|
View the H-Southern-Music Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Southern-Music's January 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Southern-Music's January 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Southern-Music home page.
Asking what is 'southern' music is answered by asking what is 'southern.' In neither case will the answer be settled and absolute. The excitement of the discussion here is evidence of the very process that underlies the continual reinvention, reimagining and re-membering of the South. All the same caveats and nuances being talked about with regard to music apply equally to southern art in general -- literature, painting, etc. Bottom line is that there will be layers of association that begin with the geographical (physical/imagined origins, site of performance, etc.) to them most rarefied realm of symbolism/semiotics/etc. R.E.M. is a case in point. Their early days were a perfect example of a band mixing the authentic (southern location, a few family ties) with the post-modern appropriation of southern iconography. That iconography, of course, is a living, continually negotiated collection, too. R.E.M. played around with southernness and associated images, icons, attitudes in a way that really brings this discussion to the surface. I go into that more here, if anybody wants to check out this riff on r.e.m., white ethnicity and southern 'structures of feeling' http://www.partyoutofbounds.com/rem2.htm The irony of the macrobiotic michael stipe sitting for photo sessions in southern barbecue joints speaks volumes. The whole early Athens music scene makes itself available to this discussion -- the bands played a variety of international punk/new wave 'sounds' but still managed through accents, images and storytelling to leverage the whole complex history of the south and southernness to position themselves (some more consciously than others) against the New York variety of new rock music circa 1980. 'southernness' has become part of our national make-up kit, but the palette keeps changing through, dare i say, the ongoing dialectic process that is the process of culture. One might say Creedence is southern because they might use chord changes, lyrics and spoken/sung accents that we define as southern. Another might say Creedence isn't southern because they weren't born in the states of the former confederacy and recordedin LA. Both are right -- both are wrong: it just depends on who draws the biggest audience to say whose story wins as the truth. P.S. Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, is one of the best case studies of one variety of new southernness today. Rodger Lyle Brown http://www.partyoutofbounds.com
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|