Chicks, part of tradition of progressive country music
Dixie Chicks, part of tradition of progressive country music
* Dixie Chicks Among Esteemed Outlaws
by Ashley Sayeau (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Wild And Blue: The Politics Of Country
By Sandy Carter (Z Magazine)
==========
Dixie Chicks Among Esteemed Outlaws
by Ashley Sayeau
Philadelphia Inquirer - February 16, 2007
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16709871.htm
On Sunday night at the 49th annual Grammy awards, the
Dixie Chicks took home five awards, including best
album, record and song of the year.
It was a long road, indeed, for the Chicks, whose
enormous fan base and ticket sales famously plummeted
in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines remarked on
the eve of the Iraq war that the group was "ashamed the president of the
United States is from Texas." Within days, radio stations were refusing
to play their music, and fans were demanding refunds. Death threats were
later issued.
Throughout the ordeal, the group remained admirably unapologetic,
insisting that dissent is (or at least should be) a vital liberty in
America. They further maintained this position in their album Taking the
Long Way (which won the Grammy for best album) and especially in the
song "Not Ready To Make Nice," in which they directly addressed their
critics: "It's too late to make it right/ I probably wouldn't if I
could/ Cause I'm mad as hell/ Can't bring myself to do what it is/ You
think I should."
Despite the group's successes, the grudge has held, particularly among
the Nashville music establishment. The Country Music Association
completely snubbed the Chicks at its awards ceremony in May.
Such an affront on the part of country music is not
only cowardly, but also quite antithetical to the
genre's history. For, while country music today is
often equated with pickup trucks, rebel flags, and men
with mullets, it also has a brave and, dare I say,
liberal streak in its closet.
Take Johnny Cash, for instance. Not only did many of
his most famous lyrics center on "the poor and the
beaten down," including a poignant attack on this
country's treatment of American Indians, but also Cash
was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, as in his famous
song "Man in Black": "I wear the black in mourning for
the lives that could have been/ Each week we lose a
hundred fine young men."
And then there is Willie Nelson, who on Valentine's Day
2006 released a love song about gay cowboys, titled,
"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each
Other)." Perhaps more seriously, he has been an avid
supporter of presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, who,
while arguing for universal health care and a swift
withdrawal from Iraq, is probably the furthest left of
any Democratic candidate.
Women in country music - like the Dixie Chicks - have a
long tradition of being particularly bold in speaking
out against some of the very conventions their record
labels and conservative fan base celebrate. Back in
1933, the Carter Family, which consisted of A.P.
Carter; his wife, Sara Doughtery Carter; and her
cousin, the groundbreaking guitar player Maybelle
Addington Carter, sang about a young woman who chose to
commit suicide rather than marry. In Sara's sorrowful
croon, we hear her say, "I never will marry/ I'll be no
man's wife/ I expect to live single all the days of my
life." Needless to say, she later divorced A.P.
Perhaps most memorable are some of Loretta Lynn's
lyrics, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s. Released
in 1966, her song "Dear Uncle Sam" was an early anti-
Vietnam protest song. And though she once feigned
dozing off while listening to feminist advocate Betty
Friedan speak as a fellow guest on The David Frost
Show, Lynn was a pretty controversial women's advocate.
In "I Wanna Be Free," she wrote of the liberating
effect of divorce: "I'm gonna take this chain from
around my finger/ And throw it just as far as I can
sling 'er." She did the same thing for birth control in
"The Pill": "The feelin' good comes easy now/ Since
I've got the pill."
As daring as some outlaw artists have been, the country
music establishment has often proved even more dogged
in its conservative views. Lynn has purportedly had
more songs banned than any other country music singer.
And Cash, never completely at home in the country music
world, once said that "the very idea of unconventional
or even original ideas ending up on 'country' radio"
was "absurd." No wonder, then, that in his gay cowboy
song, Willie Nelson lamented that "you won't hear this
song on the radio/ Not on your local TV."
With the November election, particularly with strong
Democratic gains in Virginia and Missouri, Republican politicians may
have to rethink their long-standing Southern strategy. Similarly, with
last Sunday night's awards, country music should embrace the fact that
its greatest assets have never been scared of controversy or doing the
right thing.
