Artists like Yola and Rhiannon Giddens are blowing up what Giddens calls a “manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.”
by Elamin Abdelmahmoud for Rolling Stone –
I’m never more black than when I talk about country music. By which I mean: I’m never more aware of my blackness than when I’m rambling on about my love of the genre, receiving quizzical looks back. The unspoken onus in the moment is: Explain yourself — how do you like country?
The look is, in part, because everyone is pretty sure they know country music. They don’t have to like it to think this. In fact, the folks who don’t listen to country are more likely to claim knowledge of the subject matter: of country songs and what they’re about, of the kind of people who listen to country, of their values, their likes and dislikes.
This is kind of impressive. Now, audiences are so used to genres blending into one another, used to having no borders in music. But the image of what country music is persists. It does not matter how many variations of country abound — it’s somehow easier to reduce country to a single dimension. And with that comes along an image of who listens to the music. And more important, who makes it.
At some point, it became an accepted cultural narrative that country music is the domain of white people. This has never been the case, but more to the point, it has never been further from the truth than right now. The myth persists while a number of black artists are challenging its foundation, hiding in plain sight on the country charts or on tours or on the radio. They don’t care much for that myth. They tell a different story. And they tell it damn well.
READ MORE HERE
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/country-music-racist-history-1010052/
