The South, the Civil War and complexity in country & bluegrass music
I'm stuck on a theme, I guess. I think the statue issue is pretty much done to death at this point. There is, however, something more complex and interesting here as it relates to music. I addressed this to some degree in my earlier post on statues and art, but let's delve into the complex politics of country, bluegrass and how issues of race, region and the Civil War are treated in these genres.
That's Norman Blake playing guitar, for those taking notes. Anyway, this song is pretty much a condemnation of the south's position in the Civil War. It is a condemnation of the soldier's commanding officer, the fight, and includes that great line, "I don't even know what I'm fightin' for, I ain't never owned a slave." This is pretty much the opposite of glorifying the "lost cause." If you wanted a demonstration of why Steve Earle is the kind of country musician who gets the left-wing stamp of approval, this song is a good one.
But like I said, that's too easy. So let's contrast that, now, with Blue Highway, and "He Walked All The Way Home."
Pretty different, isn't it? I mean, you can even see the different image conveyed in the cover art. Earle goes for the Woody Guthrie image of the working class troubadour, and Blue Highway goes for the Sunday morning-at-a-southern-church thing. And check out that mullet Tim Stafford is sportin' in 1998! Great singer, great guitarist, but seriously!
Anyway, this is where we get into some real complexity because this is the kind of song that tries to ride that line of a sympathetic portrayal of a southern soldier without actually taking an ugly position on slavery, and that's a hard thing to do. The song is a sad ballad about a confederate soldier sadly walking home after the Confederacy surrendered. It includes lines like, "In the end, he knew the reasons." Well, dude, if you knew, then why were you fighting? At least the protagonist in "Ben McCulloch" was disgusted with the war as he fought, directly confronting the slavery question. This kind of comes across as a dodge, no? The protagonist in "He Walked All The Way Home" bemoans the loss of all of the dead soldiers, but doesn't really confront the fact that, if he knew the reasons, he shouldn't have been fighting, and neither should they. The whole thing could have been avoided if "he knew the reasons." Knowing the reasons, they should have acted on that knowledge. Otherwise, that blood is all on their hands, and why should we be sad for him? Or them?
This song doesn't glorify the Confederacy, or slavery. It acknowledges, however tacitly, "the reasons," and by that, you can take the song as being something different from "the south shall rise again," or something like that. But it ducks responsibility.
So how do you take that? Is it properly sad? Do you feel sad for the protagonist? Where does this song fit in the debate? It doesn't in any way glorify the Confederacy or slavery, and even basically acknowledges "the reasons." Yet, there remains a case for being unsatisfied with it.
That's a point of complexity. A shade of grey, so to speak.
The song belongs in a different place from art that actively glorifies the Confederacy, and that... grey area exists precisely because it is difficult for artists to do what Patterson Hood does. The thing that makes Hood so great (or, one of them, anyway) is his willingness to confront everything ugly about his home while still embracing what he finds comforting, and seeing no need to pull the wool over his own eyes to manage cognitive dissonance. It is what makes him so insightful. The same can be said of his former bandmate, Jason Isbell, whose solo career frequently mines similar territory. (Mike Cooley is just... Mike Cooley. If you listen to the Truckers, you get him.)
And Norman Blake's willingness to sing, "Are You From Dixie?" was not in any way an embrace of slavery. How an artist balances a sense of origin with the politics of that origin... that's hard. Yet, if the demand is so extreme that the word, "dixie," is stricken, we lose songs unrelated, we must rename an African-American musical style, and we're one step away from an English band suing Lloyd Maines's daughter for copyright infringement.
Final side note: At least when Prince pulled that thing where he changed his name to a symbol, it was to screw over a record label, and I'm totally on board with that. Also, a not-fully-appreciated fact is that he was an awesome guitarist.
To a significant portion of the population, country music is nothing more than conservative white people's music, associated with a rural and exclusionary culture. Based on those cultural associations, plenty of people who might be prone to read some snooty professor's blog will dismiss country music in its entirety. In fact, that was the original motivation for posting country music back on The Unmutual Political Blog. Soon after I started that now-defunct blog, a student made a comment during a presentation about how she expected that nobody in the room actually liked country music because, ya' know, academia 'n all, and several students enthusiastically said they did. As did I. I added a country music series to the blog. That cultural expectation is a strong one. How could a bunch of educated northerners listen to that music? That's music for those people! Note how that phrasing can be turned around. And of course, it is that cultural association that causes so many to refuse to listen.
