What is Country?

Karen Black does a striptease, so obvious answer is yes.

Obviously singing as a practice has existed for ever so long: and at some point in the past it encompassed everything from Gregorian chant to the Eldar Edda to shamanic chanting to madrigals to whatever. But the forces that meant that when we say "song", we mean something of a particular kind of structure and (above all) length, are historical, and among them are — obviously — market forces, for example the competition among jongleurs, minnesingers, troubadors and the like from the 13th-16th centuries to be the best, most popular, most employed, best paid etc etc (isn't this what Die Meistersingers is abt?). I accept that music forms in the Brazilian rainforest were maybe unaffected by these European trends (or even the equivalent locals trends, if there were any), but I refuse to accept a thesis which argues that on one hand, the arrival of a specific technology of documentation, broadcast and exchange (recording) had a massive transformational effect primarily driven by the market, and that another, earlier technology of documentation, broadcast and exchange (stave-music) had no effect whatever. The reason songs are four-six minutes long, not (for example) four-six days, is a (partial) product of how professional singers and songwriters plied their trades and made their living, between the 13th and the 20th centuries. Christoff is arguing that "commercialisation" effects *only* count if they are produced by one (latecome) wing of the industry, but he doesn't choose to argue this, he just waves his arms vaguely around and says "folk". The concept of "folk" — the word itself — arose mainly in the revolutionary struggles in Europe in the early parto f the 19th centiry, when nations were beginning to define themselves in terms of culture and territory and citizenship (rather than loyalty to this or that emperor/monarch/warlord). The cultural specificity built into the idea — that there is an irish or a finnish or a greek typos, say — was part of the self-identity manufactured, via published songs ("God save the Queen", "The Marseillaise" etc), and also via such information systems (of communication AND exchange) as newspapers (modern nationalism and a certain level of literacy — in other words, engagments with commercialised bastardisation of the spoken word — are closely intertwined). From the mid-19th century there was a great (primarily middleclass) movement to rescue the arts and crafts being lost to industry: this is when folksong collectors began their work. They were ideologically inclined to see the lost medieval community as one of fabulous unchanged harmony, juit now wrecked: their methods of documentation tended to mummify and distort the material, and the people being documented were invariably shrewd enough to adjust their music/craft whatever to suit the documenters, because this paid off better in the long run. The communities that trekked across America — who after all came from many places and class backgrounds — carried many many traces of these contradictory elements, though they had become unattached from their context of origin, since by definition none of this music was chthonic pure place-bound culture in the Pygmy Rituals sense — it all came from afar.

(Of course we now know that a great deal of cultural exchange went on up and down within for example Africa prior to the arrival of colonialism, not least because local wars were settled by exchange of slaves and slaves are very often primary cultural workers — nurses telling stories and singing lullabies for example — so that the idea of pre-literate oral culture as a monolithic unchange resource since the Stone Age is also basically a self-regarding European myth: only the white man knows progress, this kind of nonsense, easily flipped on its head when you want to denounce progress... John Miller Chernoff, in his book on Ghanaian Drumming culture, asks one of the drum masters if he plays the same music as was played by drum masters a hundred years before. Of course not, the drummer says: it always changes. And in a hundred years time, asks Chernoff? It will have changed again.)

(Haha it's possible the drummer just told him that because he guessed it;s what he wanted to hear, but Chernoff presents it as something that surprises him...)

Naming is natural. Labelling is something you only need when you're distinguishing one product from another: "I sing ballads, he sings lays. Lays suxoR so hire me... "

Somewhat akin to what Ray Charles did with Country (i.e. transform it into Soul), most of the Country material performed by Elvis was transformed through R&B into Rock. In the early days, Elvis turned just about everything into Rock (albeit, many times of the Adult Contemporary variety) -- conversely how Johnny Cash (in recent years) has turned a lot of Rock back into Country.

I would say that Willie Nelson is mostly country, though, he also has a long string of Adult Contemporary.

As far as the export of Country goes, have you ever heard of Germany's Bear Family Records? These guys put out some of the most comprehensive box sets in the industry and include acts like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, and, i understand they do a fairly brisk amount of European business. As far as the Japanese flavors you speak of; i haven't heard a thing.

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So what's R&B then?

Surely i'll step forward and praise the documentarists. I wouldn't be so naive as to suggest that these recorded pieces are completely comprehensive, but to this point, it's the best reference material we have and which to base our musilogical history. As for their alleged prejudicial recording process -- who cares; take the material for what it's worth (i for one tend to enjoy it). Without their work we'd be as ignorant as you clalm Chernoff may have been in his analysis of the Ghanaian Drumming culture.

Since you ...accept that music forms in the Brazilian rainforest were maybe unaffected by these European trends..., let's look to the East whose culture developed in moderate to total isolation. The Aborigines performed ritual music (as did many). Ritual music in itself belays your notion of the 4-6 minute song -- and don't say that these ritual performers weren't any more professional than the Orissi dance troupes of India or the members of the Greek Rebetika (as Lord Custos Alpha so appropriately illustrates that commerce is at best fluid).

Music has always been an organic pursuit. The weather changes the acoustics of the instruments as war encourages more strident rhythms. Maybe somewhere along the way a couple-a-hillbillies thought they could make some spare change if they played a few tunes on a street corner -- and dad-burn-it if'n they didn't get more copper for the more differ'nt songs that they could play. 'N for dances, shoot, ever'body gots a differ'nt song that they'd-a-rather hear. ...Country, dear friend, Country started well after these things.

...But if you want to keep pushing this thing back to when the first knuckle-dragging Neanderthal starting beating some bones on a log; you seem more than qualified to undertake the task.

¥

So what's R&B then?

You're really asking for a mess now aren't you?

I think i might just like you.

¥

" 'I've had fun here.' - JFK Jr. 'Sexiest Man Alive' spends weekend in Clarksdale visiting blues sites, cotton harvest."

I think Sterling might have been on to something up there with the "Christian pop for the fallen" thing but he lost me when he nullified the 70's Hurtin-Beard.

Both the historian and the documentarian share a purpose, though - only the tense changes. The purpose is to record what happens/what did happen, not what should have happened or should be happening. The historian has an extra purpose which is to explain why things happened, and this includes an assessment of the ways in which the documentarian failed.

The work of a bad historian or a bad documentarian can still be valuable and enjoyable, but that's not the same thing.

P.S I know that it is a male singer

I'm interested; where does good "Country" exist in the current zeitgeist? The popular acts have zero cred, so where's the true cache?

Gillian Welch is and easy choice, so are the Black Twig Pickers. Cast King, Whitey Morgan

Resurrect this son-of-a-bitch with some genuine earthiness!

What?

The popular acts have zero cred,

I've seen trolls uglier than this.

1925 - The Rice-Kellogg research paper was published, establishing the basic principle of the direct-radiator loudspeaker with a small coil-driven mass-controlled diaphragm in a baffle with a broad midfrequency range of uniform response. On Nov. 28, WSM in Nashville ("We Shield Millions" slogan of owner Edwin Craig's National Life and Accident Insurance Co.) began its Barn Dance radio show (hosted by George D. Hay who had previously hosted the WLS Barn Dance show) that in 1927 became the Grand Ole Opry broadcast from WSM's Studio B on the new NBC network. The Grand Ole Opry moved to the the Ryman Auditorium in 1943 and with the Acuff-Rose 1942 studio and WSM's 1947 Castle Studio would attract recording companies to Nashville's Music Row.

this is from an incredibly excellent page with all sorts of links on it --> http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html

(looking forward to reading longer posts, especially by mark s, later today)

The popular acts have zero cred

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because they don't sound exactly like Sam Cooke.

I suppose you think current R&B acts have zero cred because...

...Advance directly to Frank Ocean

Recording Technology History page mentioned upthread is now hosted here: http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/recording.technology.history/notes.html

(It seems to move around a lot. The author is one Steven Schoenherr in case we need to look for it again, and to give credit where credit is due)

Related links here, although a few are broken: http://ncrtv.org/?page_id=52

Great link to the Recording History site -- thx Redd; what new technologies will we again need to transfer to? I'm sticking to vinyl.

The popular acts have zero cred

I don't have any problems with Nashville pop acts these days, more or less. Some of it catches my ear, a lot of it doesn't. I seriously balk at the notion it should still be called country music, though. Like, whoever...The Band Perry or Blake Shelton or Dierks...are the John Waites and Pat Benatars and Bon Jovis of the 21st century. Corporate rock is still corporate rock, except the center of gravity is now on Music Row instead of Vine.

Reviving this thread to discuss the recently re-discovered 1891 Louis Vasnier cylinder recording "Thompson's Old Gray Mule," which pertains to the thread in that the label that's doing the reissue, Archeophone, has marketed this as "the first country record"

Here's the label copy:

Thirty years before some fiddlers from Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia started recording a new genre of music called “hillbilly,” a Creole of color from the Seventh Ward of New Orleans named Louis Vasnier (1858–1902) beat them to the punch. Recorded in 1891, “Thompson’s Old Gray Mule” is the most raucous version of a song that, better known as “Johnson’s Old Gray Mule,” would enter the country music canon. But Vasnier did more than give us what is arguably the oldest country record in existence. For the short-lived Louisiana Phonograph Company he also waxed sermons by a fictional preacher named Brudder Rasmus, and “Adam and Eve and de Winter Apple” joins “Thompson” on this 45-rpm vinyl single. Vasnier’s two surviving cylinders are the earliest extant sounds from New Orleans. In them, he summons up the atmosphere and the culture of the Crescent City during the time Buddy Bolden was still a teenager.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgfhU8Tt0s

Obviously part of this is the label generating buzz (and who can blame them), but the narrative -- "Actually, it was a black man who made the first country record" -- also seems to fit nicely into the post-2020 zeitgeist, when artists like Rhiannon Giddens and Amythyst Kiah have come to prominence while highlighting the importance of African Americans in the development of what has often been thought of largely as a "white" music. (Not that they are the first to do so, but my feelers tell me that certain parts of the culture are more amenable to these narrative re-contextualizations than perhaps they ever have been.)

I guess what I'd say is that, for me, this feels more like a stray vestige of vaudeville than it does the heralding of the birth of Country Music as we know it in the '20s and '30s. It seems more like a fascinating and important window into the patchwork of American music in the nineteenth century than it does some sort of missing link or Rosetta Stone. I'm not going to try to formulate a waterproof definition here, but to me the narrative that country music emerged from an attempt in the 1920s to market and commercialize old-time music -- and in the process, get it all slick and dolled up -- more or less feels right, although it's admittedly something I haven't spent a ton of time investigating.

So, what do you think? Does this 1891 recording by Louis Vasnier compel you to feel any kind of way about what country music is?

Andrew Hickey had a really good point of view on this. I can’t remember how he said it, but the gist was that the audience for the music determines how the music is labeled. Which is obvious I guess, but I had never thought of it that way.

Dylan has recorded all kinds of music but because he’s embraced by rock audiences he is a rock musician that sometimes records country and folk songs. Hickey said it better.

Also, hence "country rock" as its own sub genre. Like, the Eagles, I guess.