• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

How Did Country Music Become So White?

Isn't country music more related to Irish folk music than African music? Or English folk for that matter.

First evidence (English folk):
 
Last edited:
I've heard country called "White folk's Blues". I can't remember when or where...
 
hunck said:
That was great. I'm a big blues fan but never heard of the first guy - Blind Connie Williams. Terrific.
Click to expand...
I thought you might enjoy!

I've got BCW playing on a loop - it's the essence and just so... good.
 
Vardoger said:
Isn't country music more related to Irish folk music than African music? Or English folk for that matter.
Click to expand...
Bit of both. Jimmy Rodgers brought a lot of the blues into c&w, which of course had African roots. Also note that 'Country' and 'Western' were originally separate genres, lumped together as a radio format. 'Country' being Appalachian mountain type bluegrass music, which was heavily influenced by Scots and Irish music because almost all those people originally came from Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. 'Western' means cowboy songs.

Speaking of cowboy songs, 'The Streets Of Laredo' is an evolution of the Irish folk ballad 'The Unfortunate Rake', as is the New Orleans Jazz/Blues number 'St. James Infirmary Blues'.
 
Last edited:
Is House of The Rising Sun a blues song? It doesn't follow the usual blues chord sequence, not that all blues do of course. In it's first recording in 1933 by Tom Clarence Ashley it sounds more like a Country waltz:


But the nature of folk forms is that they tend to mutate and cross pollinate with one another. Genre classifications are useful as a starting point, but that's all.
 
James_H said:
Bit of both. Jimmy Rodgers brought a lot of the blues into c&w, which of course had African roots. Also note that 'Country' and 'Western' were originally separate genres, lumped together as a radio format. 'Country' being Appalachian mountain type bluegrass music, which was heavily influenced by Scots and Irish music because almost all those people originally came from Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. 'Western' means cowboy songs.
Click to expand...

 
R&B used to mean, unambiguously, "Rhythm & Blues": a style of music mainly in the 12 bar blues format, closely associated with blues, rock and roll, hard rock, and Saturday evening bands in English pubs in the 1970s.

However, the term has widened in application to include a range of styles and influences and moved a long way from its 12 bar blues roots — hence, perhaps, the confusion about names like Clapton being introduced into the discussion in 2019.

There is a long history of country or folk music being adopted, adapted, and "appropriated" by those with a socio-political agenda.

The terms folk and country overlap considerably. Old recordings of live performances by country superstar, Hank Williams, show he was often called a "folk singer". If you search the TV channels in the UK for "country music" you may well find some rather smoothed out and over-produced Irish folk songs that sound nothing like "good ol' country music.".

In England, the old rural folk songs and dances started to die out as the population became more urban. The ordinary working man who spent his days in a foundry, factory or mill had no particular reason to sing about the farmer's boy or the jolly waggoner.

However, the middle classes were looking for a sense of English identity that, in their view, would be comparable in status with the folk traditions of our European neighbours. They looked back to a fictional or imaginary time of happy shepherds and rosy cheeked maidens, and simple people dancing on the village green or gently quaffing cider by a roaring fire in a quaint pub. They developed the romantic idea of the honest yeoman, the horny handed son of the soil who loved honest toil and had simple pleasures.

If such people had ever existed, their descendants had long since been displaced by mechanisation, and had migrated to the filth and squalor of the cities, where work was available — albeit hard, dirty, dangerous work for low wages.

Folk collectors such as Cecil Sharp would go around the villages, collecting songs and dances, and writing them down. They would then return to their own middle class world and share and teach those songs and dances. They were in a sense mining the folk tradition for material for their own hobby, and building reputations on the back of it.

One well known example: Cecil Sharp heard a gardener, John England, singing unaccompanied as he worked. The song was I Sowed the Seeds of Love. Sharp quickly noted down the tune and then persuaded John England to teach him the words.

That evening, Sharp presented the song as a performance with choral singing and piano accompaniment: drawing room music for the middle classes. These days, we would call this "cultural appropriation."

The good news is that, over 100 years later, the material that he collected `and disseminated has found its way back into the pubs and folk clubs and the tradition has developed a new lease of life.

This sounds similar to what Ford is said to have done: using folk music and dance as a resource to be adapted and exploited by the wealthy in order to encourage or promote one particular cultural view. I'm sure it's happened before and that it will happen again.

As for what I think of as "real country music", it has become unashamedly a branch of consumerist pop music aimed at and espoused by a certain sector of the white population.

Go back to the 1940s and 50s, though, and you will find that many of the hillbilly/country/folk/rockabilly performers came from poor backgrounds and had mingled on more or less equal terms with black musicians and singers. Thing is that most of the buying power lay with the white population, and it was easer to sell music by white musicians to white customers in a time when segregation was still in force. That is why Perkins, Presley, and others could sing in a black style and become famous among people who would not listen to black singers.
 
