Beyoncé Songs Spur False Claims Country Music Erased its Black History
In 2024, country music is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of what many consider to be the genre’s most important artifact, and one that appraisers cite as the most valuable asset sitting in the Country Music Hall of Fame’s possession in Nashville.
No, it’s not the guitar of Hank Williams, or the mandolin of Bill Monroe, or the banjo of Earl Scruggs. It’s a painting of all things, called “The Sources of Country Music.” Commissioned by the Country Music Association, or CMA in 1973, and painted by legendary American artist Thomas Hart Benton, it was meant to become the crown jewel of the CMA’s Hall of Fame collection, and has since become that very thing. The painting hangs as the centerpiece and the first thing you see as you enter the Hall of Fame rotunda where the plaques of all the official inductees adorn the walls.
Near the end of 2023, the Hall of Fame opened a new exhibit called An American Masterwork: Thomas Hart Benton’s “Sources of Country Music” at 50, which explores how Benton developed his final painting, through sketches and drawings, lithographs, photographs, a three-dimensional model of the painting, and video footage of Benton.
This painting is critically important to the history of country music because it offers a time capsule that no revisionist history can touch. The painting is made to depict the various origins of country music, including the Western cowboy of the silver screen era, a Gospel choir, old-time fiddlers and singing sisters, square dancers, as well as a locomotive, a steamboat, and river in the background.
One aspect about the painting that is most important is the inclusion of the African American character playing a banjo. For Thomas Benton and the Hall of Fame, there was never any question that the Black influence in country music must be included in any portrayal of the genre’s origins.
In fact, one of the often-overlooked features of the painting even by many historians and interpreters of the work are four more African Americans just over the shoulder of the black banjo player. They are standing on the shore of the river, with their hands outstretched towards the steamboat.
If you want to learn more about the fascinating story of what became Thomas Hart Benton’s final paining, you can find a more detailed account on Saving Country Music’s Country History X episode about it.
What’s so important about this painting is not just it’s current anniversary. It’s that it offers a strong counter-argument to one of the most unfortunate social contagions surrounding Beyoncé releasing a couple of songs being characterized as country ahead of what’s anticipated to be a country album (read more).
Using this current event as a jumping off point, numerous outlets and now viral social media posts have proclaimed that the Black influence and contributions to country music have been stricken from the history of the genre. This has resulted in perhaps the greatest eradication and wallpapering over of the Black legacy in country music that the genre has ever experienced.
The “Sources of Country Music” painting commissioned by the founders of the CMA is one obvious and indisputable illustration of how the Black influence in country was not whitewashed. But this is not the only one by far. In fact, out of the nearly two dozen general history books on country music sitting on the shelf at Saving Country Music headquarters, none of them claim that Black creators did not have a hand in the formation of the genre. On the contrary, every single one of them state that Black creators were critical to country’s formation.
This also extends to biographies in the Saving Country Music catalog, from multiple biographies on Hank Williams that credit Black blues performer Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne as the man who taught Hank how to play the guitar, to the Waylon Jennings autobiography where he explains how he would “cross the tracks” when growing up to listen to Black music and later used that influence in his Outlaw country style, and even got fired as a DJ for playing Little Richard.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville is considered one of the greatest music history museums in the world. In both public-facing displays and in the museum’s 2006 350-page companion book written by country historians Paul Kingsbury and Alana Nash called Will The Circle Be Unbroken, it states expressly:
Black and whites had met and mingled since the early Colonial era, absorbing much from each other across a racial barrier that held firm socially but remained porous culturally. In many ways, poor blacks and poor whites shared a folk culture with a common body of songs, dances, and instruments that moved freely across racial lines.
Black fiddlers were ubiquitous in the 19th-century South and, in fact, were described much more often than white musicians in the newspapers, travel accounts, and other literature at the time. Slaves frequently attended religious revivals in the antebellum era, and while they were typically segregated from white worshipers, their singing was recognized and admired nevertheless.
…White musicians did not simply learn from blacks to sing more expressively, with full, open-throated emotion; they were inspired also to take up new instruments, such as the banjo, and to experiment with unorthodox chord progressions, blue notes, slide-guitar techniques, and unusual rhythms.
Throughout Will The Circle Be Unbroken and the Country Music Hall of Fame itself, there are countless citations and segments of presented history that speak to the Black influence in country music. This inclusion of Black performers also extends into current exhibits like the American Currents exhibit for 2024 that features Joy Oladokun, Allison Russell, and SistaStrings.
The book that is considered the defining history on country music and is regularly used to create college course work is Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA. This book plays a critical role in defining country history because it is commonly cited in other country histories and is considered the most definitive. Country Music USA was also used as the source material for the Ken Burns-produced 8-part PBS documentary Country Music that aired in 2019.
Country Music USA is a dense, 700+ page tome of country music. Five pages into the history, Bill C. Malone states:
Of all the southern ethnic groups, none has played a more important role in providing songs and styles for the white country musician than the forced migrant from Africa, the black. Nowhere is this peculiar love-hate relationship that has prevailed among the southern races more evidenced than in country music. Country music—seemingly the most “pure white” of all American musical forms—has borrowed heavily from African Americans. White southerners, many of whom would have been horrified at the idea of mixing socially with blacks, have nonetheless enthusiastically accepted their musical offerings: the spirituals, the blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm-and-blues, hip-hop, and a whole host of dance steps, vocal shadings, and instrumental techniques.
Black-white contact began so early and was so omnipresent in American life that it is virtually impossible to know who profited most from the musical exchange. From the time they first saw them on slave ships, white observers have commented frequently on blacks’ alleged penchant for music. In the four hundred years that have passed, white musicians have continually drawn on black sources for rejuvenation and sustenance.
And this is just the very start. Reams upon reams of the history are devoted to Black minstrel players, the Black origins of the banjo, White performers performing as blackface minstrels, and other topics centered around country’s Black influence in the book. In fact, one regular refrain you read in most any country history book, including Country Music USA, is how the Black influence on country music is often misunderstood by the public, but elemental enough to be indisputable.
The First Edition of Country Music USA was released in 1968. In 2018 ahead of the new Ken Burns documentary series based off the book, a 50th Anniversary Edition was released.
It’s not just that country music’s Black influence is clearly laid out in history book after history book. It’s that in country music’s most defining history book and one of its best selling ones, Beyoncé and her influence is actually talked about in detail. That’s right, six years ago, and six years before Beyoncé would choose to make a country album, she was already cemented in the annals of country’s written history.
For the 50th Anniversary edition of Country Music USA, Bill C. Malone allowed Tracey E. W. Laird to compose the 13th and final chapter. A professor of music at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, the new chapter was supposed to pick up where the last edition of the book left off in the year 2000.
But instead of offering any sort of traditional history on the 18 years that had passed since the previous edition—broaching critical moments such as the emergence of Taylor Swift, Bro-Country, the rise of Chris Stapleton and independent artists—Tracey Laird instead rather controversially decided to use Beyoncé’s performance with the [Dixie] Chicks at the 50th Annual CMA Awards in 2016 to set the narrative and bookend the entire chapter, expressly for the rich narratives involving race, gender, and genre this new chapter desired to broach.
Country Music USA‘s Chapter 13 isn’t a history at all. It’s basically a journalistic think piece, or perhaps an academic paper about country music and race imposed as a chapter in a history book. However, one byproduct of this unusual addition to an otherwise sometimes frustratingly dry recitation of country history is that it means that not just Black country history is present in country’s most important history book, Beyoncé is actually already in there.
“What did it mean the the new century’s most sensational pop music performer, an African American woman, to appear on the CMA Awards, a context still so closely associated with whiteness?” the book asks. “Despite historical, artistic evidence of the deeply tangled roots of ‘hillbilly’ and ‘race’ music, as it was christened in the beginning, whiteness continues to define country music. Still, black artists challenge that organically with their oeuvre and repertoire … Nevertheless, whiteness continues to remain a defining trait at the center of twenty-first-century country music identity.”
Why do none of the recent articles on Beyoncé and the expulsion of Black history from country music cite this final chapter in Country Music USA? It’s because the authors of this misinformation have never read it. In fact, it’s unlikely they have ever read any dry, standard country history of any sort. That is how they can falsely convey to their readers the dangerous and irresponsible canard that “country music” erased the Black influence and accomplishments out of country’s history due to white supremacy.
This is what a tweet from Rolling Stone emphasized right after Beyoncé’s first two “country” songs were released, quoting Rhiannon Giddens, who appears on the Beyoncé track “Texas Hold “Em” on banjo and viola. Taken from a 2020 feature, Rihannon Giddens is highlighted in the tweet that went mega-viral saying, “The idea of what country music is has been carefully constructed to seem like it was always white. It was constructed by numerous people as part of the white-supremacy movement.”
But this seems like a strange thing for Rhiannon Giddens to assert. Not only do all of country music major histories expressly state the significant Black influence on country, Rhiannon Giddens has actively participated in the telling of country’s history. Giddens was one of the primary subjects interviewed for the PBS Ken Burns Country Music documentary that aired in 2019, written with the 50-year-old Country Music USA as the source material.
A companion written and illustrative history book accompanied the massive 8-part Ken Burns documentary called Country Music: An Illustrated History, composed by Ken’s co-creator on the series Dayton Duncan. When you open the massive 500-page book, the first illustration you see after the Table of Contents is Rhiannon Giddens playing a banjo in an image from 2010. It’s opposite a quote by Black musician Wynton Marsalis. Giddens is also quoted multiple times in the book.
Note that the Giddens quote from Rolling Stone appeared a year after she appeared in the Ken Burns documentary and the companion book, both of which were lauded by critics, and specifically praised for setting the record straight about African American involvement in country music. Giddens said herself, “It’s a hard needle to move. It really is. The narrative of where people think country music comes from has been really reinforced in very strong ways for very specific reasons. But if anybody can challenge it, it’s Ken Burns.”
Along with Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA, the Ken Burns documentary is one of the most definitive, and one of the most viewed and cited works on country music history ever assembled. Not only is the Black legacy of country music spelled out expressly in the 8-part film, Rhiannon Giddens was one of the individuals spelling it out specifically.
Countless other examples of country history giving credit to Black creators could be cited here. But just to underscore the point, let’s look at the case of country music’s shortest history. Richard Carlin’s Country Music: A Very Short Introduction released by the Oxford Press is a tiny, pocket-sized history of country music. Would it take the time with such limited space to talk about country music’s Black history? It certainly does.
“Think of country music as a river: flowing along from a starting point in the distinctly American marriage of European and African American musical cultures; meandering through different regions…” it says in the book’s introduction.
The book has a chapter called, “African American traditions: Work songs, Religious music, and blues.” The book also specifically addresses the origins of the banjo, stating, “The five-string banjo developed in the mid-nineteenth century and probably derived from earlier West African instruments.”
And believe it or not, the tiny, small format 100-page Country Music: A Very Short Introduction also includes Beyoncé. On the next to the final page of the miniature history it states,
“Perhaps the biggest indication that pop and country are becoming increasingly one and the same was the appearance of Beyoncé at the Country Music Awards in 2016, where she performed her song ‘Daddy Lessons,’ accompanied by the [Dixie] Chicks. Country diehards were scandalized, but the mainstream country audience accepted this performance as just one more expression on the spectrum of what can be called ‘country music.'”
Wise, prescient words written in a country music history book, copyright 2018.
So why over the last few days after the release of Beyoncé’s songs have we seen this constant reaffirmation that the Black legacy of country music was stripped from history, despite the Thomas Hart Benton “Sources of Country Music” painting, despite every relevant history book putting the Black influence in country in context, and despite the Ken Burns documentary underscoring it to an audience of millions, and in recent memory?
The first is sheer ignorance. Many of the sources for this false information are not native to country music. They are journalists specializing in hip-hop, academics specializing in race issues, or general activists looking to get traction and sow clout on social media by making baseless, and often breathless, hyperbolic claims with no material basis in truth. There is also now a host of books in print that start with the initial premise that country music has erased its Black history, without ever citing any examples.
What is true—and can’t be overlooked—is that there is a general prevailing notion in the overall American population that country music is predominantly a genre performed and enjoyed by White people, both in the past and in the present tense. This is due to most country performers being White, though of course there have been exceptions to that rule ever since the very beginnings of the genre.
But when it comes to the historical literature on country music, this accusation that country removed it’s Black history is patently and verifiably false. In fact, it is these false accusations that are actively erasing country music’s Black legacy in the present tense.
A lot of the misnomers about country music’s origins and influences can be traced through the lineage of the banjo. “The banjo is a Black instrument” is a common refrain you see in think pieces, historical revisionism, and articles surrounding country music and race. It’s most always presented as an “ah-ha!” moment by the author to the audience. But in reality, what the assertion often illustrates is the previous ignorance of the speaker as opposed to the account of the banjo’s origins in the historical record.
For example, the book Country Music USA states, “The banjo’s identification as a rural white instrument is rather curious, since its ‘ancestor’ arrived in this country from Africa and was long associated with slaves. Its earliest appearance cannot be documented, but the instrument that Thomas Jefferson referred to in 1781 as a ‘banjar’ resembled the gourdlike device found much earlier in West Africa. Blackface minstrels introduced their modified version of the banjo to an international public in the three decades before the Civil War.”
As many of country’s histories also explain, in the 1800’s and the early 1900’s, the banjo was categorically considered a Black instrument. It was part of Black stereotyping in advertising copy, and offensive “lawn jockey” yard art and other memorabilia, often in caricaturist portrayals of Black people. Blacks were synonymous with the banjo, so much so that if White performers wanted to play the banjo, they often did so in blackface to attempt to come across as more authentic.
Where did the disconnect between the banjo’s Black origins and it’s misunderstanding as a white instrument originate? Though Rhiannon Giddens and other attribute white supremacy, it’s likely due to two significant cultural moments that became synonymous with the banjo in the 1970s: The theme for the TV show The Beverley Hillbillies played by Earl Scruggs, and the “dueling banjo” scene from the 1972 film Deliverance.