To quote the great Dolly Parton - who has sung a few
feminist, antiwar, and progressive anthems herself -
"You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough
to try."
[Ashley Sayeau is a freelance writer currently living
in Buffalo, N.Y., was raised in Tennessee, and has
written on women and politics for a variety of
anthologies and publications, including The Nation,
Salon and Dissent.]
© 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer
==========
Wild And Blue: The Politics Of Country
By Sandy Carter
Z Magazine - September 1994
http://zena.secureforum.com/znet/zmag/articles/sept94carter.htm
Some of the fondest memories of my west Texas childhood
are linked to the lonesome moan of the pedal steel
guitar and the soulful honky tonk voices of Hank
Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Ernest Tubb. In the
1950s, as I was entering grade school and gaining some awareness of the
world around me, these sounds served up essential clues to my sense of
time and place.
A few years later, however, I perceived that some
considered country music inferior to other forms of
popular music. Southern accents, nasal voices, and bad
grammar, I learned, were the most visible signs of this inferiority. So
I became self conscious about my drawl and with some vigilance and
discipline began modifying my twang according to standards I took to be
more enlightened.
But the full arsenal of Southern stereotypes was not so
easy to escape. In my 20s, as I began living and
working in other parts of the country, I came to
realize that people outside the South, particularly
politically progressive people outside the South,
judged white Southerners and nearly all aspects of
their cultural heritage as backward. And this snobbery
often found its most candid expression in mocking and ridiculing country
music.
The elitist views that define popular prejudices about
the country tradition greeted the music at its
commercial birth. In the 1920s, when country music
first felt the pressures of commercialization, rural
traditions of all kinds were experiencing tensions and challenges
brought on by industrialization. Country sounds suggesting older and
more settled ways seemed inherently at odds with rapid social and
technological change. The music expressed a longing for stability and
order and deep-seated fears of the temptations of the modern world. At
the same time, the music could not help but reflect hopes of escaping
the hardships associated with traditional rural life.
Conflicted feelings also derived from the Southerness
of the music. While the music of Stephen Foster and the writings of Mark
Twain fueled romantic notions of the South as an exotic land of
enchantment, the region also evoked images of slavery and the Civil War,
the Scopes monkey trial, and the Klan. Thus for many, country music,
regardless of its subject matter, was nothing more than the sound of
ignorance and racism. Retaining a stubborn self-consciousness of its
white, rural, Southern, working class origins, country music today
continues to attract and repulse listeners by stirring the same opposing
images. Nonetheless, in a span of 70 years, country music has grown from
regional to national and international popularity. And presently, the
music is cresting at a commercial high-water mark justifying marketing
claims that country is now "America's pop music."
With mass popularity, however, some of the most
distinctive qualities of country music have been
diluted. Listening to the musical styles dominating
country radio, one hears a generic McDonald's styled
product so stripped of "hayseed" connotations that it
virtually erases the line between country and various
forms of easy listening white pop and bland 1970s
styled corporate rock. While harder and more
traditional country sounds have not disappeared, the
market driven industry bias toward an urban-suburban contemporary sound
has certainly muddled the definition and origins of the musical idioms
known as country.
Like other music forms of our culture, country music is
an amalgam of influences. Its sound, song structure,
and lyrical text reveal a heavy debt to African
American musical styles, particularly blues and gospel. Rhythmically,
country draws most on the dance meters of English and European country
dance tunes. As to lyrics and narrative style, country storytelling has
roots in Southern Protestant sermonizing, barroom banter, front porch
story swapping, and the general character of regional oral traditions.
Other distinctive characteristics relate to the way the music is
performed. Unlike many pop performers, country singers write much of
their material bringing a subjective, direct voice to their performance.
Like blues singers, they aim for intimacy more than technical
sophistication. In the singer's voice and story lay the central appeal
of country music.
Though country music is a vocal music above all else,
its instrumental sound is unique and immediately
identifiable. It begins with the guitar and is filled
out with fiddle, banjo, mandolin, dobro, bass, pedal
steel guitar, and harmonica. The distinctive country
sound comes from the way the musicians play these
instruments with flat picks, finger picks, bottlenecks,
and bow. In contrast to the smooth, melodic approach of
pop and classical music, country players, again showing
an African American influence, favor a rough-edged
attack with strings popped, scraped, hammered, and
frailed. Mirroring the unadorned vocal sound,
instrumental solos and fills are deliberately
"unrefined." The emphasis is on sounds that
counterpoint the social and emotional realism conveyed
by the singer and the song. Accordingly, country sounds
are harsh, rowdy, romantic, humorous, and rousing. Most
of all, they are mournful.
