Country Music: How It Survived Commercialization

Take a Scottish lament, an Irish reel, an English ballad. Transport it across the waters, introduce it to songs sung by African American field hands, let it steep in an isolated hollow for a few decades, and, presto, you have country music.

That’s the story of country, but only in part. Country music has traceable folk origins, but, like all folk music, it comes from everywhere, a magpie borrowing from every style it comes into contact with: Tin Pan Alley, the blues, jazz, polka, classical—and, particularly in recent years, the most syrupy of bubblegum pop.

Country has also long been a big business as much as an art form, with recording corporations such as Columbia, Sony, and RCA capturing a large share of the country market and, in the bargain, often treating performers as hired hands who are told what to play and when. Easy-listening, string-drenched pop country was one result, and the “outlaw” sound of the 1970s the predictable reaction, giving rise—and, in some instances, second careers—to such roots-inclined players as Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Shaver, and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Some of the artists who stayed within the system, such as George Jones, Tammy Wynette, and Vince Gill, managed to maintain a small degree of independence; others, such as Randy Travis, did not, illustrating along the way that country becomes something other than country when it goes chasing after a buck and becomes product rather than art.

But that is what happened once the big labels began to manufacture stars and songs. By the beginning of the 1980s, when the film Urban Cowboy took over where disco left off, country was thoroughly tamed and commercialized, the charts full of mere pop singers by another name. The genre, Colin Escott writes in his book Lost Highway, “had finally won its mass audience, but what had it lost? Its strangeness and its soul, perhaps.” In a field dominated by Garth Brooks, who might as well have been Michael Jackson; by pinups like Faith Hill and Shania Twain; by Clear Channel radio and songs written by committee, the soul indeed left the body. And audiences responded by fleeing in droves, reducing country’s share of music sales from 18.7 percent in 1993 to 10.5 percent in 2000.

Yet something wonderful happened in the latter year, when the quirky Joel and Ethan Coen film O Brother, Where Art Thou? introduced a new audience to the likes of Ralph Stanley and the Carter Family. Stanley sang his haunting “O Death” at the 2002 Grammy Awards, freshly signed to a major label that had earlier dropped him for being old-fashioned, while Johnny Cash and Steve Earle released new albums and other country rebels and outcasts came in from the cold.

Dolly Parton, a safely commercial but brilliant singer and songwriter, even released a bluegrass album, which must have made her record-company handlers crazy.

Listeners returned, and new ones arrived—only now they were listening to Americana, community-radio, and public-radio stations whose playlists were open to old-timers such as Cash, Jennings, and Merle Haggard, as well as younger voices such as Kelly Willis, Robbie Fulks, Victoria Williams, Gillian Welch, Rosie Flores, Dave Alvin, Tom Russell, and Lucinda Williams and a host of “alt-country” bands such as the Drive-By Truckers, Son Volt, and Uncle Tupelo.

Quintessentially American but popular in such seemingly unlikely venues as Japan and Finland, country music continues to change with the times, as it always has; it’s just a little harder to find the real thing on the airwaves these days. When you hear the wail of a pedal steel or a mountaineer’s yodel, you’re on the right track.

Happy trails!

Written by Gregory McNamee on July 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.

The Importance of the Angry Voter in 2008

There has been a lot of discussion about the angry women (mostly white women) in regard to Senator Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination. Some of these women, who provided the backbone of Hillary Clinton’s support throughout the primaries, have said that they will either vote for Senator John McCain in November or stay home. Members of John McCain’s campaign staff recently met with some of these women, discussing strategies to entice more of the disgruntled Clinton supports to move towards McCain.

In another slice of the electorate, there are some angry evangelical voters (also mostly white), who have noted that the current Bush Administration, of which they were supportive and helped to elect, has used them for electoral advantage without fulfilling many promises. These same voters are not enthusiastic about the pending nomination of Senator McCain as the Republican standard bearer. They were much more excited about the candidacy of Governor Mike Huckabee. Senator Barack Obama and his campaign are doing significant outreach within the evangelical community to entice some of these disgruntled evangelical voters to move towards Obama.

Five months out from Election Day it is hard to know exactly what voters will do—especially voters who are considered in some ways “undecided”—but there is some interesting research about the potential for shifting among angry or disgruntled voters.

Scholars studying political psychology have concluded that the angry voter is a potentially swing voter. According to many of these scholars (George Marcus, Ted Brader, W. Russell Neuman, Michael Mackuen, etc.), enthusiastic voters are more likely to continue their established habit and vote for the same individual or party that they previously voted for or supported. Whereas the voter who has become anxious or angry during the political process—anxious because of some of the issues that have been raised or the way in which they have been raised; angry because they are unsatisfied with their options or they do not like the current state of affairs or the direction that the country or party is following, etc.—is more open to considering other options, options outside of their normal habit. Marcus, Neuman and Mackuen explain (in Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment) that “anxious voters are more open minded for having set aside their dispositions.”

Thus, in both the Obama and McCain camps, there are efforts to present acceptable options to these potentially swing voters, since they are, right now, more open to persuasion. At the same time, both camps are working on keeping these potentially defecting voters in their camp. According to the research, the best way to either attract these voters or to keep them on your side is to identify “solutions, interests, and the discussion of goals and the best means to achieve [those goals.]” 

The two campaigns have their work cut out for them—but if one side or the other can figure out how to keep their defecting voters with them, and can attract these potentially swing voters, that is likely the winning strategy.

Written by Lilly Goren on July 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.