Both of these iconic moments of American culture went to shift the perception of the banjo as an artifact of African American culture, to one of poor, uneducated, slack jawed and incestuous agrarian Whites—not exactly the portrayal those focused on white supremacy may want White culture to be identified with.
The Earl Scruggs style of banjo playing revolutionized the instrument, brought it forth as more of a lead instrument out front in the mix, and dramatically popularized it. This helped obfuscate the instrument’s Black origins, but doesn’t carry any signifyers of white supremacy as part of that transition of thought.
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Again, the examples of the Black origins of country music being put in their proper context are quite numerous. One could also cite the work of Hank Williams Jr.
There are the numerous songs from Hank Williams Jr. where he pays homage to his father’s mentor, Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, most notably the “Tee-Tot Song.” There is an obelisk and plaque in front of the segregated cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama where Tee-Tot is buried that Hank Jr. and members of the Grand Ole Opry paid for and placed.
To read more about the honoring of Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne in Montgomery, CLICK HERE.
These days, most of country music history is told online. And online, the amount of think piece and editorial copy canonizing Black participation in country music is outright incredible. But if this material claims that Black participation was stricken from the country music record, it is patently false. This never happened, and despite some attempts to say otherwise, it is inarguable.
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On February 14th, a hip-hop writer named Taylor Crumpton published an article in TIME titled, “Beyoncé Has Always Been Country.”
The first line of the article states, “The greatest lie country music ever told was convincing the world that it is white.”
This sentence is a verifiable lie in itself. First, country music is not a monolith, meaning that it is made up of various entities, including performers, instrumentalists, songwriters, record labels, radio DJs, festivals, journalists, etc., including many that are Black and Brown. Yet country music is regularly dealt with as if one decision or action represents the entirety of the genre. This is used to indict the entire institution in an irresponsible manner.
But as has been laid out in this article, the history of country music is starkly clear about the importance of Black performers and creators, and has been from the very beginning. That’s not to say that Black performers have been given equal opportunity, equal representation, and have been dealt with equitably over the years because of course they haven’t been. Racism has been prevalent throughout country music’s history. This goes without saying.
But Black performers and the Black influence have been present as well, and irrefutably documented in the genre’s historical canon, including Beyoncé. The fact that Black creators have struggled so mightily is the reason to emphasize their accomplishments if nothing else—to lift them up as opposed to downplaying them as meaningless or tokenary, or eradicating them entirely by saying they were removed from country’s history instead of pointing people to where they exist.
Saving Country Music reached out to the Time author Taylor Crumpton on X/Twiter and asked, “Can you please cite the source of when ‘country music’ told or convinced the world that it was only White? The history book that says this? The documentary? The public speech? Any sort of quote or notation from any authoritative source? Asking in good faith. Thanks!”
Taylor Crumpton promptly blocked the Saving Country music X/Twitter account. There is no discussion to be had about these critical topics, apparently.
The Time article also states, “The truth is that country music has never been white. Country music is Black. Country music is Mexican. Country music is Indigenous.”
In the current media environment, to gain attention for your think piece or tweet, you must ratchet up the rhetoric, be more hyperbolic and radical to separate yourself from the norms, and to flank your peers in the marketplace of ideas. The more radical your statements are, the more they will trend on social media, creating a perverse incentive tugging journalists and activists further towards outright lies.
In truth, the racist revisionism that is happening in country music is the removal of the agency of White performers in the music as being nothing more than trivial appropriators as opposed to contributors. Articles like the Time Magazine piece also strike down huge swaths of country music’s Black history by acting likeit never existed, and simply citing book titles as opposed to delving into deeper discussion these books broach by using direct quotes. It’s sloganeering, not sincere journalism.
In 1971, Charley Pride won the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year Awards, country music’s highest honor. In 2023, Tracy Chapman won the CMA’s Song of the Year and Single of the Year for “Fast Car.” Simply mentioning these achievements in a discussion about race and country music goes a long way in making sure those accomplishments don’t go undermined or ignored.
Ironically, over the last couple of days you have seen White rednecks with “MAGA” in their bios countering Black activist journalists, saying that they are the ones erasing the legacy of Black creators such as Charley Pride, tweeting in all caps “He had THIRTY #1’s!” and the activists responding that those #1 didn’t matter. There is an active effort to destroy all of country music’s Black history to offer a clean slate for Queen Bey to “reclaim” country music for Black people.
But instead of eradicating racism or setting the record strait about country music’s Black history, the effect will be the exact opposite. It will exacerbate the culture war and stoke racism in country music directly. And if you do as Saving Country Music has done here—which is attempt to re-instill Black contributions back into country music’s historical narrative—you will be the one labeled as racist.
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You may not think that a single Black guy playing a banjo in a 50 year old painting, and four Black people over his shoulder that you can barely see in online renderings is not nearly enough to set the proper context for the Black contributions to country music. But what is inescapable is that they are there, and they were put the by the CMA’s and Country Music Hall of Fame’s founding fathers. They knew that in the future, someone might try to erase a certain element of country music’s rich tapestry of influences. And so they ensured it never would be.
Try as they may, the Sources of Country Music painting and country music’s primary history books will forever tell the true story. And that story includes critically important Black contributions.
February 15, 2024 @ 12:52 pm
A couple of other things I want to say:
Before I started Saving Country Music, I knew I needed to be boned up on the genre’s history before I ever attempted to speak about it with any authority. So I bought a bunch of books. I bought Bill C. Malone’s “Country Music USA.” I bought “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” from the Country Music Hall of Fame. I also bought the autobiographies of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, as well as the Hank Williams biography by Colin Escott. These were the books the seeded by country music history library.
Having read these books, and even before since I worked in the antiquities market and had seen the common portrayals of Blacks playing banjos at the turn of the Century, it never occurred to me that the banjo was anything but a Black-originated instrument. You will find this in every single country history book. You will not find any source that tells you otherwise.
That said, I respect that Rhiannon Giddens and other may have had different experiences, and the banjo was introduced to them as a White instrument. I shared my theory in the article where that misnomer might have come from. But I continue to be stupefied by people acting like this is something “country music” was responsible for. The historical record on the banjo’s origins are overwhelming and indisputable. I don’t think it’s fair to blame others for your own misunderstanding when the literature is patently clear.
February 16, 2024 @ 5:45 am
Your writing is so bad & one-sided. It’s hilarious & embarrassing. I wish Beyoncé the best. Remember, Trigger—you’re just another lonely guy behind a keyboard with an opinion.
February 16, 2024 @ 9:43 am
ad ho·mi·nem – adjective – (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
February 22, 2024 @ 1:39 pm
Trigger got triggered…again.
In other news, the grass is green and the sky is blue…
February 25, 2024 @ 4:40 pm
The pale colonizers seems to be more triggered than those with natural color lol I mean… If you pale people going to steal, at least know the history ..so did the banjo came from Europe or you people going deny it came out of West Africa ????
February 17, 2024 @ 11:40 pm
Boy, you love to miss the point of what Trigger wrote, don’t you?
February 16, 2024 @ 7:07 am
If the masses do not know this history that you seem to think has been profoundly documented, is it because they are lazy or is it because perhaps the story hasn’t been told well enough?
February 16, 2024 @ 9:07 am
What? Lmao that’s a really weak defense. In the words of Fez “crack open a book you lazy son of a bitch.”
February 16, 2024 @ 9:54 am
The influence and importance of Black people to country music has been profoundly documented. This is inarguable, and I feel like I thoroughly explained that in this article. What is also true is there is a disconnect between that knowledge and the general perception by the average American. I also explained that in the article. I think there are numerous reasons for this disconnect.
But to close that gap, what you need to do is educate people. That was the ultimate goal of this article. And the fact that some people are taking it as an attack on their ideology tells you all you need to known about the underlying issues with their ideology where they have perverse incentives to characterize country music in a way that is detached from reality, and that has the byproduct of continuing to erase and downplay country music’s Black legacy, as opposed to propping it up and portraying it accurately.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:40 am
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that history being profoundly documented. If you ask the average country music fan who the pioneers of the genre are, who are they going to list, Trig? Many country fans believe the genre began with Hank Williams, if they even know who that is. If you say that’s because they’re stupid and haven’t read the books that you have or taken the time to learn the Real History, that’s fine.
Just as you believe country music shouldn’t be treated as a monolith (something I find dripping with irony from you, somebody who has a site dedicated to gatekeeping the genre), the people who believe the story of black influence on country music hasn’t been documented WELL ENOUGH are not a monolith either. They’re using this moment, with Beyonce in the zeitgeist, to try and tell that story a little more.
Credit to you for also doing that. I just don’t really care for your approach, which also puts words into people’s mouths.
February 16, 2024 @ 11:45 am
“Many country fans believe the genre began with Hank Williams…”
I agree. And you might be surprised how many of them also know who Tee-Tot is because Hank Jr. has made it a top priority to make sure Tee-Tot’s legacy is cemented in history. When I took some time in 2023 to not rush just through, but really search for the ghosts of Hank Williams in Montgomery, Alabama, this became starkly evident to me.
“the people who believe the story of black influence on country music hasn’t been documented WELL ENOUGH are not a monolith either. They’re using this moment, with Beyonce in the zeitgeist, to try and tell that story a little more.”
I respectfully couldn’t disagree with you more vehemently. I think the exact opposite is what is going on. There is an active and ongoing effort to downplay, if not outright eradicate the Black legacy and influence in country music right now that is historic in nature. That is why I paused everything else in my entire life to get this article published. You are seeing white conservative country fans standing up and saying things like “Charley Pride existed” as they read some of the articles and social media posts coming from these Beyonce surrogates. If you don’t believe me, check out the Facebook comments under this article.
But I appreciate you acknowledging that I am not just wanting to sit back and criticize here. I am trying to be part of the solution. But unfortunately, I don’t have the Beyhive behind me. I have the headwinds of being called a “racist” for daring to say that Black people in country music matter.
It’s an upside down world we live in right now.
February 25, 2024 @ 4:50 pm
You do know the banjo came from West Africa or do pale people try to deny that too lmao karma is going to hit you pale demons so hard. How you steal but don’t know the history behind what you steal. You people have this entertainment to others creativity and then take it as it’s your own. Country music was created by blacks slaves…banjo came from West Africa and the slaves used to play when they weren’t being forced to help you people gain generational wealth and white privilege lol I know my history and I can’t wait for you pale demons to pay
April 1, 2024 @ 7:28 am
White people are the pioneers of the genre. There’s some black influence in country music just like there’s white influence in jazz and hip hop but country music has never been a black genre of music. Blacks can’t claim a genre of music that barely any black people listen to and even fewer participate in. It’s absurd. It would be like whites saying that basketball is a white sport because whites invented it. Nobody today would call basketball a whites sport.
February 16, 2024 @ 6:32 pm
(just FYI, for some reason I can’t reply to your below comment, so I’m going to do it here)
I’ve thought about this a bunch today, and I just don’t think there’s any way we’re going to agree. I also think you make some good points. I appreciate all you do on this site (LOVE the Droptines, btw) and find 70% of my music here. I don’t think your op-eds about country culture (for lack of better term) are for me. They always tend to rub me the wrong way. But you know what? I respect that you write them and spend so much time promoting country music. So I’ll lay down my sword, take the L, and let you get back to the grind of listening to music and spreading the gospel. Appreciate you, man, have a great weekend.
February 16, 2024 @ 7:51 am
Is this serious? Of course country music has erased and denied its black history. Turn on pretty much any country radio station (or popular streaming playlist)–go to pretty much any country concert. These things are as white as a MAGA rally.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:08 am
Did you not read the article?
Saying, “Of course country music has erased and denied its black history.” is an empirically and provably false statement.
“Turn on pretty much any country radio station”
Charley Pride had THIRTY #1 songs on country radio. In more recent times, Kane Brown has had twelve #1’s, Darius Rucker has had eight #1’s, and Jimmie Allen has had three #1s. Is this representation enough? Probably not. But it is there. And by acting like it isn’t, YOU are erasing that Black legacy from country music, not “country music” as a supposed racist institution. It’s country music that awarded these #1s.
“go to pretty much any country concert.”
I was at a country concert last week in fact. Mickey Guyton performed.
“These things are as white as a MAGA rally.”
This is where you are REALLY treading into very ignorant and outdated thinking. First, support for Trump in Black communities is SURGING. This is being well-documented in political reporting.
Second, as I said in the article, if you navigate to social media, you will see folks with “MAGA” in their bios, American Flags and AR-15 emojis telling Black activists and journalists that THEY are the ones erasing the legacy of their heroes like Charley Pride and O.B. McClinton. Throughout this entire thing, I have not seen ONE comment from anyone—not even on Facebook—saying that Black people have no agency or history in country music. On the contrary, they are out here citing statistics to hip-hop reporters who wrote about this issue completely ignorant of the African American influence and accomplishments in country music themselves.
The script has flipped. And if you think that the forces for Black erasure are white conservatives, you couldn’t be more wrong. Blindness to a confused ideology has made Black activists the ones who need country music to have always been White so they can co-opt it for their own devices, and if it doesn’t comply, destroy it.
February 16, 2024 @ 11:12 am
Dude, forget it. These people are never going to think anything other than what they do.
February 17, 2024 @ 11:19 pm
To further your point on why this is happening:
February 16, 2024 @ 10:22 am
go to pretty much any country concert. These things are as white as a MAGA rally.
That’s pretty much true for any blues concert I have been too. And includes folks like B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray. And in general, the audience for roots music artists of color are going to be predominantly white. Maybe not so much MAGA. I remember an interview with Rhiannon Giddens where she said that she couldn’t get a gig for her group Our Native Daughters at a historically black college. There wasn’t sufficient interest.