Did you ever see a robin weep When leaves begin to die
That means he's lost the will to live I'm so lonesome I
could cry
--Hank Williams
Historically the most dominant and unmistakable quality
of the country sound is sadness. One of the great
stereotypes plaguing country music is the cry-in-the-
beer loser drowning the pain of romantic loss in some
dark tavern. But the heartbreak in country music runs
deeper than cheating, drinking, and divorce. The sad
tale country music has to tell goes back to the
devastation the region suffered during the Civil War,
the loss of rural identity, and the great migration of Southerners to
urban centers in the Midwest and West during the 1940s and 1950s.
Understandably, country music is homesick music, permanently colored by
feelings of longing and lost innocence.
The loss at the heart of the country song has been
expressed through two divergent impulses. When the
Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers came to Bristol,
Tennessee in August 1927 to perform before record scout
Ralph Peer and a Victor Talking Machine, they brought
with them distinct bodies of material representing
seemingly contradictory themes and values. In the
Carter Family's huge repertoire of traditional songs
resided the morally decent old-time virtues of work,
family, humility, and Christian fellowship. By
contrast, Rodgers, an ex-railroad brakeman from
Meridian, Mississippi, wrote tunes with roots in blues
and jazz, folk and cowboy songs, work gang hollers and
pop. Though Rodgers wrote his share of songs glorifying
the home and family, his work also celebrated the lives
of hell-raisers, hoboes, wayward lovers, criminals,
rounders, and ramblers.
Both approaches proved immediately popular. By 1933,
the year of his death from tuberculosis, Jimmie Rodgers
had become country's first crossover success and in the
South his status was near mythic. And by the time the
Carter Family disbanded in 1943, their music was well-
known throughout the United States, as well as parts of
Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, and Australia. Aside
from establishing the commercial viability of country
music, the breakthroughs of Rodgers and the Carter
Family gave the shared musical culture of the white
South coherence. Though commercialization accelerated
the homogenization of sounds, by documenting the
diversity of local and regional styles it also helped Southerners gain a
fuller sense of their common cultural heritage. The music labeled
"hillbilly" dramatized what they suffered, survived, and left behind. It
offered solace and understanding, realism and escape. But most of all,
it was music that responded to change with a reassertion of tradition.
The Carter Family's religious tunes and sentimental ballads and Jimmie
Rodgers' chronicles of the rambling man, in different ways, mapped the
boundaries of tradition and the dire consequences of its breakdown.
Because of this emphasis on Southerness and tradition,
country music has long been associated with all that is reactionary.
However, while country music generally expresses a conservative outlook,
the view of country as an exclusively white, male-dominated, right-wing
tradition is unfair and one-dimensional. At no point in its history has
country music expressed a consistent political ideology. Although
performers such as W. Lee O'Daniel, Jimmie Davis, and Roy Acuff have run
for political office and many country musicians have endorsed candidates
and aired opinions in public, the music resists easy ideological
labeling. Every hard- headed patriotic diatribe like "Okie From
Muskogee" can be matched by songs like Waylon Jennings's multicultural,
egalitarian anthem "America" and James Talley's ode to populist
rebellion "Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?":
Now there's always been a bottom
And there's always been a top
And someone took the orders
And someone called the shots
And someone took the beatin', Lord
And someone got the prize
Well, that may be the way its been
But that don't mean its right
More importantly, since country music has always been a
voice for small farmers, factory hands, day laborers,
the displaced and unemployed, its harsh portraits of
work and everyday life carry an implicit critique of capitalism. Instead
of overt political protest, country songs prefer to deliver social
criticism through poignant descriptions of economic hardship and family
sacrifice. Some of the best examples of this style of protest are Merle
Haggard's "Mama's Hungry Eyes," Dolly Parton's "Coat Of Many Colors,"
and Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter."