I'll admit, of course, that most popular country is garbage, but then again, most popular music of any genre is garbage. Most popular country is produced by marketing teams to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Just like everything else. That's why it sucks. If you want the good stuff, you need to explore a bit. I have, and of course, if you listen to what I post, you learn stuff. I only post the good stuff. None of that all-hat-no-cattle nonsense here.
So once we step back from those cultural expectations, we begin to think more seriously about the complex politics of art and history. Yes, there is a lot of country and bluegrass that looks back to the Civil War and glorifies the Confederacy in similar ways to those statues, "whitewashes" history, so to speak, and all of that. There is also a wide range.
So let's deal with the range. That range requires addressing complexity. If you are from the south, but critical of that history, how do you address it? Nobody does that better than the Drive-By Truckers. This is their bread-and-butter. Patterson Hood's phrase is "the duality of the southern thing," encapsulating all of the aspects of his southern upbringing that he truly loved, and all of the ugly history from which he refused to turn away, hide or gloss over. Yet at the same time, it is easy for critiques of the history of racism in the south to turn into prejudice against white southerners based on the belief that they're all David Duke followers even though Patterson embraces aspects of his southern heritage while wanting nothing to do with the tradition that produced David Duke. As Patterson wrote in "The Three Great Alabama Icons,"
Ya know racism is a worldwide problem, and it's been that way since the beginning of recorded history, and it ain't just white and black, but thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a southern accent.
Where'd they kill George Floyd?
Anyway, consider, "The Southern Thing," also from their classic album, Southern Rock Opera. This is not country music, but it is distinctly southern, and it introduces the basic issue here of how southern artists deal with a sense of place, and a sense of home when that home and that place have the history that it does.
Pretty cool, right? That's not country, though. The Drive-By Truckers do cross over into country, but that wasn't country. So now let's start dealing with country and bluegrass. Recently, a band that really means nothing to me, but has a history of attracting controversy attracted more media attention. "The Dixie Chicks" changed their name to "The Chicks."
Side note for serious music geeks: The country music equivalent to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" might be "Six Degrees of Lloyd Maines." Lloyd is the father of Natalie, and you could basically pull an album out of the country music section of my collection at random, and chances are pretty high that he either produced or played an instrument on some track. He contributed dobro or pedal steel to some of the best in Texas country, and yeah, Texas, they have Atlas-sized chips on their shoulders about "Texas," but the best country music really does come out of Texas. That's just an inarguable fact. Just don't admit that to them. It'll cause their Texas-sized chips to grow beyond their capacities to shoulder, the mass of the chip will increase to dangerous levels, and badness will ensue.
Sorry, Patterson. Alabama? We'll deal with complexity. That Texas chip is real, though. (Hang your hat in Tennessee!)
Anyway, the band name change is motivated by the idea that the name, "Dixie," is associated with the Confederacy. Not just the south as a region, but the Confederacy as a political institution. Of course, one could argue that referring to women as "chicks" is diminutive, and one could easily imagine that, 10 years from now, the word, "chicks," becomes completely verboten. Do you call women, "chicks?" Doesn't it sound a little douche-y anyway? Honestly, we're probably 10 years or so away from "chicks" becoming totally verboten anyway. So, take away first "Dixie," then "Chicks," and they become, "The," at which point they get sued by, "The The," which was a late-70s, early-80s English band.
Get over my snark for a moment and ask seriously, which is more troubling: the word, "Dixie," or the word, "Chicks?"
And in consideration, you know that the formal name of a traditional style of jazz is "Dixieland" jazz, right? Are we going to try to have the jazz world agree on a formal renaming of that style to avoid the use of the word, "Dixie?" You know we're talking about Louis Armstrong and King Oliver and people like that, right? You know they were African-American, right? This is an African-American style of music. Rahsaan Roland Kirk didn't even like the word, "jazz." He called it "black classical music." But are we going to come up with a new name now for what we have been calling, "Dixieland jazz?"