February 18, 2024 @ 12:00 am
That last part makes me glad, as an Afro-Canadian man, that there wasn’t a black radio station playing black music here in Toronto in the ’70’s and ’80’s when I was growing up, especially when seeing the current experiences of this Afro-American couple listening to music they’ve never heard before on their YouTube channel, as well as the experiences of this Latino dude.
February 16, 2024 @ 12:33 pm
“ These things are as white as a MAGA rally.”
Every time I have seen the legendary George Porter Jr. live, it has been a 99.9 percent white audience. I see way more (by a huge margin) of black people at extreme heavy metal concerts I attend. Never been to a MAGA rally, so I can’t speak to that.
February 16, 2024 @ 1:07 pm
“These things are as white as a MAGA rally.”
You are not in touch with reality.
Just parroting the pushed narrative.
Would you like a cracker?
MAGA is multi-cultured, across the board, and financial strata.
NEXT
February 16, 2024 @ 3:55 pm
Just not true. Facts matter. Nothing about MAGA is multi-cultured or economically diverse, although the media typically underestimate their economic class. Just because GOP strategists like Patrick Ruffini are peddling the notion of a multiracial populist MAGA, doesn’t make it true.
“Who are MAGA supporters, and what do they believe in? In these figures, we elaborate on these questions. As the results make clear, they’re not a terribly diverse group: at least 60 percent of them are White, Christian and male. Further, around half are retired, over 65 years of age, and earn at least $50K per year. Finally, roughly 30 percent have at least a college degree. That MAGA supporters are older, Christian, men, more than half of whom are retired, comports with the now-familiar images of the Capitol riots. What may seem a bit surprising is that about half are middle-class by income, and almost 1/3 are middle-class by educational criteria. Apparently, these same images of the riot participants, ones portraying a mainly working-class crowd, were misleading.”
https://sites.uw.edu/magastudy/demographics-group-affinities/
Cults are not usually diverse….
February 16, 2024 @ 6:58 pm
Ah JT, get off, sweetheart. Take a big deep breath.
Your burning drive to impress yourself is going to flame out.
MAGA is not a cult.
However, you are certainly the creature of one.
Took the time to thoughtfully reply to your comment, but Trig doesn’t dare post that response.
February 16, 2024 @ 9:25 pm
and yet this is the POS JT voted for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcBQYApjSa4 and remind us again which party started the KKKlan? oh right Democrats , go figure. oh and JT what is it you disliked about Trumps four years in office? the fact he didn’t start a single war? the incredible economy? the fact he made America energy independent for the first time in over 40 years? the foreign wars he shut down? that he made NATO pay their own bills? that he cancelled TPP and created a new trade agreement to preserve America’s sovereignty ? that he passed historic prison reform laws counteracting Bidens racist crime bill from 1993 ? that he put America and not Ukraine first? honestly make me understand why you prefer a career criminal like Biden who has been fleecing his constituents for over 50 years and has an open history of lies, treason and was even just outed by Devin Townsend one of his and Hunters closet friends as a traitor and criminal, over Trump who spent four years genuinely making America better than it had been at any point in your life. if you can’t name specifics and talk like a rational adult and only have temper tantrums and ad hominem cliches, dont waste my time.
February 16, 2024 @ 11:11 pm
Matt and everyone else,
We are not getting into outright Presidential political discussions here that are not adjacent to this article. This is a music website.
Thanks for your understanding.
February 22, 2024 @ 1:43 pm
“This is a music website.”
Of all of the asinine things you’ve wrote on SCM, this is one of them.
February 18, 2024 @ 12:45 am
Matt, you need to get out of this cult, and this man can help you do so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhFMgpDi9L8
February 16, 2024 @ 12:31 pm
Trigger, l appreciate you understanding the multiracial understanding of country music’s history. That is important for a critic, you know? But l don’t understand why you would think that just because black influence is written about in a book that the average white man or woman has read it or believes it. But l remember reading Loretta Lynn’s first book when she was threatened that she would lose support for being affectionate with Charley Pride. Thankfully, Loretta kissed him on the cheek and said if she had been “cancelled,” she would have gone home and canned string beans and the heck with ’em all, or something like that. Thank God for Loretta. P.S. l like the Beyonce Texas Hold Em song, and if you think it’s lyrically vapid, it’s at least got humor and that down down part is an excellent hook, country or not. I do think the song is more country than R and B. 😉
February 16, 2024 @ 1:25 pm
I don’t think the average man or woman believe it.
As I said in the article,
“What is true—and can’t be overlooked—is that there is a general prevailing notion in the overall American population that country music is predominantly a genre performed and enjoyed by White people, both in the past and in the present tense. This is due to most country performers being White, though of course there have been exceptions to that rule ever since the very beginnings of the genre.”
All I know to do is to educate people about this. But I have to say, I have been very heartended by the country fans responding to this article with “THANK YOU!” and “Yes!” while I haven’t seen any “No, country music is only White.” I think country fans are more inclined to know about country’s Black legacy and origins than the hip-hop writers who are writing about Beyonce going country because this is THEIR music. They are Charley Pride fans.
Charley Pride won country music’s highest honor, the CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1971. Country music has come a long way from when they were hiding Pride’s photo so radio DJs would play him. BOTH of these things are part of country music’s legacy, and they speak to moments of racial reckoning that should not go erased.
February 16, 2024 @ 7:07 pm
My reference to Loretta Lynn was in fact about the entertainer of the year award that Charley Pride received in 1971 🙂 I appreciate your response and I think it is always good to know and acknowledge that music coming from different influences can make for a powerful “musical meal,” meaning a mix of influences can make for greatness. I appreciate that you want to educate and hope you will continue to do so. For whatever reasons we don’t always understand ourselves, certain words, sounds, rhythms, or combinations of many factors draw us to certain music. If the music is true and real, it will get to us despite ourselves, as I think John Lennon once said. Maybe hip hop writers don’t acknowledge country, Trigger, but my good friend Rose, a black woman friend of mine for many decades, who was raised mostly on “black” music, really likes Chris Stapleton. So, the best we can do is educate each other. For those with an open heart and mind, they will listen.
February 18, 2024 @ 12:36 am
Your liking that Beyonce song shows how (like people who are fans of Taylor Swift) that you know nothing about country or even care about it, and also that you only like a country song if somebody like Beyonce-who isn’t country-is singing it.
Here’s a better example of a country song by women to listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw7fiWqfpnU
February 25, 2024 @ 4:38 pm
Get a life…do you know where banjos came from? I doubt it…it came from west Africa that was bought by the slaves…so you know country music but don’t know where the instrumental came from…pale people and their racist colonizers mindset
February 25, 2024 @ 5:22 pm
Nobody has every claimed that the banjo was anything but an instrument that originated in Black culture. Nobody. Ever. You won’t find one history book, one documentary, one authoritative source of any origin that has ever said the banjo is a White instrument. Conversely, every single piece of historical literature in country music correctly attributes the banjo to Black origins. Your attempt to use this knowledge as a trump card is not only ineffective, it signals your own previous ignorance on this matter, because anyone even slightly boned up on country music history would already know the banjo is a Black instrument.
Furthermore, the guitar, mandolin, violin/fiddle, bass and cello, piano, and others all have European origins. So the idea that one instrument immediately makes White people colonizers in country music is ludicrous. The steel guitar is Polynesian. That doesn’t make country music Polynesian in total. Similar to the banjo, it lends to the varied origins of the music.
February 16, 2024 @ 6:09 pm
There were also the contributions of Ray Charles, whose recoding company thought he was nuts at the time. And the Pointer Sisters had a brief flirtation with country. About a decade later one of them scored big on a duet with Earl Thomas Conley. Dating back further, does anyone recall “The Boll Weevil Song” by Brook Benton?
February 16, 2024 @ 7:23 pm
Hi Brian-Yes, I definitely remember Boll Weevil by Brook Benton. It’s interesting how then later, Randy Travis, had a number one on the country charts, I think, with “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” which I just read was #1 for 9 weeks on the R & B charts in 1959 for Brook Benton, and number 3 on the pop charts. A great song is a great song, no? And I remember Conway Twitty did “Slow Hand” by the Pointer Sisters and had a hit with it….
February 21, 2024 @ 8:22 pm
“A great song is a great song, no?”
Absolutely. There was quite a bit of cross-pollination of songs, if not performers, even during the ’90s. All-4-One remade John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear” and “I Can Love You Like That” into pop smashes, Boy Howdy’s “She’d Give Anything” led to Gerald Levert’s “I’d Give Anything,” Mark Wills covered Brian McKnight’s “Back at One.” Even Reba had a moderate country hit with a cover of a Beyonce song (“If I Were a Boy”).
February 22, 2024 @ 2:01 pm
In the summer of 1999, R&B singer Brian McKnight had a song called “Back At One”, which was one of his biggest hits. Mark Wills did a cover of the song later that year and it became a hit for him, too.
Yes, that’s a white country singer doing a cover of a song from a black R&B singer. And in 1999, nobody complained about that.
25 years later, a well-known and highly successful black female R&B singer scores a #1 hit on the country charts, and certain individuals are treating this like it’s the beginning of the apocalypse. SMH…
February 16, 2024 @ 6:55 pm
I am a deeply liberal person and part of a bi-racial family, but have to say that you are 100% right, on this. Though sadly, as we both know… people don’t want to hear the truth. They only want to hear what reinforces their own narrative and viewpoint. There are definitely problems with racism (and misogyny) in country music, but the assertions that Black people exclusively created country music and the attempt to strip away the contributions of White people to the genre is just as egregious and racist as the Whites who fail to acknowledge and recognize the contributions of Black and Brown cultures. This should be something that unites us, but because of the way the narrative is being spun, it will only cause more division and bad blood. It’s a damn shame.
February 17, 2024 @ 1:27 pm
To me its not so much that black people want to be recognized as having an influence on Country music. What they really want is to be seen as the uncontested creators of a genre subsequently colonized by whites. Their goal is not the recognition of blacks as contributors, but blacks as sole creators.
February 17, 2024 @ 4:07 pm
Exactly. And that is detached from the reality of things. As activists have attempted to get more and more traction for their tweets and causes, they have entered into empirically false territory. It stands to reason that 70% of the United States had at least some agency in the formation of some music. It’s indisputable that Black created the blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and the foundations for rock and roll. Along with Black minstrel players and later blues musicians, White immigrants from the British isles took their native instruments such as the guitar, violin, mandolin, and dulcimer, and made old-time music inspired by the folk traditions from where they came from. Saying otherwise is not based in any bit of truth. It’s simply an effort to be hyperbolic to garner a reaction online.
February 17, 2024 @ 11:07 pm
Great article. By that logic all history would be told correctly by the masses. One way to look at it is how schools teach history. If our schools are to be trusted and people grew up believing one thing is correct they normally don’t chose to seek out something else. But if the overall mission is to teach white supremacy then the accomplishments of “others” will be diluted, remixed, or ignored in an effort to meet the mission. So whether it’s critical race theory or the artistic contributions of non whites, it’s nearly impossible to get someone to seek out information contrary to everything they believe to be true. I think that’s why these conversations are necessary. Red or blue pill… someone will always choose the comfort of ignorance.
February 19, 2024 @ 4:41 am
I guess I don’t understand what is so significant about the origin on the banjo.
We are blessed with a broad array of musical instruments in this world. All of them available to artists in any way they choose.
Where’s the trumpet and piano come from and does that matter to musicians who express themselves today on those instruments?
It is exhausting to have folks make controversies and feel slighted over what race of person first conceived of a banjo.
Just stop.
Just play.
February 19, 2024 @ 2:58 pm
I understand your point that the narrative of whitewashing the history of country music may be overblown. But as many others have pointed out, the mainstream average American conceptualization of country is that it is music by and for white people. Which makes it’s Black legacy that much more important and in need of being highlighted.
A couple of other points:
– From your post – “Blacks were synonymous with the banjo, so much so that if White performers wanted to play the banjo, they often did so in blackface to attempt to come across as more authentic.” Seems like you are downplaying the several decades of minstrel and medicine shows that brought the banjo to mainstream white culture. These shows were driven by white supremacist depictions of Black people in order to turn them into entertainment, reinforce ugly stereotypes, dehumanize, show them as inferior, romanticize plantation life, etc. It wasn’t about “authenticity” at all – the shows profited white people as per usual. After the Civil War some Black musicians played in those shows because that was one place they could get work; and at times they wore blackface as well which undermines the authenticity argument even more.
-The Charlie Pride example is a counterfactual in a way but can also be seen as an exception proving the rule. As you point out, naming 2-3 Black country artists is quite a long ways from any sort of true representation. Also it’s worth asking what those artists experienced on their way to some form of tolerance. Charlie Pride’s first songs were sent to radio stations without a photo so nobody would know he was Black. He recounted several racist incidents from fellow country stars and fans (though he chose to not dwell on them). So yes he’s exceptional but he is one part of the broader story.
February 19, 2024 @ 3:53 pm
Hey Life,
Thanks for chiming in.
As I stated in the article, while emphasizing it with “it can’t be stressed enough,” there is definitely a disconnect between country music’s actual history, and the perceived history. I’ve also addressed this in numerous comments, and I agree it’s an issue. That is one of the underlying reasons I wanted to publish an article like this. It was meant to answer the charge that the Black influence had been erased from country, but a byproduct is it also explains that Blacks were in fact a party to country music’s founding.
As for the Blackface portrayals, that’s probably a deeper subject for another time. I wasn’t trying to skim over those details. As I said in the article about the portrayals of Blacks in advertisement and antiquity at that time, it often gave into negative stereotypes, and used the banjo to do that very thing. Maybe “authentic” wasn’t the right word there. My deeper point was in previous eras, the banjo was synonymous with the Black experience, and at some point that got degraded, I’m guessing by cultural iconography in the ’70s.
