Excellent piece, Mr. Robinson. A bit of a music history lesson all of us should learn.
And sadly for the racist (attempted, but not successful, so suck it) gatekeepers, they will miss out on the absolute joy of experiencing all kinds of music produced by all kinds of people.
Also, this is just beautiful singing. Beyoncé’s vocals on both of these tracks are glorious; I am particularly struck by the richness of her lower register.
Daddy was born and raised in White Plains NY. He went to UNC Chapel Hill for two years, 1954-1956, but quit to get married and work full time. He said that there was a Black radio station in Durham that he and his friends loved to listen to. Sunday mornings were strictly gospel, but the rest of the time was dedicated to blues, country and a new form of music - rock and roll. He was introduced to such artists as Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, who sang the original (and far better) versions of songs that white singers had covered.
So - my kid does Irish Dance. She’s a bit Irish, by blood but not culture. But some of the kids at dance are not Irish by either.
And she does wheel gymnastics at Sokol, which is a Czech sports/recreation/social club kind of thing, that used to be common in areas where Bohemians and Moravians and Slovaks settled (which is here.) She’s Bohemian enough that our foods and some of the things we do or attitudes we have relate to Czechness. Many - maybe even most - of the kids at gymnastics are not at all Czech, but they say “Nazdar!” and do calisthenics in an uncomfortably 1930s Germanic way just like everyone else.
There are little bits of culture embedded in these spaces, and they fit with my kid’s background, but mostly at this point, it doesn’t really matter. They’re about geography. They’re about local fashion. They’re about community, and community influences culture and vice versa. They are dynamic bits of culture for everyone.
No kid grows up in this suburb without marinating in the historical Bohemianness, which at this point is mostly just a sort of freethinking, sarcastic, softball-playing, St-Mikulas-present-getting culture.
Growing up, I knew myself to be Czech, and knew what that meant: we went to a certain church and we ate certain foods and celebrated certain holidays and had certain attitudes. But, you know, there were Italians and Poles next door and we liked their stuff too, and we cooked their food or sang their songs or went to their church because ours didn’t have a convenient mass time, because why not. We were different from them in the same way we assumed ourselves different from Japanese Americans or African Americans, which is to say, mostly the same, with immigrant relatives not too far off. We didn’t have “white” as our signifier, we had our various ethnicities, because that’s how an extremely segregated community works.
All that to say, I’m always a bit aghast to see how much people in other places identify as capital W White. And how they identify cultural things as specifically White, and how that’s changed for the worse in my lifetime. They can’t imagine that there are ways to participate in a culture that isn’t one’s own that are fine, and others which are not (we ate spaghetti, we didn’t bring it to the cultural night at the school and tell them we were Italian in our hearts.) So they get mad when someone they think of as Not White participates in a piece of culture they thought was Only White, and they don’t want to be told it’s not just theirs, has never been just theirs. They feel like they deserve a broad swath of culture to be Only Theirs. They’d like that to be all of the culture, but they’ll settle for most.
Apparently their kids don’t do Irish Dance with other kids with Swedish names and Eastern European faces. Apparently they never got to feel like they could welcome Paolo’s nonna to their holiday party for vepřo-knedlo-zelo. Apparently they never realized that Kolačky can be Polish as well as Czech.
I wish they’d find a hobby that wasn’t demanding that people of color don’t get to do something they didn’t realize was everyone’s.
well-written; I grew up in an area of Chicago like that - mostly Lithuanian or Polish or a smattering of Italian; I'm Irish and kind of stuck out, but it was all good.
I appreciate so much how much better we do now at appreciating diversity and acknowledging privilege, but I’m kind of sad that we seem more separate than before, even as our neighborhoods have become more integrated.
