Posted under Culture & Music & Sovereignty and Secession
What’s behind the renewed interest in Country music? It’s a search for roots, for the authentic — for the real. And as the author of this piece says, that renewed interest is affecting more than just music:
But, it isn’t only in music and films that the essence of country is felt. People grounded in the earth are appearing everywhere. The Minute Men resort to civilian vigilance of their land, refusing to give it up without a fight. The grassroots Tea Party movements, mocked as fake Astroturfs by their detractors, insist on keeping their country authentic. Massachusetts residents voted for a senator belittled for his own down-to-earth pick-up truck, who promised to preserve some of the real America. Even Sarah Palin is on the ticket to restore love for country and land.
Country’s entry into more mainstream slots shows that ordinary Americans are rejecting the impersonal and uninspiring. They are searching for concrete and elevating examples of the world around them. Words, images and ideas reflecting this are taking precedence. It is not clear if this will last, but the showstopper country rendition of “America the Beautiful” by The Zac Brown Band at the Grammys gives room for optimism. Zac Brown sings of a real place in his other Grammy performance “Chicken Fried”: “And my house it’s not much to talk about/ But it’s filled with love that’s grown in Southern ground.”
Why has Country music surged back with such unexpected vitality? It’s the tonic we need in a time when all the promises of Modernism crumble before our eyes. Our heads and lives have been stuffed with the straw of abstraction. “Universal” rules have long been assumed to be superior to culture, tradition, and beloved old ways. Cosmopolitan detachment was supposed to replace natural affection for the sights, smells, and sounds of the places we grew up in.
We’ve overdosed on the virtual. We’ve withered away, spiritually, socially, and emotionally. Malnourished on a forced diet of the abstract, the universal, and the multicultural, we have reached the point where we can no longer do without that which makes us human. No wonder we’re witnessing a resurgence of loyalty to community, heritage, and land. No wonder independence movements based on historical bonds are redrawing the world map, and have finally shaken the stagnant, overgrown bureaucracies of the 20th-century megastate.
Country music — which is really Southern music — has become the anthem of homecoming.
Sean Scallon on 18 Feb 2010 at 3:25 am #
Hopefully its the country music of the land and not that of some suburb of Charlotte or Atlanta.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 18 Feb 2010 at 3:45 am #
I agree. I’m sick of hip-hop with a fiddle.
Sean Scallon on 18 Feb 2010 at 5:03 am #
It isn’t just hip-hop with a fiddle. If country or rural music was about the white working class of the South in field, factory or mine, what’s passing for country music for at least the last decade reflects a suburban South or subdivisions and glass towers rather than a Kentucky coal mine or an Arkansas cotton field. Then again you can’t expect writers who haven’t worked the land to write about it. You write what you know.
Weaver on 18 Feb 2010 at 3:35 pm #
Many write what sells. And Americans are likely to dream of a past America that offers “roots, … the authentic — … the real”.
I hope the past will be idealised, and country music will become more country [in theme] than America ever was.
If it can drop the soul roots, which is what I think y’all are referring to, that’d be nice. I’m not a music expert, but I like the sound of bluegrass mountain music and Celtic music. The soulfulness of some “Southern rock” doesn’t appeal to me as strongly.
That might be a betrayal of Southern music, I dunno – but that’s what appeals to me regardless.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 18 Feb 2010 at 8:06 pm #
Weaver,
I agree — the Country music that’s true to its Celtic roots is the most soul-soothing, alluring music in the world.