February 19, 2024 @ 6:04 pm
Thanks for the reply. Wondering what you think about the idea that Charlie Pride was successful in spite of country’s gatekeepers, not because of them. We can look at the Black Country Music Association and Black Opry to learn about the exclusion and racism running through the country music establishment in recent and current times. So it’s not just about history when the powers at be continue actively pushing a “country is for white people by white people” narrative / brand.
March 29, 2024 @ 6:52 am
Greetings ! I am a Black American from South Central, Virginia. Thank you for having the courage to write this article. We need this kind of relevant information available so that we can dispel ignorance and mature in our social evolution. Great job
February 15, 2024 @ 12:56 pm
Also, I have seen a lot of people countering anything said on this issue with talk about how the country charts and the “race” charts were separated at one point, and citing this as sort of country music’s “original sin.” First, that deserves an significant amount of context, primarily that both poor Whites and poor Blacks were segregated onto that chart together at first before being separated by race.
Also, that chart split happened 80 years ago and was later revoked. Charley Pride won the CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1971, and Tracy Chapman just won two CMA Awards. Even if you think that chart segregation decision was racist at that time, why are we holding Garth Brooks and Luke Combs responsible for it, when they weren’t even born at that time?
I will have a deeper article on this at some point because it will take a lot of parsing like this article did. I do think it’s something that needs to be addressed, but I also don’t think it’s the rhetorical slam dunk some believe it is.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:14 pm
If you are talking about me here, I think this is perhaps my fault for not being clear. I don’t hold “country music” as a current institution or genre or whatever responsible for the chart split, and am not trying to blame anyone currently alive for that.
I do think that there is a popular notion, mostly among people that are relatively uninformed about country music, that country music, throughout it’s history, is for white people, by white people. You can see multiple commenters on your Beyonce article expressing that sentiment, and I encounter it fairly regularly (from all demographics!) in my daily existence as a picker. I think a major starting point for that notion was the chart split and marketing thereabouts. T
Apologies if I came off as making a different point, that’s on me. Appreciate your work fostering this discussion.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:28 pm
This wasn’t just a response to you. Ganstagrass literally just tweeted this same chart split point at me. And I’m in no way not saying that it’s an important point. But it in no way justifies statements like, “The greatest lie country music ever told was convincing the world that it is white.” from the Time magazine article. Things happened after that. A dude just commented on Facebook simply “Charley Pride exists.” I think that’s incredibly prophetic and telling where this whole thing has gone. In an attempt to fete Beyonce, they have lost all touch with reality, and White country music fans are the ones stepping up to defend the Black legacy in country music.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:16 pm
Yeah makes sense.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:35 pm
To play devil’s advocate, couldn’t there be less nefarious motives for the chart split? Similar to the chart split that eventually happened with rock. Sure, many of the first generation rock stars were influenced by and sometimes performed country music. But I think we can all agree that there’s no place on country radio for T. Rex. A split was necessary to reflect the separate evolution of both genres.
Likewise, Jimmie Rodgers, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Dock Boggs, Robert Johnson and the Carter Family were all artists with a rural background, whose music was thematically in line with a rural lifestyle and performed on stringed instruments. You can play them side by side all day. Count Basie and Billie Holiday were phenomenal, but they don’t quite fit in on that playlist the way that Hank Williams would.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:36 pm
The answer is no, and the reasoning is at least two-fold: one) The first separation of rural Southern music into hillbilly and race music was in 1921, which pre-dates (and arguably helped cause) the evolution of country and blues into different genres, and two) We have statements from record executives, song collectors, and field recorders at the time stating that the split was for explicitly racial reasons.
These reasons differed, some being Northern marketing executives not knowing that rural blacks and whites listened to and made the same types of music, some being deliberate attempts to construct a nationalist musical identity, etc.
February 15, 2024 @ 5:41 pm
Thanks for the response. You know a lot more about that particular period of history than I do. I was aware that DeFord Bailey’s records were released to both the “hillbilly” and “race” markets, so it is obvious that record labels helped create the distinction in some way.
I was speaking more to the increasing urbanization of mainstream black music really beginning in the ’30s. The Depression made it less economically viable for record labels to go and locate rural talent and so their attention turned more and more to urban jazz bands, electric blues and finally early R&B and doo-wop. Great music, much of it, but decidedly not country. Some of the old rural blues artists were eventually rediscovered as old men and even Muddy Waters returned to that style for one album, but the mold had already been cast by then. It’s impossible to know what rural audiences (white or black) would have thought about Skip James or Mississippi John Hurt in the ’40s, because they simply weren’t being recorded by anyone. And, hey, the country music industry is probably as much to blame for that as anyone else.
February 16, 2024 @ 6:30 am
Let’s also not forget that “Hillbilly” was used by well-off urbanites at the time in just as derogatory a way as…ahem…that other word. Yes, poor rural whites reclaimed the word in the following decades, but so have black Americans.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:22 pm
There is an active effort to destroy all of country music’s Black history to offer a clean slate for Queen Bey to “reclaim” country music for Black people.
I don’t claim to know but I wonder if this isn’t the desire for many of the people raising this ruckus, to make Beyonce some sort of heroine slaying the dragon of white supremacy in country music. Given Beyonce’s many well-earned achievements this seems unnecessary to me.
Of course it’s the cranky old man in me that sees a lot of our social controversies as attempts by pampered narcissists to create drama where none exists, due to “Selma Envy” (envy of those involved in the Civil Rights Movement) or “Hedgerow Envy” (envy of the “Greatest Generation”). So maybe my cranky bias is coloring my take.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:30 pm
“I wonder if this isn’t the desire for many of the people raising this ruckus, to make Beyonce some sort of heroine slaying the dragon of white supremacy in country music.”
That is exactly what this this is. And for some, this is their moment. This is what they’ve worked or waited for for years. And if it means eradicating every single piece of Black country music history to make that happen, they are more than happy to do it. It’s happening right here, right now.
February 15, 2024 @ 5:12 pm
I think it’s pure silliness. Beyonce will wear her white cowboy hat until it’s time for her to think about Renaissance III. I don’t understand all the arguing about history. The problem isn’t history. The problem is representation now and I sincerely doubt that Beyonce is plotting to be the savior of anything.
Beyonce getting played on country radio and winning country awards isn’t going to make it easier for other artists to break through the country barricades. What she will do, though, is give black artists and musicians the opportunity to work and shine on something big.
February 16, 2024 @ 7:40 pm
I think you are right, Liza, and agree that Beyonce is not trying to be anybody’s savior. If she thinks she is, that is her own personal problem.
I turned 70 recently, and there has always been the crossover stuff in music. Sam Phillips at Sun Records wanted to find a white man with the “Negro sound” so he could make money, and found it in Elvis Presley. Being raised in the 60’s, I remember many white groups who supposedly made blue eyed soul music-Righteous Brothers, Rascals, Mitch Ryder, etc. But you also had Ray Charles in 1962 put out his Modern Sounds in Country Music, which was a big commercial and artistic success. I have a Solomon Burke album and one of his first hits on Atlantic Records, I believe, was a country song, “Just Out of Reach (of My Two Empty Arms.)” So, cool it people, and enjoy the music. Thanks for your comments.
February 21, 2024 @ 11:29 am
was Mitch Ryder white?
February 21, 2024 @ 11:30 am
was Mitch Ryder white.?
April 2, 2024 @ 5:44 am
This is stupifying….I’m kind of in shock reading this article. I’ll have to sit down with my computer and write a longer, more thorough response – but wow. All I will say at this point is yes, I too look askance at the new mythology being born in from of our eyes, but your central thesis is equally overwrought. Yes there is a segment out there using this moment in ways I’m uncomfortable with, but man, you cannot erase my experience, nor the experience of so many like me. Tony Thomas started black banjo players then and now list serve because he kept getting flamed on Banjo-L for daring to say the banjo began as a black instrument. You don’t know what the CCD went through, nor I, nor Rissi Palmer. Anyway I’m on my phone and can’t accurately respond to you – I don’t actually disagree with some of your points. I’m one of the few tooting the horn of the ‘cross-cultural creation’ of all of our earliest music. But the fact that you read some books that say the banjo has black origins- and yep, they are out there, it’s great- the scholarship has been out there since Dena Epstein and earlier – and think that solves the matter as to what regular-ass people know…just, wow.
April 2, 2024 @ 11:20 am
Hey Rhiannon,
Thanks for piping up.
Since writing this article three weeks ago, and since delving deeper into this Beyonce moment, what I have come to understand is that the Black community and the White community are fundamentally having two different experiences based off of preconceived notions about country music, and the role of Black creators in it. The last thing I want to do is erase anyone’s experience. I think for White country fans, they know about Charley Pride, they know about Ray Charles, they know about more contemporary artists such as Charley Crockett or Kane Brown, and so they bristle whenever anyone says Black people are not welcomed in the genre, or the Black legacy has been erased. When people tell them that Black minstrel players and blues artists were foundation to the genre, and the banjo is a Black instrument, they go, “Makes sense,” whether they knew it before, or not.
Meanwhile, Black people have always felt alienated and in a place apart from the country music legacy. This is the fault of country music not being expressive enough that Black fans and creators not only belong, but are a part of the country music story. That’s different from being erased from the physical written history, but that public perception is real, and manifests in real world attitudes and perspectives. So when someone says, “The banjo is a Black instrument,” many Black people don’t react, “Makes sense.” It’s an epiphany, a revelation, an awakening, just like learning of the foundational Black contributions to country at large.
This is where the big disconnect is happening. It’s also where the release of this Beyonce album can help bridge that gap in understanding, and help enlighten everyone’s perspectives.
That said, if Taylor Crumpton and others get their way of pushing narratives like, “Country music has always been Black music, and country music has never been white music,” it could only create deeper rifts in the culture war and misunderstanding that will be harder to heal than the rifts that already exist.
Before I wrote this article, I wrote to Taylor Crumpton, and asked her who ever said that country music was only white music. I crowdsourced for information on who ever said the banjo was a white instrument. I am not saying those moments and quotes don’t exist. I want to find them so I can speak to them, and potentially correct and dismiss them. But as someone who has read history book after history book, I have yet to discover these assertions myself. I’m not omniscient so I can swear this Black erasure in the written history is not out there. But if it is, it is much harder to come by compared to the literature that says otherwise.
But again, either way, the public perception is different. That is one of the reasons I wanted to pull the literature off the shelf, cite examples, give specific quotes, and let EVERYONE know, yes, Black people are a part of country’s history, and there’s not even any dispute over it. It’s right here in the most important works on country history that you can find.
April 2, 2024 @ 11:33 am
I hear you. I’ve never said it’s not in the history books. I’ve even said the folks we talk about, like the Hank Williams’s, and the Bill Monroes, freely acknowledge the black musicians who inspired or taught them – for me it’s the popular narrative about these people that leave their teachers out. I can only speak from my experience, and the countless folks I have played for, taught, lectured to, and spoke to after the show – this is NOT common knowledge. I’m sorry to break it to you, but most people don’t reach research books about popular music. And how music is sold and how it is categorized is very much tied to race, and that’s all up in the literature too. You try to be a black banjo player and deal with YEARS of being questioned because your audience assumes that the banjo is invented by white mountaineers. I ain’t making that shit up, I promise you. All that being said, I think there is a larger conversation here for those of us able to engage in open conversation with a willingness for dialogue, potential disagreement, and hopefully, common growth. But it takes being able to see past your own experience. I have my own, but trust me, I have heard from so many others with the same.
April 2, 2024 @ 11:51 am
Definitely agree that written history and public perception are two completely different things, and there is clearly a gap when it comes to the Black legacy in country music. I tried to emphasize this in the article itself, but perhaps could have done a better job of clarifying that. But all I know to do to challenge those public perceptions is to publish articles like this and try to highlight how important the Black legacy is to the foundations of country music, and to point out where this is chronicled. I think the fact that it actually is in most major country history works is good news. This makes the job of changing the public perception infinitely easier since we don’t have to re-instill it in the historical record, we just have to re-empahsize it.
The Ken Burns “Country Music” documentary had 34.5 MILLION unique viewers. That’s a lot of folks. And I think Ken Burns did a good job making sure Black creators were given credit for their important contributions. We just have to recognize that this work needs to be ongoing, and to continue to talk about it until that public perception aligns with the truth of country history.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:32 pm
I dont understand why any of this matters. If you like Beyonce, good. If you dont, also good. Just go to the next song. Switch the station. Whatever. I never listen to the radio, so I dont care who they play, dont play, etc. I listen to what I want, when I want. That’s the beauty of the age we live in. Music on demand at your fingertips.
There is so much music out there that it is almost impossible to listen to everything…of any genre.
To make this much fuss over Beyonce, whichever way you lean, is a bunch of nonsense.
February 15, 2024 @ 1:58 pm
It’s because we live in a country where we overall have it good enough for people to have the luxury of being upset over stupid, asinine, often fabricated things just to feel important (obviously this isn’t me saying that we aren’t facing real and serious problems in our country.)
February 15, 2024 @ 1:42 pm
Trigger, I misspoke in the comments of another article a week or so back. In relation to Tracy Chapman being the first black woman to pen a #1 country hit, I went looking for the first black man to do so and landed on Otis Blackwell, who wrote two #1s for Elvis Presley and one for Jerry Lee Lewis back in the ’50s. Blackwell was a great songwriter and deserves to have his name out there, but I researched it more and that distinction isn’t his. Noted blues artist Louis Jordan hit the #1 spot on the country charts twice in 1943 and 1944 with two self-penned songs. And there may have been others before him and around the same time.
In addition to the songs by Blackwell and Jordan, I will reiterate that “She’s All I Got” was a major hit for Johnny Paycheck and a contender for the CMA’s Song of the Year. It was written by Gary U.S. Bonds and Jerry Williams, Jr. (Swamp Dogg), both notable R&B artists in their own right. They’re both still alive, so maybe Time can reach out to them and ask their opinion on the royalty checks they’ve been getting for over 50 years.
I do agree that these people are the ones erasing country music’s black history, particularly in discounting Charley Pride and the pioneering work of DeFord Bailey. But since this discussion seems to be around black women in particular, Linda Martell had two top 40 country singles in 1969, the Pointer Sisters had one in 1974 and Anita Pointer hit #2 in 1986 in a duet with Earl Thomas Conley. Black female songwriter Alice Randall had a hand in writing a #1 hit in 1994 and, if that seems late, it’s important to remember that female songwriters weren’t really the norm in any genre much earlier than that, singer-songwriters like Loretta and Dolly aside.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t dark corners of country music’s past. But same can be said for every other genre.
As far as Beyonce goes, what I’ve heard is no worse than anything else getting country airplay these days, and, unfortunately, no better.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:10 pm
A few years ago, I was watching some country awards show with my daughter and Mickey Guyton performed. She said “doesn’t that lady know black people don’t sing country music?” I said, “They most certainly do ” She said, “name 5 – and don’t count Hootie.”
I came up with Jimmie Allen, Charlie Pride, and stretched to Ray Charles. I knew there were many more, but I couldn’t think of one to save my life.
So, after the show was over, she and went to Google and researched it was a wonderful learning experience for us both.
I said all that to say this – maybe we can use this as a “teachable” moment.
Yes, Beyonce’s most ardent supporters are going to frame this as her smashing down the barriers to black artists in country music. But maybe, just maybe those who have less allegiance to her can be reached with the truth.
Of course, maybe I am just being a big ‘ol Pollyanna wearing rose colored glasses.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:49 pm
Cleve Francis, O.B. McClinton, Stoney Edwards, Big Al Downing and Trini Triggs are five more. The Pointer Sisters won a country Grammy for “Fairytale” – a good country single.
February 15, 2024 @ 6:04 pm
Boy ya talk about real country performed by Big Al Downing. He was one of my favorite country artists . I’ll tell ya he had the best back up band I’ve ever heard in my life. Because of Big Al I’ve been a country fan since. I’ve sat and watched all this drama.
To much bs on a biscuit will ruin the batch ! Taylor.,,Beyonce’.. It’s always been how country makes me feel that brings me coming back. I’m gonna just say hey to hell with genre bs. Music is music is music. Red yellow white or black we are all precious in His sight !!!
February 15, 2024 @ 6:59 pm
I would hear Big Al in heavy rotation on 1050 WHN out of New York. He got a date on Hee Haw when that was a meaningful thing. Big Al was a good artist.
February 16, 2024 @ 2:27 am
@Todd P– The problem is that your list ony reinforces the idea that black artists were not welcome in country music. Big Al Downing had 15 singles in the late ’70s-’80s. The biggest two made it to #18 and #20. Only three others cracked the top 40. O.B. McClintonhad about 15 singles that charted–the highest two made it all the way to #36 and #37. Only one other made the top 60!.
The great Stoney Edwards, who was rediscovered in the CD era (after his death) had something like 20 singles on Capitol in the 1970s. Two of them went to #20. The next highest made it to #39. And Dr. Cleve put out 8 singles on Capitol Nashville (then called Liberty, for a while) in the ’90s. Only four charted at all, the highest one making it to #47.
February 16, 2024 @ 9:05 pm
I understand your point. These artists were talented people who, for whatever reasons, ended up at the fringes of industry. Big Al had some success in other genres which proved he had a lot of talent.
There aren’t a lot of top-tier black artists in country just as there aren’t a lot of white artists who thrived on the R&B charts. There’s blue-eyed soul with Boz Scaggs, Bobby Caldwell and the like who have that niche to work in.
What I couldn’t tell you is how much pressure is there in the (I don’t like this description) Black community for Black artists not to like or perform country music.
I’m a big Don Williams fan. On Facebook, there are Don Williams fan communities chock full of cell phone videos of Don Williams fans in Africa performing his songs. Don has as broad a fan base as anyone in the world in this genre.
If the music is genuine and heartfelt, it will touch people. That’s what I see is at the heart of this site. From Gabe Lee to Brennan Leigh and beyond, if it’s sincere and the artist has talent, you don’t need a formula for good music. It’s a question of getting the music out to people. The interwebs have given us the means to hear it and share it.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:18 pm
I wish I were intelligent enough about the history of country music to add something meaningful to this, but there are others on here that are and will. I do believe this is an important discussion, because it has triggered Trigger. And one thing I believe is that he doesn’t blow stuff up for no good reason. So dismissing all of this as simply, why should I care because I’ll listen to what I’ll listen to is a bit short sighted.
I love independent country music and I’ll tell anyone who will listen as much. At the end of the day, it’s still country music and falls under the umbrella. So the last thing I need is someone who believes all of this bullshit flying around social media judging me and assuming my musical choices imply an intolerance or racism. I don’t need country music to be labeled as racist simply because I don’t want my appreciation for it to represent anything other than that – a love of the MUSIC. I do think what you’ve written here is important Trigger and I do hope it reaches the people it needs to reach.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:23 pm
All of this whining feels like compensation or cope for the music itself not being that good. If she releases a badass, heartfelt, actual country album, I’ll buy It and she will gain my respect. I think it would be a huge hit. There wasn’t anything to stop that half a century ago with Pride, and there’s nothing to stop that now. Other than the music itself. But therein lies the problem, and the reason for all this noise.
February 15, 2024 @ 2:50 pm
What a great article. Most of those books are fantastic reading.
I guess my question to anyone who cares to answer it, what does any of this mean?
A decade ago people were freaking out because country concerts became booze fests
Party down south was on TV and had people pissing on each other
The Florida Georgia Line guys were making
ridiculous statements about Johnny Cash
And then one day that just stopped happening. And just a couple years the whole paradigm shifted
Now People are talking about this,
But I’m on people who actually know anything about Music, in particular country music, very few people have talked about any of these issues, at least not where I have seen,
And, nothing seems to come of the dialogue, except a bunch of people get frustrated until they move onto the next target.
What I guess I’m asking, trigger, or of anyone who actually has an answer, is there any of this dialogue actually make a difference one way or the other or is it just a talking point to keep the people distracted and up in arms?
In my comment on the previous Beyoncé article, I expressed to once upon a time I felt like there was a concerted effort to erase the kind of music that I liked, but looking back 10 years later, or so, exactly the opposite has happened and more of the kind of music I like has been preserved, archived, and made accessible than ever before
So, I guess I wanna know, trigger, after setting the record straight in all of the articles you do like this, do you feel like anyone who actually needs to read them, reads them and responds? Retract their statements? Do you think that the people who might read their misinformation read your material and realize the people spreading misinformation don’t know what they’re talking about?
Or is it just that none of those people don’t matter and they move onto the next talking point while the people who care now have the full story from reading articles like this?
In the long run, do these articles that set the record straight actually have an impact? Do the people spreading misinformation just move onto spreading information about something else?
In the last 10 years, I have seen more people move from not understanding why people said that modern country music wasn’t country music at all, to more people understanding why there is such a distinction between modern and classic country music? At least from what I see on social media and from the people I talk to on the street, more people are becoming aware of the distinction and why it’s important.
I guess I’m curious how widespread this information miss information, crisis actually gets, if erasing the legacy of Charley pride is actually a legitimate concern, considering everybody who actually knows anything about country music news about Charlie???, pride, and what becomes of the people spreading this information in the first place?
Obviously, every misinformed tweet won’t be retracted, every bad article won’t be fixed, but what happens in these situations? Does the misinformation spread for a while until everybody moves on to a new talking points? Do these articles that set the record straight make a meaningful impact? Do the people who spread miss information actually reach out to Stephen country music and either apologize or double down on the misinformation?
February 15, 2024 @ 2:51 pm
Saving* not Stephen… foiled by voice to text
February 15, 2024 @ 2:57 pm
The facts don’t matter to these fanatics. They are not interested in learning. They only wish to destroy something that they see as fundamentally racist.
February 15, 2024 @ 3:09 pm
There’s room for criticism of the country music industry, but labeling all of country music as just “white,” as the author of the Time article does, is just a blanket statement that excludes so many great black artists. Aaron Neville has been in the country genre for years. In the 90s he was nominated for CMAs and Grammys for his contributions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Neville
(See Awards and honors)
See Also: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0005270/awards/?ref_=nm_awd
He even recorded a song on the Jimmie Rodgers Tribute Album: https://www.u2songs.com/discography/various_artists_the_songs_of_jimmie_rodgers_a_tribute_album
Not to mention all the other names here in the comments.
Are there gatekeepers? Yes, but not simply bc of racism- more like some notion of what traditional country music should sound like. Nashville didn’t like Willie at first either. John Denver was labeled by some as not being country enough (by Charlie Rich, specifically). And look what Dolly and Tammy and most women had to go through to start their careers. Sometimes it’s who they knew or a matter of the artists paying their dues.
Yes, there is plenty of room for criticism of country music and/or mainstream radio, but to make blanket observations about it being all “white” also excludes other critical observations like sexism in the music industry that exist in other industries, as well.
February 15, 2024 @ 3:26 pm
This is the end game for identity politics. Everything has to belong to an “identity” the idea that instruments and styles of music are tools for expression open to anyone with a willingness to learn and an imagination to express themselves seems to be a foreign concept. Instead, enjoyable music that comes from fusing different cultures and styles gets labeled “appropriation” and those who enjoy this music are made to feel guilty of their enjoyment.
Yes, the banjo is very clearly an African instrument. White performers picked it up over time (presumably because they liked what they heard when Black musicians were playing it) and developed their own styles culminating in the banjo dominated form we call Bluegrass today. Players like Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, Doug Dillard and countless others used the banjo to invent an American art form rooted in rural American traditional music, but one that could be expanded to include jazz and classical elements (ie. Bela Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Abigail Washburn, etc).
Meanwhile, the saxophone was invented by a White Belgian for military bands and European orchestras. Black Americans like Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and John Coltrane picked it up and revolutionized it by integrating it with jazz and using its unique sound to incorporate improvisation and modal chord structures over the top of standards from the American songbook and in turn creating the most original, important, and uniquely African American art of the last 100 years.
To take the current social media/contemporary academic thinking to its logical end, neither of these styles should be allowed to exist. Under this thinking, listeners should feel shame and guilt for enjoying music that’s been “appropriated”. A recent quote by Steve Albini I saw that underscored his hatred of music by the likes of David Byrne and Peter Gabriel for using Afro-pop motifs in their music during the 80s and 90s is just another example of how this discussion is taking place in just about every genre.
In 1995, Bruce Hornsby released the song and album “Hot House” featuring a painting on the cover of an imagined jam session between Bill Monroe (playing a mandolin, from Italy) and Charlie Parker – implicitly drawing the connections between these 2 giants of 20th century American music. Hornsby himself has worked with players of all races and genres, including a recent split single with alt-R&B singer Jamila Woods on a cover of “Fast Car” that predates Luke Combs by 2 years.
Certainly there are racist and White supremacist elements that have existed within the music industry and the way the music has been marketed over the years which have led to many of the misconceptions Trig is addressing with this recent Beyonce dust up. Addressing and rooting out racism within the industry is a laudable goal and should be pursued relentlessly. The concern is that by constantly dividing and subdividing music by genres and policing who gets to play what is going to be detrimental to helping expose wide varieties of music to all audiences. The good news is that real musicians never seem to care about that and keep their ears open at all times.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:38 pm
Amen.
February 15, 2024 @ 7:29 pm
Well said. Sadly I wouldn’t expect mean-spirited in group preference and flat out racism to ever go away. Whether it’s the asshole’ry of Charles Mingus to the alt-right proclivities of current and former members of Pantera. Identity poliitics is so insidiious because it is has no clearly stated end-goal and it inevitably eats it’s own when it runs out of targets. It’s a cancer that needs to keep destroying for it’s very existence to continue.
February 18, 2024 @ 9:15 am
Exactly that, Lake Erie Brown; I’ve also heard such bullshit as people blasting the rock band Arcade Fire for ‘appropriating’ Haitian music and not paying the people who play it any money. If people like this had been around when George Harrison had incorporated Indian music into the Beatles’ songs and his own songs, and had also brought the sitar to the Western world, he would’ve been accused of the same thing.
February 19, 2024 @ 11:25 am
Exactly! And how many people were turned on to Indian music from the Beatles?!
What I think gets lost in a lot of the political/cultural discourse these days is that the modern left and modern right are both fundamentally ILLiberal. The “L” word used to have a specific meaning that implied freedom in both cultural/personal matters and economic ones. Now both sides of the divide are more interested in being thought police and enforcing orthodoxy.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:07 pm
Seriously, who are the ones that always make it about race? And if you, by definition, see everything in terms of race, you are a racist. Now GTFO.
February 16, 2024 @ 4:51 pm
You’re really smart, Steven. Thanks for the contribution. Whether your poetic GTFO-brilliance wants to acknowledge it or not, racism exists–and it’s systemic and structural. Choosing to look the other way, only strengthens White supremacy. Talking about race and recognizing race, doesn’t make you racist. Denying race and arguing for a color-blind society is color-blind racism.
I also love your “Seriously, who are the ones that always make it about race? Who are these folks? It’s folks like Trump who assert Obama was born in Africa, or whose father actively said he didn’t want to rent to Black applicants who he regularly called “nig*****,” and maybe it’s the White nationalists marching on Charlottesville shouting about blood and soil (just as Trump recently accused immigrants of poisoining the blood of the nation.” What a dog whistle! But, you somehow want to make it about folks calling out systemic racism! Truly laughable.
February 17, 2024 @ 7:45 am
The post you are responding to is indeed simple and blunt, so that even a miserable marxist like you can understand. Anyway, I should have known better than to expect anything other than ideological nonsense in return.
Out of curiosity: does JT stand for just trolling and are you one of the incarnations of the gentile?