My mother-in-law went to school in a Lithuanian neighborhood (being, herself, Polish and Irish.) It wasn’t until her little brother started five years later and struggled mightily in Kindergarten that her mother discovered the nuns taught partially in Lithuanian. And my own grandmother learned English as a third language, as a Polish kid in a Czech neighborhood. Chicago and the suburbs have some real holdovers from those neighborhood boundaries, and it’s very interesting to see it now that there aren’t so many new immigrants from the same places. I have been thinking a lot lately about the reaction of people about my age, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants, to more recent immigrants. There’s still the ethnism, but the racism blankets all of it so much more hideously now. We wouldn’t have ever identified ourselves as being part of a White culture then, but I think that has changed in the most belligerent fashion. It’s disappointing.
Another fantastic article! The willful (?) ignorance of some people always amazes me. Anyone with any knowledge of American music knows that the Black musical experience is at the heart of ALL the music we call "American." It's so obvious that there shouldn't need to be any explanation OR argument about it. Sigh. 🙄 Anyway. . . .
My sister-in-law is a Prince fanatic. After reading your comment about the threatened country album, I had to go ask her. She confirmed what you said, and told me that there is supposedly one in the vaults, but no one has released it yet. I'd listen to that in a heartbeat; he was part of the soundtrack to my coming of age in the 1980's. I still love to put on the "My Guitar Gently Weeps" video from the RRHOF concert. He tore that guitar UP!
Well Beyoncé is Black and so that's "fake" when it's country. It's no wonder so many of our contributions to that genre are diminished. And easy to see why a figure like Sister Rosetta Tharpe (in Rock & Roll genre) can go unsung and largely forgotten with people appropriating her music and style.
To add to your point that "She never tried to hide it"; I've been thinking also about lyrics from her groundbreaking, magnificent "Formation": "My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana / You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama."
I find it quite rich that a has been actor/singer feels like he’s the expert on who should or should not be able to add to the C&W genre. Lort knows white people have pretty much appropriated Black music for a long time.
Also too Rhiannon Giddens has been contributing to Bluegrass with The Carolina Chocolate Drops and other folks for sometime now. And aside from being a legit trained singer, she’s a helluva Banjo player too.
I love Linda Martell's version of "Color Him Father" (also a great soul version was done by the Winstons, not sure which was recorded first) and if you listen to it without a tear in your eye you may be a robot.
Anyway, the thing about country--or any musical genre--is you really don't have to be of a certain race, class or background to be able to appreciate and create it--yes, Beyonce is a southerner and country music has way more in common with "black" musical forms (like soul and R&B) than most people realize, but even if that wasn't the case there's no reason she couldn't make an authentic country song. No one questioned whether Taylor Swift was "country" when she started out, and she was from an upper class household in PA (I think her dad was a lawyer or something?). John Schneider hails from Mt. Kisco, NY (a town I lived in in my childhood, which was definitely NOT country!) and for his Dukes of Hazard audition had to lie about being from Georgia (which, again, is fine--actors are supposed to play parts, not play themselves!). Kayne West doesn't have the 50 Cent bona fides of prison time or Jay-Z background in the Brooklyn projects, his parents were professors, but he still could apparently rap before he discovered hating Jews. And the Stones were just one of several British acts that adored and copied Mississippi Delta Blues music, which might be as far from foggy old London as you could get--but the point was that working class kids in post-war Britain could relate to the blues singers because the human experience is about understanding one another.
The issue should never have been "who can make country music" (answer--anyone) but "is this song a country song".
The most defining sound of "country music", was a creation of "race music", the bottleneck slides used by the early blues musicians even back to the earliest days of Tampa Red and Robert Johnson (and even earlier than that) along with the slack key craze from Hawaii in the 20s and 30s, which went on to become the "pedal steel" sound so defining of "country music". So in reality, this "white" country music as it exists now wouldn't even exist at all without Black music.
Excellent piece, Mr. Robinson. A bit of a music history lesson all of us should learn.
And sadly for the racist (attempted, but not successful, so suck it) gatekeepers, they will miss out on the absolute joy of experiencing all kinds of music produced by all kinds of people.
Also, this is just beautiful singing. Beyoncé’s vocals on both of these tracks are glorious; I am particularly struck by the richness of her lower register.
