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How do you define "country" music?


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I actually listened to a lot of country while in college, but it was what Sirius would refer to as Outlaw country...Willie, Waylon and the boys, so to speak. But I didn't find it in LA...it found me in the form of my wife.

 

Pics or didn't happen!

 

 

 

JK

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That is the reason you are the writer...you made a point I was trying to make earlier in the thread, much more succinctly than I ever could.... as music "evolves" the definition of what constitutes a genre of music become more and more murky. You pointed out that you though it was odd that out of Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee and Johnny Cash, it was JC who was dubbed the country guy. But, in 1955-56, Cash was the country guy of that bunch. What makes him so significant, and such an important artist, was that he helped to define the genre, rather than have the genre define him. I don't know it for a fact or anything, but I suspect, Johnny saw himself as a country artist.

 

I get a ton of crap from people I know, for liking "country" music...my older sister, who probably had more influence than anyone over my passion for music, to this day (she is in her mid-fifties) swears that she "hates country music"...but practically everything she listened to when we were growing up was blurring the lines between country, folk and rock. Her favorite artist of all-time is, easily, Bob Dylan... he blood boils when I tell her that some of Dylan's best stuff is rooted in country music... she loves Arlo Gutherie.... his classic albums from the 70's are a who's who of some of the best country musicians around at the time....

 

What I find frustrating, as somebody who doesn't feel ashamed for saying that I like country music, it seems that when ever a country artist gets attention, musically, outside the narrow constraints of the country music industry, they are normally adopted by some other "cooler, hipper" genre of music. So, when I say I like country music, I am not talking about the cookie cutter stuff that comes out of Nashville (though I admit, I can appreciate some of that on a rare occasion), but I am talking about the country genre that, for me, is populated by people like Steve Earle, Lucinda Willams, Guy Clark, Kelly Willis, Johnny Cash and hundreds of other artists that most have never heard of..

 

If the argument is, "if I take every great artist from the country genre and put them someplace that works better for me, do you still like country music?" I mean, a point have made before, if I say "I love rock-n'roll" does that mean I live in some fantasy world where "classic" Nickleback should be critically compared to vintage Stones?

 

don't pump me up as a writer, when you did a very good job explaining yourself here. well said.

 

jw

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And "Americana" IS country.

 

"Americana" (or "No Depression") was a genre that was self-consciously created to encompass the types of music that is considered "country" or just "american" music, that couldn't make any headway with the Nashville pop that most identify as country music nowadays...sort of "alternative country"...but like any genre, the longer it exists, it starts encompassing so many different elements, that it is kind of a meaningless term, as far as defining a style of music. Most genres' categories, in reality, only tell you what something is not, as opposed to what it is...if that makes any sense? That is why categories and genres have so little meaning as time goes on.

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"Americana" (or "No Depression") was a genre that was self-consciously created to encompass the types of music that is considered "country" or just "american" music, that couldn't make any headway with the Nashville pop that most identify as country music nowadays...sort of "alternative country"...but like any genre, the longer it exists, it starts encompassing so many different elements, that it is kind of a meaningless term, as far as defining a style of music. Most genres' categories, in reality, only tell you what something is not, as opposed to what it is...if that makes any sense? That is why categories and genres have so little meaning as time goes on.

Kind of like how "outlaw country" was a response to the overproduced Nashville sound of the time...

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i'll tell you this: what's mostly played on "country music" radio is generally not "country music."

 

jw

there are a few stations down here you'd love. Tewo country gold stations and another that's mostly pre-70's with a lot of bluegrass and small time bands. 5-7 they have the outlaw drive, all outlaw bootlegger music, too.
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thank you for this post...you got me to put No Depression on! Good stuff!

 

"Americana" (or "No Depression") was a genre that was self-consciously created to encompass the types of music that is considered "country" or just "american" music, that couldn't make any headway with the Nashville pop that most identify as country music nowadays...sort of "alternative country"...but like any genre, the longer it exists, it starts encompassing so many different elements, that it is kind of a meaningless term, as far as defining a style of music. Most genres' categories, in reality, only tell you what something is not, as opposed to what it is...if that makes any sense? That is why categories and genres have so little meaning as time goes on.

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