February 18, 2024 @ 9:21 am
As Farron Williams recently said (https://youtu.be/4QRMXAFawfY?si=FArwAvc7YHbuEedQ) about Marjorie Taylor Greene and her insulting Larry David over what he said in an episode of his TV show, can people like you come up with a better insult than ‘Communist’ or ‘Marxist’? Those are so last century (but then again, people like you and her want to drag the USA back into the past, because past eras are the only ones that people like you and her can live in and thrive in.)
February 18, 2024 @ 4:05 pm
I’m fine with calling people what they are, so no, I won’t be calling them anything else. They consider it an insult? Don’t be a communist then.
And the past has been, had some really good points though. And way better music.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:08 pm
Will you approach Charley Pride’s estate or DeFord Bailey’s descendants, whom I think Rhiannon spoke to in a radio series? I think this series is essential, and some of your best work. I’ve put your question to whatserface Crumpton via her website. I encourage people in this comments section to do the same: https://www.taylorcrumpton.com/contact
February 15, 2024 @ 4:14 pm
If Taylor Crumpton has created a public forum for people to reach out to her and that’s something people want to do, that is fine. But let’s please not be harassing. Let’s be bigger people here and let the facts and information speak for itself.
February 15, 2024 @ 10:57 pm
I understand how ambiguous the comment was, and pile-ons are pointless, but blocking someone does not make for good dialogue in a time where we need, to be blunt, truth and reconciliation. I did email one noted critic and he has promised an OpEd. I think there’s validity in the argument that one play takes away play from another black or female artist, and that this is the latest fight in the Battle of the Overton Window.
Why doesn’t Bey cosy up to Apple Music, though?
February 16, 2024 @ 10:16 am
I think Taylor Crumpton really showed the deep, underlying issue with so much media these days by blocking me, which is they only want to know the reality they live in, and use the blocking feature to curate that. This is super dangerous. You want to interact with ideas and perspectives that are different from your own. That is why I continue to operate a comments section, and have never blocked anyone on Twitter ever. Sure, people say mean things and it can hurt. But it also broadens your perspective, steel mans your arguments, and allows you to speak convincingly to perspectives that are different than your own.
February 17, 2024 @ 11:19 am
On the topic of music journalists, have you seen or read any of Robert Oermann’s work? I saw him on CBS, he seems to have a good body of work behind him, including the docs:
The Women of Country
America’s Music: The Roots of Country
The Black Experience in Country Music
In the CBS interview, his critique didn’t seemed cherry picked, for a lot of the reasons you noted, disregarding some some history to make this seem like a different problem than it might actually be. Any thoughts on his work that might be useful here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPuczTvOcK0
February 17, 2024 @ 11:21 am
***His critique DID seem cherry picked
February 17, 2024 @ 4:19 pm
I consider Robert Oermann a mentor of mine, and I think he’s a great writer. I agree with much of what he said here, except for the part where he says that country music has “historically” not accepted the Black influence in the music. That’s just incorrect. Again, just look at the 50-year-old “Sources of Country Music” painting.
And people keep saying, “Yea, well were not talking about the ACTUAL history, like in the history books.” Yes you are. The works cited in this article are country music’s history. Full stop.
I agree that it has clearly been harder for Black folks to break into the industry, but then he names off Kane Brown and Darius Rucker, who both have a career’s worth of #1 songs on country radio. Then he says only 3 of the 100 Black performers that have released country records have made it into the Top 10. But I guarantee you if you took that same test to White performers, the ratio would be dramatically, dramatically worse.
The thing is Robert Oermann can’t even tell the truth, even if he knew it. CBS wouldn’t air it, and he’d never say it, because he’d be blackballed in Nashville. And now you know why Saving Country Music is based in Austin.
February 18, 2024 @ 9:26 am
Trigger, all of this happening is because of this (https://thedailybanter.com/2015/03/23/the-world-isnt-a-safe-space/) happening in colleges/universities in the mid-2010’s; people like Taylor Crumpton came up in this and agree with this.
February 15, 2024 @ 4:40 pm
I think you have to distinguish between history as reported by historians versus “history” as promoted by the commercial music industry and the general press. Rhiannon Giddens has regularly credited historians for her knowledge of the situation. Her frustration is with the false impression the general public has about black contributions to country music, and this misconception had to come from somewhere. Those sources include record companies, country radio stations, venue programmers, and various press outlets. The fact that an occasional black performer or recording slips through does little to offset the overwhelming impact of this mainstream narrative. Even the Thomas Benton painting depicts the black banjo player as a small figure far in the back, suggesting minor importance. It’s easy to miss him entirely, and even if you notice, he seems like a bit player compared to everyone in the foreground. Anyway, I can’t speak for Rolling Stone or any of the other people now making statements, but as a long-time fan of Giddens, I know her attacks aren’t aimed at historians or the many educational organizations that try to present history accurately.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:23 am
There is definitely a difference between actual history, written history, oral history, and the way history is perceived by the public. I talked about this very thing in the article, and you would have to be a fool to not admit that most people perceive country music as predominantly White music. But even in that context, I think more people than you think would be like, “Well of course it was influenced by the blues.”
My specific beef here is with the characterization that” country music” was a white supremacy project. If you read my deeper feature on the “Sources of Country Music” painting, it talks about how Tex Ritter (who is the cowboy in the picture, btw) and “Uncle” Joe Allison were the literal founders of the CMA and Country Music Hall of Fame. If they were “white supremacists,” why put a Black guy in the painting at all? Why put the Black gospel quartet? As I said at the end of the article, saying this illustration is weak at conveying the importance of Black artists to country is fair. But a true racist isn’t going to put a Black guy in a painting they wanted to be the very centerpiece of their institution at all.
February 16, 2024 @ 3:14 pm
I think the white supremacists Giddens is referring to are people like Henry Ford, who tried to shape the cultural interests of his workers as well as the general public. A lot has been published about his antisemitism which played out strangely through his insistence that black jazz was being promoted by Jews. He then pushed his workers toward square dancing but without mention of the form’s black roots. Giddens has repeated information she read that Ford organized country music competitions that intentionally excluded black musicians. I’ve seen this idea challenged by a commentator — that Ford personally intervened — but there was no disagreement that white-only competitions existed. I really believe you should contact Rhiannon for clarification. She is very open to speaking about the subject with anyone, and I’d bet she’d be especially happy to have an exchange of ideas on a serious country website like yours.
February 15, 2024 @ 5:50 pm
Sorry. I lost you about halfway through. After you basically said that THE definitive history book about country music felt the need to insert a whole about racial divisions.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I’m sick and tired of all of this forced racial divisions. We are all humans and we should stop constantly focusing on race.
Ok. Rant over.
February 15, 2024 @ 6:09 pm
“So why over the last few days after the release of Beyoncé’s songs have we seen this constant reaffirmation that the Black legacy of country music was stripped from history”
I’m going with “money.” Race hustlers gotta race hustle.
Musicians, whatever their race, care about music. They learn from each other, and it’s a joyful thing. As soon people bring their resentments to that conversation, the well is poisoned. Who would want to work with Giddens after that kind of comment?
Hard pass.
February 15, 2024 @ 7:21 pm
Victimhood is a shortcut many are using for personal gain. That’s all that it is. Pop artists are coming to country music for the easy success – It’s not for the love of traditional country,
As far as I am concerned mainstream country as a genre destroyed itself in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s and it will never be redeemed. And I’m not falling for this idea that Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Post Malone, Morgan Wallen, Hardy, and the like will ever be a ‘Gateway drug’ or conduit for new listeners to traditional country. Changing the parameters of what constitutes country music will not engratiate true traditional and “good” country music to new fans. Country music as a genre is just deluding itself for money.
February 20, 2024 @ 9:43 pm
So trying to enlighten clueless white people like you about racial issues is ‘race hustling/? Glad to see what you really think about black people, and how willing to be racist you are.
February 15, 2024 @ 6:37 pm
I watched all of the Ken Burns Documentary episodes, and he made a significant point to mention Deford Bailey as one of the first artists to play at the Grand Ole Opry. And Rhiannon Goddens was featured prominently. Not sure what her gripe is.
February 15, 2024 @ 7:13 pm
There was a radio station in Nashville in the 50’s and 60’s that played “race music” late at night, when it was taboo to even play black music on the airwaves. They would receive hundreds of barely readable letters which were from black families happy that black music was being played on the radio. I can’t remember the station name off-hand but it’s easily found on Google. There was also some record store that shipped race records out in other record sleeves to skirt censorship.
February 15, 2024 @ 7:58 pm
You’re talking about John R., who gets referenced in Don Williams’ best song. Or Bob McDill’s best song, if you prefer.
February 15, 2024 @ 8:31 pm
I didn’t know that was who John R was, thanks for that. I knew about Wolfman. That’s also one of my favorite country songs. I can’t fully imagine how cool it would have been to hear something that exciting on the radio.
February 15, 2024 @ 8:44 pm
I’m ordering Various – Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970 off discogs’s site now actually. It’s recordings of John R and his program.
February 16, 2024 @ 3:04 pm
1510 WLAC .Not just John R, but Gene Nobles and Hoss Allen.
February 15, 2024 @ 7:32 pm
Beyonce is only half black. So doesn’t her oppresive half and victimized half cancel each other out?
February 16, 2024 @ 10:25 am
Beyonce is half Black, and half Creole, which is also (at least) half Black. So I don’t think your math works out there.
February 17, 2024 @ 3:55 pm
So if this site is moderated and you seem to want a serious discussion, why even allow this nonsensical BS? Because this isn’t a serious point of view that needs to be considered and just adds fuel to the hostility towards black and women artists and fans.
February 17, 2024 @ 4:09 pm
All your comments are being approved Nadia.
February 16, 2024 @ 1:59 am
…too many women (musicians) in that painting – at least in relation to the actual state of country music this side of the millenium, ain’t it? so much for today’s country music honoring its history properly. the painting itself – a chunk of bad taste and wasted paint of the highest magnitude. it easily beats the “art” that was commissioned in the sowjet union, (communist) china, iran or north korea. completely worthless, if it wasn’t for being most obvious testimonials of its era and mindset.
if two songs by beyoncé can put country music once more right back into big justification mode, no wonder there’s a need for self help groups like scm. a little more confidence folks – but don’t take it from storms in your tea cups.
February 16, 2024 @ 2:11 am
Some people always seem to want to divide on the basis of race. The fact is the vast majority of people really do not care. Those that do try and divide are ignorant. I have always been very interested in the history of country music and Bill C Malone’s book is simple superb as well as being a great read. It like so many other sources has always made clear the influence from many sources, Irish, Scottish, European, black etc. I have always known about the black Opry stars, Charlie Price and others. Black artists are a small but important part of country music history. Fact is it is not a genre of music that is favoured by most black people, is it? I am disappointed in Rhiannon Giddens words, they are disappointing. I expected less ignorance from her. People are people, whatever their colour and it is time people stopped being so divisive all the time. The words of Martin Luther King Jr. from his famous speech are the words that should be repeated time and time again. This is a very thoughtful, insightful and well written article that I hope gets the readership it should. It would be nice if the ignorant and those that try and divide would read it. They do need educating.
February 16, 2024 @ 6:12 am
A lot of unsigned black and LGBTQ artists hoping to ride the coattails of Beyoncé getting airplay on “country” radio are in for a rude awakening.
Beyoncé is an established moneymaker and attractive woman.
Two things they are not.
February 16, 2024 @ 7:37 am
It seems to becoming clear that Beyonce’s new “Country” album was not just a chance for her to stretch her wings into another genre. I have already seen stories of her fans, the BeyHive, contacting country music radio stations and demanding the new singles be played. Stations who do not respond quickly enough or who have decided Beyonce does not fit their format are then set upon with phone calls and social media attacks of being racist.
Now begins the media onslaught to portray country music as a genre formed from racism, and remaining a white only form of music. Reality and truth be damned. Beyonce will be used as the measuring stone that the country music industry will succumb to, or be shown as proof of this racism. The instant movement by Beyonce’s fan groups and the media right after release of her singles gives this the appearance of a pre-planned agenda rather than an organic decision to try something new. There will be more demands for Beyonce to top the charts, win the awards, and be proclaimed as top country music artist, or else suffer the media and social media backlash.
I think I already know the direction the country music industry and radio will choose. Prepare yourself for the fawning over the new queen of country.
February 16, 2024 @ 8:09 am
Thinking out loud, carry on. 🙂 I listened to both of Beys new songs. I don’t care if it was her, Reba, Britney putting these out, I wouldn’t call them country. I’d rather hear FGL over this. Radio shouldn’t play it b/c they’re afraid of what ppl will think. & Why is anyone that isn’t country telling me what country is or isn’t?
February 16, 2024 @ 8:17 am
…”But when it comes to the historical literature on country music, this accusation that country removed it’s Black history is patently and verifiably false. In fact, it is these false accusations that are actively erasing country music’s Black legacy in the present tense.”…..
This small paragraph is the Country Music version of: “Democrats are the real racists!” That’s the common rebuttal far too many on the right regurgitate when a Communist calls them a racist, and it really sums up Trigger’s utterly weak, ineffective approach, not only on this topic, but all topics related to the Communist attempts to destroy Country Music.
Always on defense, always explaining, always taking the high road, always adhering to “muh principles” does not impress or deter people who only want to win.
When you accept your enemy’s framing of a given topic, when you accept their premise, and are only playing defense in regard to who is responsible, you’ve already lost.
For anyone and everyone who hates what’s being done to your music, and more importantly your country, you must understand something: the Communist DOES NOT CARE ABOUT RACE. The Communist cares about winning and knows that YOU care about race to the extent that it can be used against you to control the narrative. The Communist knows that your “principles”, dictated to you by the zeitgeist, require you to care deeply about racial issues, and he weaponizes your own principles against you to attack you and limit your willingness to fight back.
This is why Trigger (who isn’t even on the right, by the way) is utterly ineffective in this fight. Trigger thinks he’s in debate club. He thinks that if he can just make enough good arguments and present enough facts, that the people who only want to win will simply give up.
The correct response to this Beyonce thing, and the larger issue of blacks in Country Music isn’t: “The Libs are the ones who are really want to erase blacks!” The correct response is something that Trigger and many others don’t have the stomach for. It is to stop playing defense and go on offense.
The correct response is to say: “I don’t care who’s been erased or who hasn’t. I only care about Country Music. Beyonce is not and will never be a country person or a Country singer, and she is therefore not welcome in Country Music, and if you don’t like that, I would like to invite you to dine on a steaming pile of dog s**t while you cry yourself to sleep over it.”
And then go on an anti-Beyonce movement openly promoting her exclusion from Country Music on the basis that she isn’t country and never will be.
It’s really simple, and easy. It just requires an understanding of what you’re dealing with and some spine.
February 16, 2024 @ 9:22 am
I mean, okay – but then you need to go on a crusade to exclude Hardy, Jelly Roll, Wallen, etc. ’cause they ain’t country either.
February 16, 2024 @ 9:53 am
Thank you for assisting me here. Trigger already does that for the artists you mention.
He won’t do it to Beyoncé because he’s scared he’ll be perceived as racist… which makes him an easy mark for the Communist. Trigger can’t get past his own zeitgeist-driven understanding of the world.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:32 am
I already did that with Beyonce and “Daddy Lessons,” and got called a racist for it.
With these two new songs, I honestly think it’s more open for interpretation whether they are “country” or not. I also think it’s fair to ask if Beyonce is “country” or not.
But that’s not even the game that’s being played here at the moment. The game right now is, “Country music has never had any Black performers, and it has completely erased its Black influences due to white supremacy.” Clearly these are false, and proving so through the headwinds of being called racist IS going on the offensive.
February 22, 2024 @ 2:23 pm
The fact that you still allow King Honky on this website speaks volumes…
February 16, 2024 @ 10:37 am
Just stop lol
February 16, 2024 @ 10:17 am
Big if true.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:09 am
Here’s the thing: these progressive journalists that want to erase black history from country music don’t care if they’re getting rid of Charley Pride or Deford Bailey because they probably are completely unaware of their existence. What good are a couple of people that prove your argument wrong from the get go? Pretend they don’t exist or that they never actually mattered and bulldoze ahead.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:29 am
American is a racist, white supremacist country that is slowly – within the last 50 years – becoming less racist. That’s inarguable. Country music can acknowledge its diverse roots as much as it wants in books and museums but the fact remains that the culture that created the commercial genre of country music is overwhelmingly white because it grew from the same institutionally racist systems that inform the rest of contemporary American culture. There isn’t a fix for it other than slow progress and time. How many black artists were locked out of country for most of its history? Hundreds if not thousands. And the same goes for every other musical genre. I mean, Elvis Presley exists ONLY because of institutional racism. Artists like Rhiannon Giddens are simply acknowledging that fact. Racism isn’t ‘over’ just because we now (mostly) agree that it’s a bad thing. You can’t erase hundreds of years in a few decades of ‘sorry’. The media and discussion around Beyoncé’s ‘country’ record reflects this reality. Black voices that break into country are still breaking into a racist genre, Darius Rucker and Charley Pride aside, because country, like the rest of America, has not – maybe cannot – shake off it’s institutionally racist origin.
That having been said, this is a very smart essay Trigger, I really enjoyed it. Thank you!
February 16, 2024 @ 3:21 pm
Yawn, another lazy lefty take.
And Elvis had talent, you asshole, that’s why they still call him The King.
February 17, 2024 @ 3:48 pm
Unlike your truly insightful right wing take? And whether you like it or not, Beyonce has talent which is why her fans are so passionate. And personally as an Elvis fan, he’d be a more open person than you come off in your pist.
February 18, 2024 @ 4:43 pm
Who knows what kind of person Elvis really was? We certainly don’t.
And yes, I’m not very open to people who claim Elvis had success because he was white. Craig is clearly on some guilt trip because of his own skin color, pathetic really, but not my problem.
And if people enjoy listening to Beyonce, great. If she makes a country album, we’ll see if it’s any good or just a gimmick. Till then, why discuss her on a country music site?
February 16, 2024 @ 3:52 pm
It’s not Craig’s fault that his parents had to send him to public school, nor is it his fault that he wasn’t born with a natural tendency to be skeptical of what he hears and reads. But regardless of those things not being his fault, they’re still his problem.
It’s important that you don’t allow Craig to make his problems your problems.
February 17, 2024 @ 8:00 am
Ignorance may be your family value, but it ain’t mine. I grew up Southern Baptist and attended Christian school.
February 16, 2024 @ 10:36 am
Who cares?
February 16, 2024 @ 10:59 am
This whole argument is bull crap.
There has always been country music being sung and played by people’s of all cultures, on the North American and South American continents, and worldwide.
What is being discussed and whined over is COMMERCIAL country music.
For those who care about actual talent and authenticity, go to local, regional, national areas that feature artisans who are far superior to the media propelled wannabes.
February 16, 2024 @ 3:06 pm
Like Lost Dog Band and Brady Lux in the two adjacent reviews with a total of 7 comments!
February 16, 2024 @ 4:33 pm
Is it just me, or do you think Brady Lux and Charley Crockett could be fire ???? on stage?
I swear within the first minute of listening to the embedded in the Brady Lux article, was the first thing that crossed my mind.
February 18, 2024 @ 10:38 am
You nailed it with that last one, Di. Also, avoid Top 40 radio like the plague; as I like to say, ‘Save the art, starve the beast’ (commercial radio.)
February 16, 2024 @ 2:00 pm
Yea this whole argument is more manufactured crap to keep the division in the country. Has there been a movement from the beginning to keep blacks out , yea maybe there was. Was t any different than people with rap music trying to keep whites out of it for a long time. Some of all that is surely based on race while some was based on money. When artist were taken in and produced to be on radio, there is an investment that those people taking them in that has to be put in. If they feel they aren’t going to get a profitable return on that then they are less likely to take that chance unless they feel it’s a sure thing. If you asked the average person what race is represented most by country music, most probably would say white, with rap it would be black, heavy rock or metal would be white, and pop would probably go to all races. I’m sure bluegrass would be considered white by most. Perception is what it is but it doesn’t mean that it’s absolute. People can play whatever they want but success far as fame and awards isn’t guaranteed or just expectedly deserved based on race
February 16, 2024 @ 4:28 pm
No David Duke. The reason Blacks wanted to keep Blackness at the center of hip hop is because Whites had already colonized every other Black musical tradition of the last two hundred years. Go listen to Pat Boone and maybe things will slowly come into focus. Your juxtaposition of Black and White assumes equal power. We live in a White supremacist nation. There’s not equal power.
February 16, 2024 @ 5:53 pm
Sorry black people didn’t create everything by themselves. I know that’s hard for you to comprehend. Music has been around since the beginning of time, no one has ownership of it or gets any credit for inventing it. Far as the white supremacist thing, I’ll just ignore for its stupidity
February 17, 2024 @ 3:35 pm
Well considering the origins of civilization is Africa, maybe you should rethink your statement? But that might be too hard for you to comprehend. I suggest you direct your ire to the likes of John Schneider for the division in the country than the Beyonce fans who want to hear her music on broadcast radio.
February 17, 2024 @ 5:18 pm
Maybe the original people did come from Africa, maybe not if you believe the Bible. Regardless doesn’t mean black people invented music or that other people didn’t create music without any outside influence. I don’t personally care about Schneider one way or the other so don’t know why you bringing him up. I also didn’t realize Beyonce was having trouble getting her music played on the radio. Maybe she isn’t all that good
February 17, 2024 @ 11:09 pm
Shcnider is an outrageous idiot. But so are out of control fan bases who don’t get their way …and management teams that don’t know how to handle public relations and promotion.
Part of this argument is the bombastic rhetoric of we’re going to “reinvent country blah blah blah…” or what ever. Beyoncé has enough star power to record anything she pleases and get notoriety and success doing it. Maybe her “management team” should use prowess and tact to captivate instead of anger and sanctimony. Imagine the outrage if these roles were reversed. Playing these games is disingenuous to ALL fans and disrespectful to her by tainting the artistry before it has a chance. The music will ultimately stand on its own.
February 16, 2024 @ 3:19 pm
Here’s a wild thought – maybe most black Americans don’t enjoy, consume, or participate in country music (as musicians or fans) as a matter of preference?
Was there ever a time when a large segment of the black American population did enjoy, consume, and participate in country music? Were they pushed out? Was there ever a time when the vast majority of consumers and participants within country music weren’t white?
I ask because the notion that country music is a black genre, was stolen by whites, or that there are barriers to entry for black performers and fans seems far fetched. Maybe I’m totally wrong, though. Please set me straight.
At one time, blues music (clearly a black origin genre) was in fact primarily enjoyed and consumed by black people, with most (if not all) blues performers being black – but the genre fell out of favor with black people and was supplanted by other genres over the decades – soul, funk, hip-hop etc. If it weren’t for white British kids in the 50’s/60’s the blues genre may have been lost to the history books forever. Now any blues show or festival you attend is gonna be 99% old white dudes stroking their beards to the sounds of white performers. Oddly, that genre doesn’t seem to get the scrutiny, or face the accusations, that country music does – despite its obvious history of appropriation by fans and musicians of one race from another.
My point is, could wildly differing racial demographics within certain music genres simply be a matter of preference rather evidence of racist malice or appropriation?
February 16, 2024 @ 3:22 pm
“Country music is just the white man’s blues”
– Little Richard
I happen to think that music should be enjoyed by whoever fucking enjoys it!
I love Hank Williams’ music and I love Tupac’s music, too!
February 16, 2024 @ 4:20 pm
Still triggered I see. Looking forward to your response to Beyonce’s “Texas Hole ‘Em” charting today on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. LOL. What’s particularly humorous about this whole article, is someone named Trigger who routinely professes racist, sexist, and transphobic attitudes, relying on academic historians and other scholarly research to insist that country music remembers its Black cultural history. Just because that is true of a lot of excellent social history of country music, doesn’t make it true of country music in practice or institutionally.
Country music by definition today reflects its conception within a segregated South. As Karl Hagstrom Miller argues in his book Segregating Sound, the concept of “segregating sound” is how a multicultural process of musical creation (as you detail above) became segregated to form a “musical color line” in the early twentieth century by a host of people as varied as writers, intellectuals, musicians, and fans.
You would rather gaslight Black performers and fans who have argued of their deeply felt outsider status within country music, although you half-heartedly attempt to understand Giddens to an extent and how the banjor is constrcted as a White instrument. You like to think it’s simply a numbers game (country music is White because more of its performers are White). There are very real reasons most performers are White. It’s called White supremacy. The same can be said for rock music, despite its early pioneers being Black–from Jackie Brenston to Chuck Berry. For that story, check out Maureen Mahon’s Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race.
I would say you can do better. But I’m not sure you can when two country songs by Beyonce spark such defensiveness.
February 16, 2024 @ 5:48 pm
Trigger,
This communist ☝️perfectly and unintentionally makes my point for me.
You should tell him to gorge himself with maggot-laden rodent feces on his way to the darkest pit of Hell.
But you won’t. You’ll keep defending and explaining while he openly slanders you, your website, and the music you love.
February 17, 2024 @ 3:41 pm
Please explain what particularly is “communist” about the statement.
February 16, 2024 @ 6:21 pm
Still s lot of nonsense spewed by people who don’t even listen to country music, just were drawn by Beyonce on a Google search. I’ve been friends with and known quite a few folks that are black and really none ever thought about listening to country radio even when Charley pride was doing his thing. Not saying none do but I can say it’s not a big percentage cause just by coincidence I should have met one person who did if it was a big percentage. In fact by most black people I knew, I was made fun of for being from the country and listening to country music. The only time I guess a perceived stereotype proved maybe wrong was a black friend I had, liked heavy metal or hard rock stuff and didn’t matter the race of those playing it and he didn’t like other types of music much. Now mind you this was all a while ago as I’m not young but I still figure not a lot has changed. I will agree it’s possible that as we become a more blended nation that those things might change or be changing. But harping on the past isn’t going to change anything. I’ve heard the song by Beyonce, Texas hold em I think. It’s not bad and def fits the country mode of today anyway. It’s not something I would listen to normally but there is far worse on the radio.
February 16, 2024 @ 7:31 pm
Well Beyonce is still more country than FGL so she has that going for her
February 16, 2024 @ 11:10 pm
Seems like every quintessential American music type owes a great deal or everything to black folks.
Jazz, blues, rock, country, bluegrass, rap…
Well, not indie rock. Which blows anyway.
February 17, 2024 @ 2:48 am
They’ll keep chasing us down until we simply can’t have nice things anymore, like a Chiefs Victory Parade or a violence-free Academy Awards Ceremony. Is Country Music our “Last Bastion?”
February 17, 2024 @ 7:58 am
Who cares what Beyoncé thinks?
About anything at all, let alone country music.
February 17, 2024 @ 8:54 am
As far as the claim of Taylor Crumpton on Twitter that country music was invented by black people, I have to take issue with that. Spoken ballads have been around for centuries and in all cultures. The spoken ballads became song. Here’s a note about the Ballad of Barbara Allen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5jBl5r50P0zKGJm5nLTpwpq/never-heard-of-barbara-allen-the-worlds-most-collected-ballad-has-been-around-for-450-years
February 17, 2024 @ 9:27 am
Also a good read. All cultures have oral traditions, mostly spoken at first and then turned into rhythmic songs to make them easier to remember. https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/traditional-and-ethnic/traditional-ballads/#:~:text=Such%20historical%20ballads%20also%20entered,of%20mouth%20until%20modern%20times.
February 17, 2024 @ 12:23 pm
I find this whole topic tiresome and without any redeeming value.
How often do we acknowledge the creators of each specific musical instrument (if we even know) based on their race. Why should we?
What color was the person who first created a piano or a trumpet?
Do we celebrate Leo Fender as a white man or as an inventor?
What race was the person who first annotated music?
Assembled the first symphony orchestra?
Who invented the microphone and loudspeaker? Magnetic tape and digital audio?
On and on and on.
I mean to celebrate the wondrous power and impact of all music. It doesn’t all move me equally.
But it is all equally valid as long as it moves someone, somewhere.
Everything is derived from something prior.
It’s the nature of the entire human experience.
February 17, 2024 @ 4:06 pm
Perhaps you should save this scorn of race hustlers for the likes of John Schneider? Beyonce doesn’t need broadcast radio or quite frankly country music. She doesn’t have to do anything else in her life and she, her children and on down the line will be setup. Maybe just maybe she made the music because she has evolved to a certain place in her life where this speaks to her more. The question you should ask yourself is why this upsets you so much.
February 18, 2024 @ 7:11 pm
With Beyoncé’s star power, all she could have said was “I am at point in my career where I wish to create a collection of Country songs” or something like that, it would have sounded genuine and be an easy sell. Megastars have that ability on reputation alone. However her “management team” chose the toxic and off putting “we’re reinventing country our way!…” or whatever line of bombastic BS. Sanctimonious tactics won’t work, neither do bullying stan armies. The added resentment will turn prospective audiences right off – “by telling you where it’s at” and persecute you if you have a differing opinion. It also does no justice to her artistry either, because now it is tainted by being “forced”. SJWs here need to realize “compartmentalization” is a two way street and those throwing accusations are just as much at fault by employing foul and demeaning tactics…..
February 17, 2024 @ 4:14 pm
I’m confused by this statement. You think black and LGBTQ artists aren’t marketable? Because huh?
February 17, 2024 @ 5:01 pm
Perfectly related to the point I have a 3 CD anthology called “From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music”
Also the point about clearing the path so Beyonce can save country music is very plausible.
February 17, 2024 @ 8:27 pm
“Beyonce is saving country music” from what, exactly…?
February 18, 2024 @ 1:45 am
i hope this is a joke.. a bad one anyway..
February 18, 2024 @ 1:02 pm
Qoute 《”There is definitely a difference between actual history, written history, oral history, “》
Exactly. The first 2 have a tangible and traceable origin which help deduce factually.
Oral history is BS; its like gossip and the “telephone game” where it starts and as one thing and ends in another, usually overblown and grandiose.(a good word gor this mess,).
And I’m this case, tangible history should negate Bey’s public relations team’s “grandiose”, offensive BS about “reinvention of country” or what ever line of horse$h!t they are pushing. And that grandstanding does damage in many ways – Fans in general are put off by hype, automatic resentment of the music because of being force fed how great it is before you individually can judge it and of course, (oral history powered) megastardom outshinging the hard earned, incremental steps established artists have taken to gain fame while diversifying the market.
February 18, 2024 @ 3:33 pm
Once again I feel for Kane brown the guy is clearly working hard and will eb overlooked again
February 18, 2024 @ 9:15 pm
This all plays right into Beyonce’s hands. Making herself seem vastly more important and influential than she actually is has been her trademark for years. According to her army of online stans, Beyonce is a genre-defining artist who cranks out masterpiece after masterpiece, and has cemented herself as the very voice, heart, soul and conscience of the Black Experience in America.
The reality is that she’s a fairly mediocre pop singer, with lots of charisma and a talented songwriting and production team behind her. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, on the contrary. Many millions of people like and enjoy her music, which is fine. But the idea that it’s the pinnacle of the collective history of popular music is ridiculous, as is the idea that she’ll conquer the country genre next, and render the genre’s entire history obsolete.
Maybe next she’ll do a black metal album, and her “Beyhive” can explain how the entire history of black influence in black metal has been whitewashed away. Now that’s a record I might even pay to hear.
February 21, 2024 @ 5:12 am
exactly ..she is one of the most overrated fake industery plants out there…she used rece and sex and her husband power to get where she is..ovcershadowing a zillion more talented black women who really creat thier shit ..its very much known her father is the mastermind of everything she is and that she is compleytly manfactured ..there is also some dark secrets hidden behind her shiny image
February 19, 2024 @ 8:44 am
Well what I’ve found interesting is although I have seen the show too much, how similiar the Texas hold em song is to the kids show franklins theme song. Not to trying to throw any shade, just pointing it out.
February 19, 2024 @ 2:11 pm
Was enjoying the comments & debate….not caught up at the moment. But, I learned this yesterday which is tangential at best, but interesting IMO. A popcaster was making the argument that rock music also has a history problem in that the role of soul & COUNTRY is not given its due with most folks thinking rock evolved almost entirely from the Blues.
In the 1960s, some white rockers felt guilt for “ripping-off”/culturally appropriating black music & that is why some (Buffalo Springfield, Byrds, etc) white rock bands started incorporating country music into their sound as it was seen as “white music”.
February 21, 2024 @ 8:02 am
Guess who has the Number One Country hit ? Raise your hand if you said Beyonce Giselle Knowles-Carter ,the first black woman to achieve the feat .
February 21, 2024 @ 10:38 am
The song has hit #1. We knew that would happen, that’s fine, history made.
The problem with Beyoncé’s isn’t her ability to create Country music – it’s the resentment built by her bombastic PR and miserable stan army. The whole “we are taking over and remaking country” line of BS is sanctimonious and phony.
So, instead of this being a non country artist doing a soft launch into a new field, it is an overbearing SJW issue shoved down everyone’s throat. Especially by dictating that star power and greatness making fans minds up for them.
Reflecting that are the upthread stan posts which have infected the sight with thier ignorance of past stars and their successes – and disrespect artists like Charlie Pride. Perhaps our SJWs need to “check their priviledge”, put down TikTok, quit istening to hype and read more about recorded country history and the pioneers who built it instead of worrying about banjos and glitter – and realize there is more to this.
All of this infantilizes prospective fans and creates resentment, tainting the music before it has a chance to stand on its own and steamroller those who have been working strictly in country since the beginning of their careers. Success by privilege makes artistry opaque.
February 21, 2024 @ 4:17 pm
Beyoncé making country music (whether it’s good or bad, authentic or inauthentic) cannot help but bring more attention to the art form. If we are talking about whether or not her presence is going to bring attention to country music’s relationship to this nation’s racial history – is this not also a good thing? We are not talking about the erasure of Rhiannon Giddens, Charley Pride, DeFord Bailey, the banjo’s African roots or anything else. We are, I think, talking about the reasons that more African Americans haven’t felt welcomed into the country music fold and how the music’s history has been whitewashed in ways that jazz, the blues and rock n’ roll have not. That’s a discussion worth having.
February 21, 2024 @ 5:10 pm
“We are, I think, talking about the reasons that more African Americans haven’t felt welcomed into the country music fold and how the music’s history has been whitewashed in ways that jazz, the blues and rock n’ roll have not.”
The first part is most definitely a discussion worth having. The second have is categorically and irresponsibly false, and you and others keep parroting this verifiably false talking point from fear of being called racist and wanting to appear progressive about this issue. There was never a whitewashing of country’s history. It did not happen. I cited half a dozen of the most critically importance sources in this article. I could have cited dozens more, but I didn’t want to come across as pedantic. I’m sorry if people’s perception is that country’s history was whitewashed, but that doesn’t mean it was. It’s a urban myth. And it needs to stop being said because the byproduct is erasing the Black legacy in country music.
February 21, 2024 @ 5:42 pm
“The second have is categorically and false, and you and others keep parroting this verifiably false talking point from fear of being called racist and wanting to appear progressive about this issue. There was never a whitewashing of country’s history. It did not happen”
I would certainly ask that you not infer motive on my behalf. Now, to the meat of the discussion – would it have been better or more accurate to say that Black artists have been deliberately excluded and erased from the popular perception of the genre they helped to create?
February 21, 2024 @ 6:41 pm
I apologize if I come in hot over this issue. I just know from my own experience on reading, writing, and reporting on country music history for 16 years that saying or even inferring that the Black legacy of country music was erased or whitewashed is empirically false. I also know that despite the truth of the matter, millions of people over the last week or so have been convinced that is the case.
“would it have been better or more accurate to say that Black artists have been deliberately excluded and erased from the popular perception of the genre they helped to create?”
No, it would not. The only people that I know that continuously participate in Black erasure are the activists and journalists that want to fete Beyonce in this moment by acting like her move is unprecedented, historic, and transformational.
What I will say is that it has been significantly harder for Black performers to break into country music historically, and that I have no doubt that there are Black artists that never got their fair shot because of the color of their skin. How much is that relevant in the modern context after the success Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, Jimmy Allen, and others have had? I don’t know. But the urge to be hyperbolic and maximalist about this issue to earn attention through social media algorithms has caused people to veer further and further from the truth, which is that there has always been an inventory issue when it comes to Black artists, just like there has been an inventory issue with women in the genre. There are just significantly less Black people pursuing country music then there have been white ones. Once you understand this issue from that fundamental standpoint, you can craft pragmatic solutions on how to solve it. If you say country music is solely about white supremacy, always has been, and purposefully erased its Black legacy, you do not have the proper knowledge base to address the underlying issues because instead of trying to tackle the inventory issue, you’re off fighting a crusade against a boogey man that no longer exists, if it ever did. This is why the women in country issue continues to fail as well. See my article on the recent Key Western Fest.
February 21, 2024 @ 9:57 pm
I agree with you that the issue of country music’s reckoning with its racial history is a complex one – made more so by the fact that, unlike jazz, rock and the blues -all of which originated in the South and then took flight with the Black migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, country remains much more tethered to the zeitgeist of the American South and Southwest (even if the music is enjoyed everywhere). Please don’t misunderstand, I am not saying that everyone from the south is a racist or is consciously supporting white supremacy. What I am saying is that white supremacy was (and some would say IS) much more thoroughly entrenched in parts of the American South and that would lend itself to how quickly a lot of people were willing to take what they liked from Black music without actually supporting Black musicians. In some quarters, that means Tee-tot isn’t celebrated for his own skill, he’s celebrated for giving us Hank Williams.
Are there successful Black country artists? Sure there are. One could argue that a white supremacist system is always capable of finding “good ones” among the oppressed to celebrate and elevate. I’m not sure that it goes that deep – I think a lot of Black artists that might consider a career in country might consider it simply not worth enduring the possibility of racist blowback for trying to get into “the white man’s blues.”
Ultimately, I think Beyoncé’s likely-short-lived country phase is good for the genre. I think if her coattails provide for more varied representation in country music – i.e music that actually looks and sounds like the country it represents, that’s not a bad thing. Black people from the South embracing a key part of Southern identity and getting (or, I would argue, restoring) a seat at the table when it comes to this unique American art form seems to me to be a win.
February 22, 2024 @ 4:34 pm
Black participation stricken from Country Music genre until February of 2024? —Aha!, what a farce. If Black performers like: Chuck Berry, B.B.King, Little Richard, Ray Charles, and Charley Pride have been present and documented in Classic Country’s historical canon since the 40s, then it’s a refutable claim that “racism has been prevalent through-out Country Music’s history.” Classic Country Music is as indigenous to the American experience and history; as is “Honky Tonk Music” to George Strait’s neo-traditional Texas music influences. THANK YOU!
March 11, 2024 @ 10:04 am
I like the new Beyoncé song but it’s pop not country. You can’t dye your hair blonde, chuck on a cowboy hat, add a banjo to your song and claim it’s country. To me the song sounds like what someone’s idea of country might be, it doesn’t sound like someone entrenched in country, I don’t feel like she’s really living it. Beyoncé is a performer and is no different to someone like Madonna in that she will adopt whatever culture or style she feels like in the moment. She’s also a greedy capitalist raised in a middle class family. Music to her (while she may claim she’s empowering black people) is a business. She’s here to do one thing only and that is to make money. She couldn’t care less if her song is considered country or not by authentic country fans either way she’ll make a ton. She got to where she is today by trampling on and exploiting those beneath her, she’s no different to any other cut throat millionaire out there. You don’t get to where she is by empowering and supporting others. Her husband plays the gentle, supportive husband and doting father now but he built his empire by creating songs and music videos that exploited black and brown women by treating them as objects. I really wish that the world would stop holding those two up to a pedestal just because have black skin.
May 28, 2024 @ 12:19 pm
I think people miss the reason there is such an issue with the trendy “blackening” of country music.It is because it is just another attack on something perceived to be “too white” and I think a growing number of americans are getting annoyed with this idiotic trend and wonder where it will end.The most disheartening thing about it is the whites who go along with it and praise it rather than opposing it and exposing it’s true ideological and political intent.It’s just another part of the ongoing subversion of what was once a white country by a hate-filled elite who aim to destroy it.No matter how trivial and inconsequential these trends may seem,they are still,as I say,part of a much larger and more nefarious agenda.It isn’t simply a joke that should be ignored,no matter how ridiculous it is.It is an agenda with potentially ruinous consequences for our remaining cultural institutions.If it isn’t stopped,eventually there will be nothing left that is white and american and western that hasn’t been polluted with “wokeness”
May 28, 2024 @ 1:22 pm
Though I agree with you that equating “witness” to evil is definitely a trendy thing and a problem that has infected large swaths of media and academia, I’d push back on the characterization that this was once a “white country.” Native Americans were here before Western Europeans. And when Western Europeans came, they almost immediately brought Black slaves with them.
The influences and origins of country music are predominantly White. But I do think it is important to recognize the Black influence in the music as well.
January 22, 2025 @ 2:56 pm
Just ran into this article today, a year or so after its release. Thanks for getting your perspective out there.
Anyone who knows anything about country music knows that black contributions are central to the form. As you mention, this is well documented. Black music and influence is so important to country music that it has been a signifier of authenticity since the beginning of the genre.
Those that diminish those contributions, for whatever reason, make it more difficult to get to the truth of the complicated and interesting story of country music.