Daddy was born and raised in White Plains NY. He went to UNC Chapel Hill for two years, 1954-1956, but quit to get married and work full time. He said that there was a Black radio station in Durham that he and his friends loved to listen to. Sunday mornings were strictly gospel, but the rest of the time was dedicated to blues, country and a new form of music - rock and roll. He was introduced to such artists as Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, who sang the original (and far better) versions of songs that white singers had covered.
Dolly Parton knows what's up.
(from Isa-Lee Wolf on Spoutible - https://spoutible.com/thread/28356745)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/dolly-parton-beyonce-hot-country-number-one-single-1234974405/
Way too much thinking in print:
So - my kid does Irish Dance. She’s a bit Irish, by blood but not culture. But some of the kids at dance are not Irish by either.
And she does wheel gymnastics at Sokol, which is a Czech sports/recreation/social club kind of thing, that used to be common in areas where Bohemians and Moravians and Slovaks settled (which is here.) She’s Bohemian enough that our foods and some of the things we do or attitudes we have relate to Czechness. Many - maybe even most - of the kids at gymnastics are not at all Czech, but they say “Nazdar!” and do calisthenics in an uncomfortably 1930s Germanic way just like everyone else.
There are little bits of culture embedded in these spaces, and they fit with my kid’s background, but mostly at this point, it doesn’t really matter. They’re about geography. They’re about local fashion. They’re about community, and community influences culture and vice versa. They are dynamic bits of culture for everyone.
No kid grows up in this suburb without marinating in the historical Bohemianness, which at this point is mostly just a sort of freethinking, sarcastic, softball-playing, St-Mikulas-present-getting culture.
Growing up, I knew myself to be Czech, and knew what that meant: we went to a certain church and we ate certain foods and celebrated certain holidays and had certain attitudes. But, you know, there were Italians and Poles next door and we liked their stuff too, and we cooked their food or sang their songs or went to their church because ours didn’t have a convenient mass time, because why not. We were different from them in the same way we assumed ourselves different from Japanese Americans or African Americans, which is to say, mostly the same, with immigrant relatives not too far off. We didn’t have “white” as our signifier, we had our various ethnicities, because that’s how an extremely segregated community works.
All that to say, I’m always a bit aghast to see how much people in other places identify as capital W White. And how they identify cultural things as specifically White, and how that’s changed for the worse in my lifetime. They can’t imagine that there are ways to participate in a culture that isn’t one’s own that are fine, and others which are not (we ate spaghetti, we didn’t bring it to the cultural night at the school and tell them we were Italian in our hearts.) So they get mad when someone they think of as Not White participates in a piece of culture they thought was Only White, and they don’t want to be told it’s not just theirs, has never been just theirs. They feel like they deserve a broad swath of culture to be Only Theirs. They’d like that to be all of the culture, but they’ll settle for most.
Apparently their kids don’t do Irish Dance with other kids with Swedish names and Eastern European faces. Apparently they never got to feel like they could welcome Paolo’s nonna to their holiday party for vepřo-knedlo-zelo. Apparently they never realized that Kolačky can be Polish as well as Czech.
I wish they’d find a hobby that wasn’t demanding that people of color don’t get to do something they didn’t realize was everyone’s.
well-written; I grew up in an area of Chicago like that - mostly Lithuanian or Polish or a smattering of Italian; I'm Irish and kind of stuck out, but it was all good.
I appreciate so much how much better we do now at appreciating diversity and acknowledging privilege, but I’m kind of sad that we seem more separate than before, even as our neighborhoods have become more integrated.
My mother-in-law went to school in a Lithuanian neighborhood (being, herself, Polish and Irish.) It wasn’t until her little brother started five years later and struggled mightily in Kindergarten that her mother discovered the nuns taught partially in Lithuanian. And my own grandmother learned English as a third language, as a Polish kid in a Czech neighborhood. Chicago and the suburbs have some real holdovers from those neighborhood boundaries, and it’s very interesting to see it now that there aren’t so many new immigrants from the same places. I have been thinking a lot lately about the reaction of people about my age, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants, to more recent immigrants. There’s still the ethnism, but the racism blankets all of it so much more hideously now. We wouldn’t have ever identified ourselves as being part of a White culture then, but I think that has changed in the most belligerent fashion. It’s disappointing.