As to the issue of race, country music's sentimental
attachment to Dixie is often taken as an endorsement of
white supremacy and slavery. Country music's
glorification of the South, however, derives mostly
from an idealized notion of working the land and the
real life movement of millions off the land during the
years of the Great Depression and World War II. Not surprisingly,
hundreds of country tunes plead the case of the farmer and celebrate the
beauty of Southern landscapes. By contrast, since the birth of the
country music industry in the 1920s, very few country songs have offered
direct commentary on race relations in the South, and certainly no
popular song has advocated a return to the slave system. This doesn't
mean, of course, that white Southerners or the country music industry
are free of racism. Rather, it suggests that the homesickness in country
music is based primarily on the erosion of rural identity.
Still, it is obvious that "whiteness" is dominant in
country music. Despite the tradition's enormous debt to
African American music and other ethnic music cultures, non-white
performers are still exceedingly rare in country music. When voices of
color have gained popularity in the country field, it has generally been
through songs and styles evidencing only traces of their racial origins.
Nonetheless, in recent decades Mexican-Americans such as Johnny
Rodriguez, Freddy Fender, Tish Hinojosa, and Flaco Jiminez and African
Americans such as Charlie Pride, Stoney Edwards, and Big Al Downing have
won acceptance with country audiences. And occasionally, there are tunes
like Bobby Braddock's "I Believe The South Is Gonna Rise Again" that
break the mold:
The Jacksons down the road were black like we were
But our skins were white and theirs was black
I believe the South's gonna rise again
But not the way we thought it would back then
Some of the strongest stereotypes attached to country
music revolve around the social and sexual roles of
women. To many people Tammy Wynette's 1968 hit "Stand
By Your Man" typifies the passive, long suffering
mentality of the unliberated country woman. In truth,
the female perspective in country music is much broader
and far more assertive than this superficial stereotype
can allow. The richest and most authoritative evidence
of this reality can be found in Mary Bufwack and Robert Oermann's
Finding Her Voice: The Saga Of Women In Country Music(Crown Publishers
Inc., New York). This 541 page narrative tracing the lives and music of
country women from the late 19th century up to the present, shows how
country music has encouraged white working class women in their
struggles to survive and resist "economic exploitation, sexual
subjugation, and limited opportunities."
Exploring the folk origins of country music, Bufwack
and Oermann argue that women were the primary
folklorists for early rural music, memorizing the tunes
and lyrics that provided the basic entertainment for
the family and community. And in their own original
ballads, women expressed sexual fantasies and
discontents in songs loaded with images of romantic
longing, promiscuity, violence, and death. Bufwack and
Oermann also reveal more active and socially oriented resistance in the
depression era songs of Sarah Gunning, the composer of "I Hate The
Capitalist System," and Aunt Molly Jackson, who began making up class
conscious songs and walking picket lines before she was ten.
It was not until the 1950s, however, that women in
country music began to gain commercial equality with
men. Following Kitty Well's surprising 1952 hit "It
Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"--a woman's
retort to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side Of Life--women
singers such as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly
Parton, and Tammy Wynette started achieving record
sales and stardom rivaling country men. The appeal of
the modern country female star, Bufwack and Oermann
note, in many ways mirrored general trends in country
music. Country tunes of the 1950s and 1960s still
focused on subjects of work, family, and religion. But reflecting an
audience that was now struggling to come to grips with the realities of
urban life and wage labor, the music increasingly dealt with alcoholism,
infidelity, and divorce. Reacting to these problems from a distinctly
female point of view, country women stepped forward with songs
displaying tougher attitudes. Sad songs of betrayal prevailed, but women
now would sing also of sexual freedom and nights on the town. And in
love songs, women would voice a straightforward demand for relationships
based on fair play and an end to double standards.
Some of the purest samples of this new toughness came
in a string of popular tunes by Loretta Lynn. With a
basic hard country sound and a writing style favoring down-to-earth blue
collar bluntness, Lynn laid down the law to men in songs such as "Fist
City" and "Don't Come Home A-Drinking (With Loving On Your Mind)." With
her singles "The Pill" and "One's On The Way," Lynn also became the
first popular country singer to publicly advocate for birth control.
These attitudes and Lynn's reputation for gearing her shows to women,
earned her a legion of devoted, fanatical fans, including a large
lesbian following.
