HuffPost.
Country music was born out of the black American experience.
And yet, while black artists from Beyonce to Lil Nas X have written important
country songs, country music is still considered by many to be mostly a space
for white artists. Exploring the complicated racial legacy of country music
reveals why the genre often goes from being a musical form to a vehicle for
difficult conversations around race and identity.
-snip-
No reader comments are shown with this 2019 article.
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video about Country Music in the United States that was published by Huffington Post in July 2019.
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Huffington Post for publishing this article and this video. Thanks to all those who were associated with this article and this video. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this pancocojams post.
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ARTICLE EXCERPT: WHY IS COUNTRY MUSIC CONSIDERED SO WHITE
Country music is deeply rooted in the black American
experience, and yet the genre hasn't quite lost its original racial
designation.
By Isaac Himmelman, July 17, 2019
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/country-music-black-artists_n_5d2de760e4b085eda5a25516
..."Music scholars often acknowledge the black musical
influence on country music chords, pointing out things like the African origin
of the banjo and the genre’s deep roots in blues music.
[...]
“Country music is a stand-in for a lot of conversations that we are too often afraid to have, or even when we want to have them, we don’t necessarily have the language to do so effectively,” said Charles Hughes, a music scholar and the director of the Lynne and Henry Turley Memphis Center at Rhodes College.
For example, when Beyoncé performed her song “Daddy Lessons”
at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards alongside the Dixie Chicks, she
faced backlash from some country fans who called into question her country bona
fides. This further sparked the conversation around which artists get to call
themselves “country,” and perhaps more to the point, which artists don’t.
“A lot of folks really celebrated [the CMA performance], not just as a really cool example of what country music could sound like, but also as potentially a symbol of the changing — or, at least, loosening — boundaries, in terms of who and what gets to be country,” Hughes said. At the same time, “the moment created that same old anger that we’ve seen too often about ... what country music is supposed to represent in terms of race, in terms of gender, in terms of a certain kind of identity.”
Country music’s association with white identity goes back not just to the beginning of country music, but to the beginning of musical genre itself, Hughes said.
Starting in the 1920s, at the dawn of the recorded music industry and at the height of the Jim Crow era, record companies began marketing genres like gospel and blues specifically to black audiences as “race music” or “race records.”
“The record industry marketed and promoted and created a language about the music from the beginning, and this continues through this day in some way, in which whiteness is, if not on the surface, then right below it.”
- Charles Hughes, music scholar
Meanwhile, white audiences were sold country music — or, as
it was originally called, “hillbilly music.” The genre was musically and
thematically rooted in the black American experience, and yet, it “was very
explicitly thought of as being the music of white southerners or white folks
who had recently moved out of the south into northern or western cities,”
Hughes said.
Despite the work of black country artists like Charley Pride or Ray Charles’ seminal country album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” the genre has never quite lost its original racial designation.
“The record industry marketed and promoted and created a language about the music from the beginning, and this continues through this day in some way, in which whiteness is, if not on the surface, then right below it,” Hughes said.
Still, there is reason to believe the genre could be
changing. A new crop of diverse artists, including Jimmie Allen and Kane Brown,
are making waves on the country music charts.".
-snip-
The bold font was used in that article.
****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THIS VIDEO'S DISCUSSION THREAD
Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VIRtikKEnw&t=477s
1. @_Peremalfait, 2020
"If you listen to early recordings of blues and country
there's very little difference one from the other except for the race of the
musicians. So that's probably your answer right there. Segregation. Black and
white musicians borrowed from one another all the time, listening to each other
over the radio, but were not allowed to play together or collaborate."
**
2. @vr6535, 2020
"Buna I wrote my senior thesis on the origins of country
music. Country was folk and brought of by slaves on the ships; and your right
the blues melted with the mountain folk (hillbillies) who played banjos in
south. It eventually evolved into Opry style and influenced Tejano music in
Texas/Mexico. It’s all combines :)"
Reply
3.
"@vr6535 So based on your research for your senior
thesis, did Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh folk music had minor influence
in the development of country music compared to African folk music? Or how
would you allot the percentages of influence?"
**
Reply
4. @_s827, 2020
"@damuni1 hi, I play early country music ("old
time music", the Appalachian fiddle and banjo stuff and ballad singing
that evolved from the Irish music you're excited about). Country music was
developed from fiddle/banjo stringband music after the coming of recording
companies and radio in approx the 1930's.
That fiddle/banjo music is absolutely a hybrid of European and African music
styles and instruments, and absolutely no one (except ignorant angry people on
the internet in 2020) disputes that.
The most important and unfortunate part of the story of that music is that when recording companies arrived on the scene, they artificially segregated Southern music into white "hillbilly music" (the name for country before they called it country) and "race records" (blues and everything else related to folk music played by Black people). Eventually Black fiddling and banjo playing died down substantially due to lack of support from the recording, radio, and entertainment industry. There is ENDLESS oral history from musicians of all races from the South that indicates that the removal of Black musicians from the 'country' category was artificially induced by the recording industry that eventually created country music."
Reply
" @damuni1 it's also important to note that AP Carter,
Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Jimmie Rodgers, the first and second
generations of country music Mt Rushmore, all were mentored by Black artists."
Reply
"Dead Bear, if it's so Celtic then why did AP Carter and
Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams Sr and Johnny Cash all have Black mentors?"
**
7. @veridicusmaximus6010, 2020
"It's considered so white because that is who the majority
musicians are - Duh!"
8.
"Oh for Pete sake have you ever heard of Charlie pride!!!"
**
9. @majesticalshimmer6105, 2021
"Dude country music isn't tied to race i know many black folks who love country music"
**
10. @k.8297, 2022
"Black people and old timers in general HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN
that COUNTRY MUSIC WAS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN INVENTION! Once again, white
americans who seek to white-wash american history WILL ALWAYS DENY THIS TRUTH,
but we KNOW OUR HISTORY and country WAS NEVER WHITE to begin with, but was
APPROPRIATED like everything else in America! Was not Elvis' "Hound
Dog" ORIGINALLY Recorded by Big Mama Thornton A BLACK WOMAN back in 1952?
Elvis was singing the COVER SONG of a black woman the ENTIRE TIME, but they LET
YOU THINK it was originally his... Black and Indigenous People of America KNOW
OUR HISTORY! Do you know yours???'
**
11. @NoBody-pf2nv,2023
" "You can't talk about music without talking about
race." What nonsense.
Why is it always that "educated" scholars at
university have to conflate race and identity with the very things that unite
us all the most? There is nothing to gain from it.
The only thing it allows is for is the justification to
force a group of people to hate themselves or their ancestors and be sorry for
something they have no control over.
Disliked."
Reply
12.
"Literally the entire society we live in was founded and
groomed on the basis of race and identity. Everything done/most of the things
we have today was influenced by black people in some shape or form. This is NOT
to say White folk aren't talented and don't contribute because they
are/absolutely do contribute, and I would never discredit them. But thats
literally the point, white people in these mediums have erased the black
identity, or rather DNA, and claimed it as solely their own. That's the issue. That's
always been the issue, and it should not be forgotten/not discussed so easily.
Have nothing but love for you, but these types of videos need to be out there
and people have to stop being so angry when faced with the truth."
**
13. @gregcager2, 2024
"Black people already know country music came from us my
grandfather loves him some lightnin hopkins and if u listen to him u can't
get no country than that it just the
record company call it the blues, country music to me it just the white man blues and like everything in America
especially back then blacks start
something whites redo it call it something else rock and roll and country music
have there foundation in the blues.
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