Pride and Prejudice : The White Working Class Tradition of American Country Music

Pride and Prejudice : The White Working Class Tradition of American Country Music

  This essay surveys the history of American country music, analyzes the songs of some of its representative performers, and discusses the cultural significance and politics of the music. Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams serve as representatives of early country music, which had roots in the so-called "hillbilly" music of the Appalachian mountains as well as the blues. Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard serve as representatives of 1960s country music, which reacted against the cultural turmoil of the countercultural and anti-Vietnam War movements with nostalgia for a simpler past and expressions of traditional American values. And Tim McGraw and Toby Keith serve as representatives of contemporary country music. I argue that while contemporary country music does not sound much like early country music or even the country music of the 1960s, it comes out of a tradition in which the values that the music represents and the politics that it promotes have often been more important than the music itself. From the beginning, country music was driven by a politics of authenticity in which the hillbilly authenticity of its performers was constructed in order to promote a romanticized vision of a common white identity and culture. And that vision was always to be found in an idealized past of racial/cultural purity that had never existed.