Although few country music women of the 1950s and 1960s
made music as self-consciously for women as Lynn, the
emergence of country women superstars put "the woman's perspective" on
substantially more equal terms with that of the working man. By 1984
about one-fourth of the top country singles and albums were by women.
And today's country and pop charts are overflowing with country
women--Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Trisha
Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, Pam Tillis, and
K.T. Oslin, to mention only a few. Most significantly, the commercial
appeal of the current generation of country women seems directly linked
to a feminist oriented lyric. Lorrie Morgan, for instance, takes clear
control of her relationships in "What Part Of No," "Watch Me," and "5
Minutes." Michelle Wright shows off a similar attitude on "Take It Like
A Man." And Martina McBride rebels against an abusive husband on
"Independence Day." As these examples suggest (and many others could be
given), the most progressive and defiant strains of contemporary country
music are being created by women.
While the politics of country music eludes many popular prejudices and
neat categories of left and right, the fundamental conservatism of the
message cannot be denied. Country's conservatism, however, comes not
from taking a particular stand on particular issues, but in the way it
reads and resolves conflict. Country music may be one of the truest
forms of popular music in giving voice to the bitter realities of class
and the sorry state of male-female relations. But in offering few
avenues of escape and rebellion, country music tends to settle struggle
in favor of the powers that be. Change in country music comes mostly
from individual hard work and sacrifice, luck, and God. The music's
vision of community is insular and backward looking. And as a result,
failure breeds feelings of self-blame and resignation.
Nonetheless, country's stoic acceptance of things as
they are cannot be taken as an unqualified endorsement
of the status quo. The great strength of country music
has been its ability to capture white working class
life as it really is and without the projection of
false hope. Country music knows you can't always get
what you want or what you need no matter how hard you
try. In this realistic assessment of limits, the music contradicts
capitalist ideals of progress, fairness, and happiness through
consumption. Accordingly, throughout most of its commercial history,
country music has been dismissed as something beneath and apart from
mainstream culture.
Fully aware of country music's "negatives," the
Nashville music establishment has periodically
regroomed the sound and image of the tradition with
hopes of winning respectability and crossover appeal.
In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the smooth, urbane
"Nashville Sound," in the 1970s it was the tasteless
pop country of John Denver and Olivia Newton-John, and
in the 1980s it was Urban Cowboy role playing. Although
all of these trends gave country a temporary commercial
boost, hard-core country fans and musicians reacted to
each with a purist backlash (bluegrass, the Bakersfield
sound, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings' "outlaw"
movement, neotraditionalism) that eventually brought
the market back around to traditional sounds.
In the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, country music has
slowly ascended again to mainstream popularity with
sounds and images revealing few traces of country's
old-time rough edges. This time around country's new
audience seems to come from aging white boomers and
younger middle-income suburbanites who've tired of
classic rock and can't tolerate aggressive youth sounds
(metal, hip-hop, alternative rock) or easy listening
pop. For these listeners, country supplies a guitar
based rock influenced sound, adult subject matter, and
yearning for a more simple and decent way of life.
Unfortunately in meeting this demand, the music
industry has again resorted to formula: muscles in big
hats, starched boot cut Wranglers, choreographed sexy
moves, and pale, twang-free impersonations of
heartbreak. But at the borders of country, in the
progressive new voice of women, left-of-center
hillbilly folk (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tom Russell, and
Iris Dement), country rock (Rodney Crowell and Travis
Tritt), traditional bluegrass (the Johnson Mountain
Boys), and tradition conscious hard country (Dwight
Yoakam and Marty Brown), you can still hear the raw
emotions and wild and blue themes of a truly populist
art form. The "old" story country music has to tell is
too real and too rooted to be forgotten.
[Sandy Carter was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and
grew up in Amarillo, Texas. While attending the
University Of Texas at Austin, he became active in the
late 60s anti-war, student, and civil rights movements.
During the last three decades he has been active in
organizing around workplace, community, and mental
health issues. Since the early 80s, he has been living
in the Bay Area. His writing on music, politics, and
popular culture has appeared in the Bay Guardian and
The San Francisco Chronicle. "Slippin' & Slidin," his
column on music and popular culture, appears monthly in
Z Magazine. He currently works as a high school
counselor in Novato, California.]
==========
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Submit via email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
!DSPAM:2676,45da7d0025681792683703!
