I'm certainly an amateur in the field of Southern music.
I have listened to some form of Southern music or another
almost all my life. I also play quite a bit on the radio.
(So please excuse any academic gaffs.)

I'm sure that there are many very different--even
exclusive--but each at least somewhat supportable--methods
of defining Southern music. Southern music is not, by
definition, exclusive. We don't even (as a nation)
agree 100% on which states are "South" <grin>.

Michael Bertrand and Emily Toth, I think have hit on the real
answer--Southern music is the music that appeals to the
sensibilities of a certain population. That population had its
roots in the South. Due to the diaspora of southern
agricultural workers, those people who enjoy Southern music
don't all live in the South.

That creates some interesting problems, I suppose, for those
who study Southern music. Even before we deal with the
circumstances of individual artist residency (a distinction
with which I heartily but cheerfully disagree), different types
of Southern music had quite different audiences. Jazz, rock,
gospel, country and bluegrass are all appreciated by baby
boomers, but the older audiences (in my anecdotal experience)
tended  to follow just one or two sorts of Southern music.

Then, of course, we also have the racial divide. Today it is
fairly widely accepted that people can appreciate music from
artists and writers of different racial backgrounds, but I can
personally remember when it was considered radical--almost
communist--for young white people to listen to Black Southern
music.

Economic circumstances that have created a Southern
diaspora--the loss, first of agricultural jobs in the South,
the later industrial needs for manpower in the North, the
elimination of the majority of jobs in the coal industry in a
single generation, the post WWII migrations of black
Southerners--have created a very diffuse geographic population
of people with an appreciation of Southern music. Many of them
have passed the love of good music to their new friends and
neighbors who never had Southern roots.

I had the experience of growing up in a Mid West town with very
Southern attitudes (Cincinnati). Many neighbors and friends had
moved to the city for the war-time and the auto-plant jobs.
There was no question that the bluegrass music as played by the
current city residents (ca 1960-1968) was "authentic". To my ear,
and seemingly, to those of my neighbors, the Bakersfield,
California, music of Buck Owens (who moved to California in
1951--about the time I was born) and Merle Haggard was authentic
as well. We certainly enjoyed both forms in the then-southern/hills
enclave of "Over The Rhine".

Authenticity is one of the hallmarks, I think, of Southern music.
The authenticity of Southern music comes from (at least) two
sources I can readily identify:

1) it demonstrates the roots music influence in some way;
2) it speaks on a personal level to the life experiences of people
   who in some way think of themselves as "Southern".

Michael Wood
Cincinnati

For an authentic bluegrass Saturday morning, H-Southern-music
readers might want to tune in over the Internet to Cincinnati
community radio WAIF from 8 until 11 EST: www.waifstreams.com
or www.waif883.org
(It's noncommercial local programming, 88.3 on the FM dial)

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS