Why does Europeans never want to listen to country music?

i mean, there is a reason that the bear family exists in germany and not here. they are addicted over there.

― scott seward, Monday, April 25, 2011 11:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

otm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAE9Hylcj48&feature=related

Hull Trawlermen were often into their cowboy culture, i guess they thought of the sea as being like the open range, which accounts for our Rugby club's theme song.

5 CDs and a 120 page book. wow. want. go germany.

http://www.bear-family.de/out/1/html/0/dyn_images/z1/bcd16094.jpg

http://cdn.healthhabits.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/myth-busted.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1BDRerUtMQ

Need I remind you of the Stones' fascination with country?

yeah and Jagger's take on it is ... conflicted to say the least. also Stones/Beatles not necessarily representative of general populace music-tastewise.

Or the English folk movement?

uh, I'm gonna let this one go lol

i mean, there is a reason that the bear family exists in germany and not here. they are addicted over there.

this is a good point, hadn't occurred to me!

Happy to learn that I am just wrong and Geir is weird. Am currently surveying my Hungarian in-laws for how they feel about it.

English:
5-CD boxed set (LP-size) with 120-page hardcover book. 124 tracks; playing time approx. 6 hrs 25 mns. -- 'The single most important event in the history of country music.' (JOHNNY CASH, on the 1927 Bristol sessions). This is the foundation of country music! An unsurpassed storehouse of traditional American music, featuring the first recordings by the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The legendary sessions issued complete for the first and only time, including the ultra-rare follow-up sessions from 1928! -- The recording trip made by Victor Records to Bristol, Tennessee in July-August 1927 was a defining moment in country music. Producer Ralph Peer found two acts that acquired national and international fame: Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. But more than a hundred other recordings were made at the Bristol sessions of 1927 and '28. There were ballad singers, street evangelists, string bands, gospel quartets, harmonica virtuosos, Holiness preachers, blues guitarists and rural storytellers. A snapshot of rural American music was caught in an era of rapid change: pictures of a past almost beyond recall, but preserved for ever in these magnificent recordings. -- The five CDs in this set gather every surviving recording from these sessions, including alternative takes. The accompanying 120-page, LP-sized hardcover book contains newly researched essays on the background to the sessions and on the individual artists, with many rare and unpublished photographs. Also included are complete song lyrics and a detailed discography, illustrated with reproductions of the original recording sheets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_l9T1iM84k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTfWTqQ0dM

Read the "Herre" of "Hot in Herre" in German in my head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERVZYGAzJcU

Never heard of these particular artists, but this displays most of the defining characteristics of Country and Irish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP5n0yflDZo

My aunts in Kerry would be so down with this.

Scandinavians are pretty good at cranking out alt.country now and then.

Yeah, whatserface from Bettie Serveert had a side project called Chitlin' Fooks that were pretty much this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcs7loUWwzo

sorry but the Netherlands isn't in Scandinavia iirc?

Not that this says anything representative about national taste, but Germany did send a decent pop-country song to Eurovision a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQqRNq9YqYw

Ah, for some reason I was confusing Bettie Serveert w/ The Cardigans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbi2i0j0k9M

mo dutch country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8mY1C89po

I like the skiffle beat of that German Eurovision song but it's not really...country? That Dutch business qualifies just fine. I think it's in the swing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7Ly_b6rS-g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jc2efqj5Js

I guess that skiffle was coming straight out of country, so you could argue that it's actually deep in the dna of british rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAh1DvvtL0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjNyHsWD7g

Whoever moved this thread I haet you because you're making me read ILM. Also I just tried to post 3 times and couldn't figure out why I only got a blank screen.

SO ANYWAY. That Pussycat song is great, AND youtube tells me they're playing in Brooklyn in May...??

The skiffle-style beat is way prevalent in country music up until the last 30 years or so.

Friend of mine linked this on Facebook the other day. More Country & Irish hotness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KulZbuZFet4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HnzjBXG9k

IT'S NOT THE SKIFFLE, IT'S THE LACK OF SWING. Although thanks for all these youtubes because they are a treat.

Country clearly came from the Irishes and Britishes that settled in Appalachia a couple centuries ago, right? Especially Irishes. It's no wonder there are a lot of traditional Irish touches in early American country, and it still carries over in some smaller ways now.

Yeah, I take Appalachian clogging and highland dance classes, I am somewhat aware of these ties. :D

Oh, that wasn't directed at you, but rather a general statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfp78kOjkk

I WILL SPARE YOU REDNEX

Country clearly came from the Irishes and Britishes that settled in Appalachia a couple centuries ago, right? Especially Irishes.

yeah, a lot. but there's German elements too - polka, for ex.

Totally forgot that Steps originated as a line-dancing thing. That was huge in Ireland in the '90s too.

i mean, there is a reason that the bear family exists in germany and not here. they are addicted over there.

hm, I assumed a lot of those European roots-oriented labels (Bear Family, JSP, Charly, Snapper, Proper) were just trying to reissue stuff without having to worry about American copyright litigation & import their products to the US to sell at (with the exception of Bear Family) budget prices. I wonder how their album sales break down w/r/t American vs. European audiences.

country + glossy Scandinavian chartpop = bliss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHirD3BfzMg

isn't country music pretty big in Norway? Wikipedia names Heidi Hauge and Bjøro Håland as a couple of popular country acts their, but I don't know how closely their music resembles modern American stuff.

Bjøro Håland (born 6 October 1943) is a Norwegian country singer.

He was born on Håland in Norway and grew up in Audnedal with five siblings. In 1960 he emigrated to the USA. He worked as a construction worker and sang in bars. He moved back to Norway in 1966.

Håland has released 22 records which have sold four million copies.

yeah, country is huge there. not too surprising, since the ruralist and patriotic themes resonate well with norwegian life and culture.

i buy shakey's basic contention - with a thousand caveats, but still: yes. american country is somewhat unique in its resistance to transfiguration through export. i mean, all musical genres come from somewhere, a specific point in time, place and culture. but most become plastic as they move out from that point. they usually bear some authenticating stain of the ur-culture that bore them, but they adapt to the needs of other times, places and people, even eventually recolonizing the land of their birth in new "foreign" guises. this has been true to at least some extent of the blues, jazz, rock, funk, punk, disco, dub, metal, etc.

doesn't really seem to have been true of american country. country is probably appreciated all around the world, but it hasn't often been successfully recreated in mutant form, recreated to suit alien needs. its core identity, the way it symbolizes a specific culture and its ethos, seems resistant to this sort of creative meddling.

maybe this has something to do with the fact that country is the symbolic voice of america's dominant (white) culture, and that america herself so dominated 20th century pop. like country is somehow too strongly tied to an ostensibly indomitable white-american-ness to ever surrender comfortably to other hands. does this make sense? i ask myself, i guess. why would rap, for instance, be less "indomitable" in this sense? perhaps because rap cannot claim to so easily speak for dominance, for specific power. it therefore becomes more easily metaphorical, suited to the needs of those coming up from under other sorts of oppression.

this analysis doesn't sit well with american country's long history of outlaw/outsider/rural-as-underclass posturing. that's probably another argument though...

Isn't there at least one middle aged bloke in every English town who calls himself "Tex", wears a Stetson, listens to country music a lot and dreams of a cowboy life while driving around in his Mondeo?