Anyway, getting back to that word, "dixie," in country music... it's all over the place. There is, in fact, a large catalog of songs, many of which are completely innocuous. Without even getting into the matter of Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken," how about this one: Norman Blake, "Are You From Dixie?" from Blackberry Blossom.
When it comes to flatpickers, they don't get any better than Norman Blake. This song, which opens his 1977 album, cannot in any way be construed as a defense of the Confederacy, slavery, nor anything like that. He's a southerner asking if the other person is a southerner too. That's it. Do we share an origin? Nothing more. Do we have this in common? How many songs like this should be scrapped, for using the word, "Dixie?" If you store your music electronically, can you tell how many you have? As a fan of country and bluegrass, I can tell you that I have a lot.
But now let's get into the Civil War, because so far, we haven't really touched that. There are country and bluegrass songs that really do glorify the Confederacy, but I'm not going to bother with any of that. Too easy. Instead, I'm going to put up two songs against each other. One, an easy case, and one somewhat harder. The easy case is going to be Steve Earle's "Ben McCulloch," from Train A-Comin', and the harder case will be Blue Highway's "He Walked All The Way Home," from Midnight Storm. That latter album, mind you, came out on a label called "Rebel Records." Let's start with the easy case. Here's Steve Earle.
Anyway, consider, "The Southern Thing," also from their classic album, Southern Rock Opera. This is not country music, but it is distinctly southern, and it introduces the basic issue here of how southern artists deal with a sense of place, and a sense of home when that home and that place have the history that it does.
Pretty cool, right? That's not country, though. The Drive-By Truckers do cross over into country, but that wasn't country. So now let's start dealing with country and bluegrass. Recently, a band that really means nothing to me, but has a history of attracting controversy attracted more media attention. "The Dixie Chicks" changed their name to "The Chicks."
Side note for serious music geeks: The country music equivalent to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" might be "Six Degrees of Lloyd Maines." Lloyd is the father of Natalie, and you could basically pull an album out of the country music section of my collection at random, and chances are pretty high that he either produced or played an instrument on some track. He contributed dobro or pedal steel to some of the best in Texas country, and yeah, Texas, they have Atlas-sized chips on their shoulders about "Texas," but the best country music really does come out of Texas. That's just an inarguable fact. Just don't admit that to them. It'll cause their Texas-sized chips to grow beyond their capacities to shoulder, the mass of the chip will increase to dangerous levels, and badness will ensue.
Sorry, Patterson. Alabama? We'll deal with complexity. That Texas chip is real, though. (Hang your hat in Tennessee!)
Anyway, the band name change is motivated by the idea that the name, "Dixie," is associated with the Confederacy. Not just the south as a region, but the Confederacy as a political institution. Of course, one could argue that referring to women as "chicks" is diminutive, and one could easily imagine that, 10 years from now, the word, "chicks," becomes completely verboten. Do you call women, "chicks?" Doesn't it sound a little douche-y anyway? Honestly, we're probably 10 years or so away from "chicks" becoming totally verboten anyway. So, take away first "Dixie," then "Chicks," and they become, "The," at which point they get sued by, "The The," which was a late-70s, early-80s English band.
Get over my snark for a moment and ask seriously, which is more troubling: the word, "Dixie," or the word, "Chicks?"
And in consideration, you know that the formal name of a traditional style of jazz is "Dixieland" jazz, right? Are we going to try to have the jazz world agree on a formal renaming of that style to avoid the use of the word, "Dixie?" You know we're talking about Louis Armstrong and King Oliver and people like that, right? You know they were African-American, right? This is an African-American style of music. Rahsaan Roland Kirk didn't even like the word, "jazz." He called it "black classical music." But are we going to come up with a new name now for what we have been calling, "Dixieland jazz?"
Anyway, getting back to that word, "dixie," in country music... it's all over the place. There is, in fact, a large catalog of songs, many of which are completely innocuous. Without even getting into the matter of Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken," how about this one: Norman Blake, "Are You From Dixie?" from Blackberry Blossom.