If he'd been around in other times, Sharp would probably have filmed/recorded these people themselves to form a valuable archive, as Alan Lomax did with blues/folk/country/prison songs etc in the US.

If Lomax had been earlier, he'd have been forced to notate the songs/lyrics as Sharp did, so I think it's a little unfair on him. If he hadn't done it, a lot of these songs would've been lost & forgotten.
 
hunck said:
If he'd been around in other times, Sharp would probably have filmed/recorded these people themselves to form a valuable archive, as Alan Lomax did with blues/folk/country/prison songs etc in the US.

If Lomax had been earlier, he'd have been forced to notate the songs/lyrics as Sharp did, so I think it's a little unfair on him. If he hadn't done it, a lot of these songs would've been lost & forgotten.
Click to expand...

I'm not against Sharp — I've been a Morris dancer for nearly 40 years, and that is a tradition that may well have died out without the work of Sharp and others.

Nevertheless, it is true that he collected the dances for his own purposes and with his own agenda, and that, in doing so, he changed the very nature of the tradition.

The dances and songs have survived because of Sharp and others, but the tradition has come back to life because of the many ordinary people who have claimed it back and developed it.
 
Last edited:
Mikefule said:
The dances and songs have survived because of Sharp and others, but the tradition has come back to life because of the many ordinary people who have claimed it back and developed it.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.
 
Mikefule said:
However, the middle classes were looking for a sense of English identity that, in their view, would be comparable in status with the folk traditions of our European neighbours. They looked back to a fictional or imaginary time of happy shepherds and rosy cheeked maidens, and simple people dancing on the village green or gently quaffing cider by a roaring fire in a quaint pub. They developed the romantic idea of the honest yeoman, the horny handed son of the soil who loved honest toil and had simple pleasures.
Click to expand...
Great post. It's also worth mentioning Marxists like Ewan McColl who sought to rehabilitate folk music as what they thought of as true expression of British working class culture.

Edit: whereas left wing country and Western is thin on the ground to say the least. To quote King of the Hill:

BOBBY: I like Willie Nelson. He's got long hair, he's alternative.
HANK: Now you take that back!
 
James_H said:
Great post. It's also worth mentioning Marxists like Ewan McColl who sought to rehabilitate folk music as what they thought of as true expression of British working class culture.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of an incident many years ago. We were in the pub after a big Morris dance event. One of the Morris dancers was American, although living and working in England, and dancing with an English side.

Someone sang one of the regular "big chorus songs" and all the dancers joined in with gusto. Afterwards, the American started a conversation that went something like this:
American: "That's interesting. You know, the reason you sing that is because of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846."
English: "No, the reason we sing it is because it has a great chorus."
American: ""Yes, I agree it's a great chorus, but the real reason you sing it is because of the repeal of the Corn laws in 1846."
English: "No. It's just got a great chorus."
American, "But it comes from the repeal of the Corn Laws."
English, "Quite possibly, but I bet you're the only person in the room who knows anything about the Corn Laws. W singit because it has a great chorus."

This American chap had quite an academic approach to the subject. Elsewhere in the English folk world, there are many "unreconstructed lefties" still defiantly carrying the banner for causes from the 1960s and 70s — you may even see the occasional Justice for Blair Peach badge. Some of them make a point of singing songs that express their Marxist/Labour point of view. Thus, you get social workers and teachers singing rather too earnestly about working down the mines or int he cotton mills.

However, most of us just like to sing a good song, whether or not we agree with, or care about, the subject. Indeed, you get those same class warriors singing enthusiastically in the choruses of hunting songs, without apparent irony.

So, I agree with you, James H, that the concept of "claiming" or "hijacking" folk music for a socio-political cause is not solely the province of the wealthy and privileged.

Change of subject: thirty years ago, I worked in a corner office with a small group of people. I was born in 1962 and I worked with a woman who was probably 15 years younger. If I started to hum a Buddy Holly song (he died in 1959) she would join in and know all the words. I was (am) a rock 'n' roll fan, but she wasn't. She had just learned the words by osmosis, hearing them on the radio, or played by her parents. In a sense, Buddy Holly songs were her folk music.
 
kamalktk said:
There's actually quite a debate over whether a particular current hit song by a black artist is "country music", with the song first appearing on, then being removed from the Billboard Country music charts for not being "country music".

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/media/lil-nas-x-billy-ray-cyrus-billboard.html

The song itself is here:

and the version with added Billy Ray Cyrus is here:
Click to expand...
First song is neither Country nor Western. The second got a few Country & Western elements.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top