Or is this a television sitcom thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abmrAf0evgk

with a thousand caveats, but still: yes. american country is somewhat unique in its resistance to transfiguration through export. i mean, all musical genres come from somewhere

Hmmm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMr6SSHP-A0&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm4v_A7E7zU

doesn't really seem to have been true of american country.

now that i've said this, and in light of the last few posts above (note chilli on ruralist & patriotic norwegian country), i've got my doubts. maybe american country is better integrated into world pop than i thought. and maybe the difference is not that country resists this kind of transformation, but that america is not interested in transformed country. we sometimes accept the mutant versions of rock and even rap that arrive from distant shores, but we keep country sacred. it must be authentically american even to exist.

otfm

Just commenting to nth the observation that country in many forms, from early Johnny Cash to sons of Mayo putting on fake American accents singing about corner forwards, is massive in large tracts of rural Ireland.

http://www.glasgowsgrandoleopry.co.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-8EOf8GlnI

"i ask myself, i guess. why would rap, for instance, be less "indomitable" in this sense? perhaps because rap cannot claim to so easily speak for dominance, for specific power. it therefore becomes more easily metaphorical, suited to the needs of those coming up from under other sorts of oppression"

Personally, I never thought to American country and folk as inextricably tied to an expression of white American political/cultural "dominance". I love Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, Porter Wagoner because their songs have an universal emotional power, and I guess it's the same for lots of other people.
If Europeans who love country can't really grasp it or recreated it, maybe its because a) it is not an easily manageable musical form and b) still has strong, intense cultural connotations rooted in American reality.

Country's hugely popular with older people across Europe. It's also absolutely massive throughout the West Indies, again mostly with older people but it's very widespread. If you walk into a mall or supermarket in Trinidad, there's a decent chance that they'll be playing Nashville pop-country over the PA.

Despite all of this evidence of Country's euro-popularity, time and again here, when we discuss some huge song like "Before He Cheats" or "Need You Now", some poster writes something like "But I have never heard of this song because I live in Europe."

yeah I had totally forgotten about it. was this his last tour-de-geir?

he's been around

bernard was the bluegrass festival held in the Ulster American Folk Park by any chance?

https://www.nmni.com/uafp

Omagh, so I would imagine so

extra jealous if so, have long had a dream of seeing exactly how dour that place is one day

yeah it was in the Folk Park. not sure how it's "dour" tho? tbqh (unless you meant "dire", in which case

mostl y I appreciated the the signage (comically different from our own)

i dunno bernard me and my wife used to drive past the park on the regularly and we built up a picture in our heads of this tribute to grim hard-working Prods pioneering their way cabin by cabin for Jesus across Americay

like "folk art as expression of know yr place under God" kinda thing

oh wait I found my notebook from that day of our* trip!!! enjoy y'all:

A BILLBOARD:
don't get caught out by
out-of-date food!!

Radio 3 announcer
rolling, with obvious relish,
the R in 'Requiem'

Lonesome River Band:

"she always knew I'd
never change / Like i knew
she'd never stay"

Small boy in 'ULSTER RUGBY'
shirt holding head & crying

(sign above large stage,
Bluegrass festival)

OMAGH DISTRICT COUNCIL
Leading...
Delivering.....
Excelling........

* = me, my father, & his father before him

also recorded in my notebook: Stirling Castle tour notes; astonishment upon hearing new Rod Stewart single "Brighton Beach" at breakfast one morning; "fresh dulse = ??"

; idea for a TV show called "(The?) Castlecats"

ok "The Castlecats" sounds awesome

Duilsk is where we eat dried seaweed.

I dont know about europeans but I can say from personal experience that Mexicans love country music. The gambler might be the top song in a non spanish language that every mexican knows by heart.

I don't know why that makes me happy, but it does.

I was obvs talking out of my ass when I said The Chieftains were Ireland's country music. Sorry, everybody.

Probably cos I have a headful of cold I neglected to point out that there was a major influx of Irish people to America in the middle of the 19th Century escaping the 'famine'. Meant that there were other irish traditions entering play than Irish scots' music.
Not sure about distribution of where they headed to settle. Have heard that there were a large number fighting on the confederate side at least partially because freed blacks would have been going for the same niche in society in terms of work that they were trying to carve out for themselves.