When it comes to flatpickers, they don't get any better than Norman Blake. This song, which opens his 1977 album, cannot in any way be construed as a defense of the Confederacy, slavery, nor anything like that. He's a southerner asking if the other person is a southerner too. That's it. Do we share an origin? Nothing more. Do we have this in common? How many songs like this should be scrapped, for using the word, "Dixie?" If you store your music electronically, can you tell how many you have? As a fan of country and bluegrass, I can tell you that I have a lot.
But now let's get into the Civil War, because so far, we haven't really touched that. There are country and bluegrass songs that really do glorify the Confederacy, but I'm not going to bother with any of that. Too easy. Instead, I'm going to put up two songs against each other. One, an easy case, and one somewhat harder. The easy case is going to be Steve Earle's "Ben McCulloch," from Train A-Comin', and the harder case will be Blue Highway's "He Walked All The Way Home," from Midnight Storm. That latter album, mind you, came out on a label called "Rebel Records." Let's start with the easy case. Here's Steve Earle.
That's Norman Blake playing guitar, for those taking notes. Anyway, this song is pretty much a condemnation of the south's position in the Civil War. It is a condemnation of the soldier's commanding officer, the fight, and includes that great line, "I don't even know what I'm fightin' for, I ain't never owned a slave." This is pretty much the opposite of glorifying the "lost cause." If you wanted a demonstration of why Steve Earle is the kind of country musician who gets the left-wing stamp of approval, this song is a good one.
But like I said, that's too easy. So let's contrast that, now, with Blue Highway, and "He Walked All The Way Home."
Pretty different, isn't it? I mean, you can even see the different image conveyed in the cover art. Earle goes for the Woody Guthrie image of the working class troubadour, and Blue Highway goes for the Sunday morning-at-a-southern-church thing. And check out that mullet Tim Stafford is sportin' in 1998! Great singer, great guitarist, but seriously!
Anyway, this is where we get into some real complexity because this is the kind of song that tries to ride that line of a sympathetic portrayal of a southern soldier without actually taking an ugly position on slavery, and that's a hard thing to do. The song is a sad ballad about a confederate soldier sadly walking home after the Confederacy surrendered. It includes lines like, "In the end, he knew the reasons." Well, dude, if you knew, then why were you fighting? At least the protagonist in "Ben McCulloch" was disgusted with the war as he fought, directly confronting the slavery question. This kind of comes across as a dodge, no? The protagonist in "He Walked All The Way Home" bemoans the loss of all of the dead soldiers, but doesn't really confront the fact that, if he knew the reasons, he shouldn't have been fighting, and neither should they. The whole thing could have been avoided if "he knew the reasons." Knowing the reasons, they should have acted on that knowledge. Otherwise, that blood is all on their hands, and why should we be sad for him? Or them?
This song doesn't glorify the Confederacy, or slavery. It acknowledges, however tacitly, "the reasons," and by that, you can take the song as being something different from "the south shall rise again," or something like that. But it ducks responsibility.
So how do you take that? Is it properly sad? Do you feel sad for the protagonist? Where does this song fit in the debate? It doesn't in any way glorify the Confederacy or slavery, and even basically acknowledges "the reasons." Yet, there remains a case for being unsatisfied with it.
That's a point of complexity. A shade of grey, so to speak.
The song belongs in a different place from art that actively glorifies the Confederacy, and that... grey area exists precisely because it is difficult for artists to do what Patterson Hood does. The thing that makes Hood so great (or, one of them, anyway) is his willingness to confront everything ugly about his home while still embracing what he finds comforting, and seeing no need to pull the wool over his own eyes to manage cognitive dissonance. It is what makes him so insightful. The same can be said of his former bandmate, Jason Isbell, whose solo career frequently mines similar territory. (Mike Cooley is just... Mike Cooley. If you listen to the Truckers, you get him.)
And Norman Blake's willingness to sing, "Are You From Dixie?" was not in any way an embrace of slavery. How an artist balances a sense of origin with the politics of that origin... that's hard. Yet, if the demand is so extreme that the word, "dixie," is stricken, we lose songs unrelated, we must rename an African-American musical style, and we're one step away from an English band suing Lloyd Maines's daughter for copyright infringement.
Final side note: At least when Prince pulled that thing where he changed his name to a symbol, it was to screw over a record label, and I'm totally on board with that. Also, a not-fully-appreciated fact is that he was an awesome guitarist.
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