Thanks for the thoughtful response!
lol, I am amazed anyone read through it. I wish I could think silently in my head.
I read through it, and appreciate that you took the time to write it!
Another fantastic article! The willful (?) ignorance of some people always amazes me. Anyone with any knowledge of American music knows that the Black musical experience is at the heart of ALL the music we call "American." It's so obvious that there shouldn't need to be any explanation OR argument about it. Sigh. 🙄 Anyway. . . .
My sister-in-law is a Prince fanatic. After reading your comment about the threatened country album, I had to go ask her. She confirmed what you said, and told me that there is supposedly one in the vaults, but no one has released it yet. I'd listen to that in a heartbeat; he was part of the soundtrack to my coming of age in the 1980's. I still love to put on the "My Guitar Gently Weeps" video from the RRHOF concert. He tore that guitar UP!
Thanks!
A wonderful essay!
Thank you!
Well Beyoncé is Black and so that's "fake" when it's country. It's no wonder so many of our contributions to that genre are diminished. And easy to see why a figure like Sister Rosetta Tharpe (in Rock & Roll genre) can go unsung and largely forgotten with people appropriating her music and style.
It’s an absolute crime that Sister Rosetta’s name and music are not more widely known.
Thank you!
To add to your point that "She never tried to hide it"; I've been thinking also about lyrics from her groundbreaking, magnificent "Formation": "My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana / You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama."
I find it quite rich that a has been actor/singer feels like he’s the expert on who should or should not be able to add to the C&W genre. Lort knows white people have pretty much appropriated Black music for a long time.
Also too Rhiannon Giddens has been contributing to Bluegrass with The Carolina Chocolate Drops and other folks for sometime now. And aside from being a legit trained singer, she’s a helluva Banjo player too.
I love Linda Martell's version of "Color Him Father" (also a great soul version was done by the Winstons, not sure which was recorded first) and if you listen to it without a tear in your eye you may be a robot.
Anyway, the thing about country--or any musical genre--is you really don't have to be of a certain race, class or background to be able to appreciate and create it--yes, Beyonce is a southerner and country music has way more in common with "black" musical forms (like soul and R&B) than most people realize, but even if that wasn't the case there's no reason she couldn't make an authentic country song. No one questioned whether Taylor Swift was "country" when she started out, and she was from an upper class household in PA (I think her dad was a lawyer or something?). John Schneider hails from Mt. Kisco, NY (a town I lived in in my childhood, which was definitely NOT country!) and for his Dukes of Hazard audition had to lie about being from Georgia (which, again, is fine--actors are supposed to play parts, not play themselves!). Kayne West doesn't have the 50 Cent bona fides of prison time or Jay-Z background in the Brooklyn projects, his parents were professors, but he still could apparently rap before he discovered hating Jews. And the Stones were just one of several British acts that adored and copied Mississippi Delta Blues music, which might be as far from foggy old London as you could get--but the point was that working class kids in post-war Britain could relate to the blues singers because the human experience is about understanding one another.
The issue should never have been "who can make country music" (answer--anyone) but "is this song a country song".
Nice post!
"a little bit country"
Durnit, SER. Now I have Donnie and Marie Osmond singing in my head.
The most defining sound of "country music", was a creation of "race music", the bottleneck slides used by the early blues musicians even back to the earliest days of Tampa Red and Robert Johnson (and even earlier than that) along with the slack key craze from Hawaii in the 20s and 30s, which went on to become the "pedal steel" sound so defining of "country music". So in reality, this "white" country music as it exists now wouldn't even exist at all without Black music.
The overlap between country and blues and R&B and soul is immense.
Oh yes! And thanks for the overview as well.
Isn't there anywhere, ANYWHERE left in this world where white people can pretend Black and queer people don't exist?!
I see you haven't been to CPAC!
There are people dancing all over the world to this song on TikTok, it's so much fun!
Texas Hold ‘Em is a JAM.
That’s all.