Famine gets quotation marks since the idea that there was a famine is a misnomer, during that time landlords still managed to export large amounts of grain.

here now there was a famine and leave it at that or take it to the brits thread and lets really kick off

hey it's not really a famine if your colonial masters have got food

Probably cos I have a headful of cold I neglected to point out that there was a major influx of Irish people to America in the middle of the 19th Century escaping the 'famine'. Meant that there were other irish traditions entering play than Irish scots' music.

Well, true, but they weren't they mostly in the North? I actually don't know though, I just assume the South isn't really the place to be celebrating St Paddy's Day.

The early Ulster immigrants and their descendants at first usually referred to themselves simply as "Irish," without the qualifier "Scotch." It was not until more than a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the Protestant Irish began to refer to themselves as "Scotch-Irish" to distinguish them from the predominantly Catholic, and largely destitute, wave of immigrants from Ireland in that era.[14] The two groups had little initial interaction in America, as the 18th century Ulster immigrants were predominantly Protestant and had become settled largely in upland regions of the American interior, while the huge wave of 19th-century Catholic immigrant families settled primarily in the Northeast and Midwest port cities such as Boston, New York, or Chicago. However, beginning in the early 19th century, many Irish migrated individually to the interior for work on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and, later in the century, railroads

The Ulster Irish migrants from the first wave were mainly originally Hugenots iirc that were brought to Ireland for farming, so there's a Low Countries source of origin really rather than an Irish one.

Now it's getting even more complicated

FWIW I don't think there's a great deal of awareness of contemporary mainstream country here in the UK. When I tell people (music enthusiasts or generalists) I am interested in country, 99% of the time they say something like "oh Dolly Parton and stuff yeah?". Taylor Swift's pretty well known, past that I don't think anyone has much of a profile (a few really switched-on people will have a sense of Toby Keith as the dude who was all "put a boot in your ass it's the American way" but not many of those would have heard the record).

That's not to say there's no following for contemporary stuff - it's a big global pop music and that spreads through the usual channels of Vimeo and so on, people get to hear stuff, people like stuff. Kacey Musgraves's audience (maybe 300 people)at the Bush Hall the other month was mostly an enthusiastic and young pop crowd, and she's booked to play the (2000-ish?) Shepherds Bush Empire this month. Think she's getting some love as the next thing to listen to if you're into Taylor.

Nevertheless, it's my view that "country" as a concept still means as steel guitars and rhinestones to the massive majority over here, and much of what's in the country chart just wouldn't code "country" to British ears (if Jon Bon Jovi has a hit single here with a song that's charted Country in the US (this may have happened for all I know), virtually no-one would recognise that sound as country music. The fact that Lionel Ritchie gets on the country charts is met with genuine surprise and sometimes incomprehension!

Ronan Keating, bless his boring cotton socks, had some hits some years back covering the more ballady end of the country charts in pretty similar versions. Again, those records just wouldn't code as country over here as far as I can tell.

Please note: the above may be completely wrong in repect of under-25s, I don't know any of them.

AN ERITH singer is ‘on cloud nine’ after winning a national competition for the second year running.

Wayne Jacobs, Riverdale Road, has scooped the National UK Country Music Award again after getting the top gong last year.

The 51-year-old discovered he had won with song I Want my Daddy on Saturday (September 7) at the ceremony in Derby.

Mr Jacobs wrote the hit based on a true story about a firefighter who was hit by a truck on a highway in Kentucky.

strange last words for a 51 yr old firefighter but im not gonna judge we'll all be there or thereabouts someday and are like to say something as bizarre in such circumstances i'm sure

ctrl-f Mumford gives me no hits on this thread, so I'll just say that there are reasons we try to keep non-Americans away from banjos.

(not that Americans are all that reliable with them either)

Billy Connolly was damn handy on a banjo. My dad saw his and Gerry Rafferty's folk act The Humblebums many a time

Garthmania hits Ireland

Country music singer Garth Brooks starts a world tour this July with five sold-out concerts at Croke Park. That's 400,000 tickets - or nearly one for every 10 Irish citizens. Why does Ireland love Garth so much, asks comedian Colm O'Regan?