I'm a relative newbie on this list, and certainly no
scholar of southern music, and so have been content
until now to lurk and simply enjoy the lively debate
among those who know more than I.

I was particularly struck by David L. Carlton's
statement that "Good musicians aren't hung up on
boundaries; they're eager to learn, and love to
congregate in places [New Orleans, Austin, Memphis,
Athens, Nashville, etc.] where they can play off each
other."

I'm an Austin resident, albeit a transplanted one (born
in California, college in Massachusetts, God help me!),
and I've enjoyed the local music scene immensely. I've
also been struck by what has happened in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina: a number of displaced New Orleans-based
musicians came here, at least temporarily, and seem to have
found it a congenial spot. On September 12, 2005, the
excellent "Texas Music Matters," a radio series on KUT hosted
by David Brown, aired an interview with Cyril Neville in which
he said, "The gumbo has spilled into the chili, y'know, so
ain't no telling what's gonna happen now."

What this means for notions of musical "authenticity," of
course, is unclear. One possibility, as music journalist Dante
Dominick noted in the same segment, is that "seventy years from
now, no one remembers that the reason why all the trombones are
in Texas bands is because of Hurricane Katrina way back in 2005."

I'm not sure what conclusions, if any, to draw from all this for
the purposes of this discussion, but I found these comments
suggestive.

(You can find this and other "Texas Music Matters" stories at
http://www.kut.org/site/PageServer?pagename=texas_music_matters.)

Martin Kohout
Associate Editor
Research and Education Services
Texas State Historical Association
(http://www.tsha.utexas.edu)

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