The Complicated History of Country Music
Country music is often associated with a very similar group of ideas, images, and cultures that define many people’s view of the genre as a whole. When you think of country music, you almost undoubtedly picture some type of cowboy or redneck from the southern United States, driving around in his truck, on his way to some type of blue collar or agricultural work. You may associate it with things like trucks, alcohol, chewing tobacco, pretty girls, and other images that you constantly see, or hear, when you experience country music. So what is the real background of country music? And how did its history become so one sided?
Modern Country
Modern country music has almost entirely secluded country music to one group of ideas and behaviors. It’s associated with objects such as alcohol and trucks, but more importantly, with ideas. Many associate country music with things like patriotism and rural roots, such as coming from a small town. Many songs mention Christian religion and Southern pride. Some would even argue that country music is associated with the white race, and conservative ideologies. These associations often lead many to assume that country music has derived from Southern roots and history, and is exclusively a piece of white, Southern culture. This idea of a single, strictly southern US root of country music is entirely inaccurate, and is a disservice to the diverse and international roots of country music.
How did this happen?
Books like Bill Malone’s “Country Music, USA” heavily contributed to this idea by reinforcing the narrative that southern agriculture and working class culture was the sole creator of American Country Music. His writing was heavily criticized in the article “In the Round: The Circular Heritage of Country Music,” where authors Aleen Leigh Stanton and John Schofield point out Malone’s misstatements. They state that country music has strong influences from folk music in the British Isles along with regions all over North America, debunking Malone’s ideas.
The Real Roots
In reality, country music has a very complex history. While it was influenced by Southern culture in the US, it has history all over the United States, and even the world. Deriving from less broad genres such as folk music, country music has many connections to the industrial era in the Northern United States, along with parts of Europe. In the factories and mills of the north, a unique version of folk music was created within the working class, known as “lint head music.” It was very popular among the workers as a rebellious kind of music, referencing drinking and lawlessness, allowing “lint head music” to thrive.
“The music presented the realities of mill life: it was sometimes about working conditions and held workers together during labor, while changes in the music brought growing pains.”
Areas of Pennsylvania were a huge part of maintaining the history and development of country music. Trades such as mining created genres of folk music that were used as working songs, that were then passed down through generations as folklore according to Ronald Cohen.
As far as ideologies go, country music and its roots have been strongly associated with conservative ideologies. This is likely due to the fact that many songs mention hunting, patriotism, farming, guns, and other topics often associated with conservatism. As it turns out, however, some of country musics strongest roots have been used for very different causes. In “Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States,” Tia Denora discusses the use of folk and country music during the 20th century during the civil rights movement, singing during freedom rides, sit ins, and other historical protests throughout that era. Furthermore, earlier in the 20th century, left-wing groups used folk music as a propaganda tool, using it to promote communism and attempt to change the public’s mind on major social issues.
Whitewashing
So how did the roots and history of country music become so one sided, Americanized, and boring? The white, christian, conservative and southern labels placed on country music create an unexciting and bland story of country music with no real substance to it, ignoring and disrespecting the true diverse and exciting history that it holds. This is the exact question that Jeffrey T. Manuel explores in The Sound of the Plain White Folk? Creating Country Music’s ‘‘Social Origins’’. The phrase “Plain White Folk” in the title perfectly describes the slanderous presentation of country music’s story. The first flaw that Manuel found was the view of Southern Culture overall. Analyzing historical texts, he found that many viewed southern culture itself as a single rooted tree, where everyone had the same beliefs, hobbies, and practices. He also found that race and white pride played a large factor in the whitewashing of country music as well.
“Southern folklore literature asserted the importance of a white southern ‘‘folk’’ in the region’s history. To the extent that it was successful in arguing for a history of the South that contained a large and influential white middle class, southern folklore literature was crucial to later country music scholarship, for it provided a ready-made social category to which the sounds and symbols of country music could be ascribed.”
Historians beliefs that southern culture was self-developed and uninfluenced, as well as their racial biases led them to focus on the successful white artists and their beliefs, describing them as completely original and self made. These biases and beliefs led to censoring of key information that would’ve described the true nature of country music throughout it’s whole history. Because the truth was concealed in the beginning, the misinformation continued to spread as time went on, burying country music’s beautiful history further and further.
