Author: Max Weidman
It is so trendy to entertain anti-national sentiments that college kids would be burning flags left and right if it weren’t such a hazard to their American Apparel T-shirts. Fortunately, most liberals in college are too timid to get flammable; their protests go down in more innocuous, inane demonstrations of ignorance like this one: “I like every kind of music except country.” The fallacy of the statement’s first component (“Every kind of music?”) is too great for inclusion in the present discussion. I plan here to treat the aspersion for “country music,” hopefully with all the respect and equanimity that any open-minded person ought to afford statements of such severe stupidity.
I’ll begin by dealing with the (problematic) designation: genre = country/western. For my purposes, this includes bluegrass, honky-tonk, folk, contemporary/popular country (think Garth Brooks) and rockabilly. Already some liberals have made themselves liars: I know how much you all love the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
I would like to clarify then, that when we talk about country music, we are not talking about CMT; we are discussing some one hundred years of recorded musical variety. The statement’s rationality is slowly thinning. What remains of it I hope to dispel with an exploration of some of the liberal reasoning upon which it so unsteadily rests.
In the liberal’s eagerness to disavow herself from country music, I see a series of prejudices at work. Some I have heard directly, others inferred. The first is that Southerners, who make up a large constituency of country listeners, have bad/ugly (a.k.a conservative) politics – “they all love George W. Bush.” Despite some people’s reaction to it, I offer the Dixie Chicks’ latest record, among others, as a counterexample. The second prejudice involves the Bible Belt and God, who terrifies liberals so much that they all decry his death. “People who listen to country music are born-again Christians, and therefore foolish, weak, dependent, etc.” An artist’s formative conditions are no way to judge her music: I know you all worship Beck. He’s a Scientologist. Who cares?
The third prejudice deserves special attention. It comes in the form of an assumption that casts all country music, and its listeners, as people who are racist, sexist and homophobic. What concerns me about these judgments, even more than their potential validity, is the hypocrisy which allows someone to judge others in a room with Eminem playing on the stereo. Rap, not to mention other popular genres, is at least as anti-gay and misogynistic as country.
When we listen to music, much of the time it is necessary to abstract ourselves from the fundamental (mis)conceptions of both artists and other listeners. Please, liberals, you already know how to do this: you quote Heidegger in daily conversation. He was an early Nazi supporter. Does that make you one?
Finally, let me try to teach you liberals why you should appreciate – not necessarily listen to or like – country music. Firstly, there is the vast influence of the country/western impulse on the fabric of American music. I know you’ve all seen Walk the Line; don’t you remember how Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash (not to mention Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis) were both on Sun Records? I’ll grant that rock ‘n’ roll stole its soul from African American music, but most of its sensibilities and instruments are pure folk. Furthermore, it goes both ways: that song “Ghetto Superstar” is just a rip-off of a Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers hit called “Islands in the Stream.”
Secondly, I’d like to argue that country music is probably the most versatile genre around-it can do comedy, tragedy, narrative, romance, politics and drug ballads (try Cash’s “Cocaine Blues”). In a world full of emo kids who take themselves too seriously, it’s nice that Toby Keith can sing a song (“Runnin’ Block”) which is, to put it delicately, about doing a fat chick so your buddy can do her hotter friend.
Finally, there is such a great volume of work to explore that it seems impossible to unilaterally deny all of country music. If you like to listen to Coldplay and have a good cry, check out today’s alternative country scene (Ryan Adams, Mark Olson or Wilco). Just remember: Somebody once said The Byrds were our answer to The Beatles. Tim McGraw and Kris Kristofferson are better actors than 50 or Eminem. Dylan got juiced when he first saw Woody Guthrie. The Stones made a record (Let It Bleed) with a song called “Country Honk.” Jimmy Paige played the banjo. Willie Nelson was smoking grass before Snoop was born. You don’t have to love it the way we ass-backwards, slack-jawed, simple-minded non-Californians do – just respect it enough to know what you’re talking about before you go spouting absolutes.
Max Weidman is a junior ECLS major. He can be reached at mweidman@oxy.edu.
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