[Dixielandjazz] An Interesting Parallel? Country Music // OKOM

[Steve barbone]

CAVEAT - LONG, ABOUT AN UNIQUELY AMERICAN MUSIC GENRE, BUT NOT OKOM.
UNLESS YOU ARE CURIOUS ABOUT A GENRE THAT HAS THE SAME PROBLEMS/CHALLENGES
AS OKOM . . . DELETE NOW.

However, if you are at all intellectually curious about a parallel music
form and how they are bumbling along with identity problems similar to those
of OKOM, you will enjoy this article.

Cheers,
Steve


Country Music? Whose Country?

By KELEFA SANNEH - November 11, 2005 - NY TIMES

WHEN country music comes to New York City, there's usually a simple
explanation: it's a publicity stunt.

Over the past few years, a handful of leading country acts have come to town
for promotional appearances, among them Sugarland, Lee Ann Womack and
Miranda Lambert. And when Big & Rich needed a high-concept venue for a
television special, they found one at the corner of Bleecker and Bowery: the
elderly punk dive CBGB. (This was, in an odd way, a chance for the club to
rediscover its roots: those four initials originally stood for Country,
Bluegrass, Blues.)

But all of that pales in comparison to what's happening this weekend, when
scores of country acts are descending upon this city in advance of the
Country Music Association Awards, which are to be held at Madison Square
Garden on Tuesday night. In New York, a city that - as every Nashville music
executive surely knows - doesn't even have a country radio station, this
weekend will offer an extraordinary lineup of country-music concerts. And as
usual, the simple explanation holds true: it's a publicity stunt.

The events are known collectively as Country Takes NYC. (The New York Times
is one of the sponsors.) Organizers are hoping to galvanize the area's fans,
but they also know that temporarily relocating the awards from Nashville is
a way to make noise nationwide.

Over the past few years, country music has been undergoing one of its
periodic - or never-ending - identity crises. The genre's biggest current
names include arena-packing rock stars like Kenny Chesney, self-styled
rebels like Gretchen Wilson and proudly old-fashioned singers like George
Strait. (Some performers, like the troublemaking, arena-rocking part-time
traditionalist Toby Keith, fit all three categories.) These competing
tendencies have made country music one of the nation's most exciting genres,
as performers figure out what to do. Should they rap? Sing power ballads?
Record duets with Jimmy Buffett or Nelly? Follow the rebellious example of
Merle Haggard? Leading country stars are trying all of the above, with
mixed, but generally entertaining, results.

And yet country isn't one of those genre labels, like alternative rock or
teen pop, that performers can merely shrug off. Country music is supposed to
stand for something, even if no one can decide exactly what that something
is; you're supposed to be proud to be country. The music has a historical
and mythical connection to rural Southern white culture, even though today's
performers and fans are often neither Southern nor rural.

WHITE BUT AMORPHOUS

Country music remains, of course, an overwhelmingly white genre, though
perhaps not much more so than heavy metal or indie rock. And while it would
be futile to pretend that country pride had nothing in common with white
pride, it's also clear that the genre's identity is much more amorphous than
that. It's untethered, now, to any region or population or strict musical
identity, but fans know it when they hear it.

Still, the debate continues. Fans, singers, even executives routinely
grumble about how "real country" is under attack, both from within (timid
country-radio stations) and without (mainstream-minded marketers).

These forces don't often operate in the way you'd expect. When, say, a rock
'n' roll fan is bashing country, the complaint probably won't be that the
music is too rural or old-fashioned: the complaint will probably be,
instead, that it's too slick; they love Willie Nelson but wouldn't be caught
dead listening to the pop-country group Rascal Flatts. Similarly, the recent
collaboration between Loretta Lynn and the postpunk bluesman Jack White (of
the White Stripes) got a warmer reception on CMT than on country radio, and
an even warmer one on MTV2. In country music, alternative and old-fashioned
sometimes mean the same thing, and outsiders might be even hungrier for
authenticity than insiders.

HOEDOWNS AROUND TOWN

One of this weekend's most high-profile performers has seemed, for years, as
if he were just about to cross over into the rock 'n' roll mainstream. As
his millions of fans know, Keith Urban (who plays Irving Plaza on Sunday and
Monday) is an Australian country-rock singer with a knack for
car-radio-friendly singalongs. In another era, he might have wound up in Los
Angeles, not Nashville, but for now he's in the odd position of being a rock
'n' roll hitmaker who's largely unknown to rock fans.

The duo Montgomery Gentry (B. B. King, tonight) plays a different kind of
country-rock: in recent hits like "Dawn" and "You Do Your Thing," revved-up
guitars and half-snarled vocals aren't a gesture away from country tradition
but a way to insist upon it. These days, the remembered rebel yells of
1970's Southern rock might very well seem more "country" than country music
itself.

BROADWAY (American Songbook) MEETS COUNTRY

You can hear another kind of crossover at "Broadway Meets Country," tomorrow
night at Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center. It's hard to say what's more
worrisome: the prospect of Glen Campbell and Trisha Yearwood adding some
twang to Broadway chestnuts, or the prospect of Ben Vereen and Brian Stokes
Mitchell taking the twang out of country chestnuts. Couldn't the organizers
have found a more appetizing hybrid? How about "Soul Meets Country"? Keyshia
Cole could sing Tanya Tucker. Jeff Bates could sing Barry White. Jaheim
could sing George Jones. Ms. Wilson could sing Aretha Franklin. And everyone
could sing Ray Charles.

On Monday night, the city's best rock club, the Bowery Ballroom, plays host
to one of the (long) weekend's best concerts. Ms. Womack, who has six C.M.A.
nominations, is a country-pop star who reinvented herself as a
neotraditionalist; her current album, "There's More Where That Came From,"
is full of elegant weepers. She is to be joined by Shooter Jennings, the
rock 'n' roll son of Waylon.

Songwriters get a showcase at Joe's Pub this weekend. Tomorrow's program
includes Jessi Alexander, a singer-songwriter who may still be better known
for her pen than for her voice, and Sunday's includes Craig Wiseman, a
prolific hitmaker; expect to hear not only songs but also stories about
writing them and selling them.

The awards show itself arrives at the Garden on Tuesday, with Brooks & Dunn
serving as hosts. Scheduled performers include most of the genre's big
names, and Dolly Parton has been recruited to sing a duet with Britain's
leading rhinestone cowboy, Elton John.

THE OPRY AT CARNEGIE

Out of all these concerts, perhaps the most intriguing is the one scheduled
for Monday night at Carnegie Hall: the Grand Ole Opry, country music's
historic revue, will be bringing its biggest names and its peculiar
traditions to the Isaac Stern Auditorium. Cheerfully perverse, the Opry
treats big stars like valued employees, allotting even the best singers only
two or three songs. The pleasingly overstuffed lineup includes the cunning
veteran Alan Jackson, the first-rate balladeer Martina McBride, the playful
singer-songwriter Brad Paisley (have you heard his tongue-in-cheek
slur-along hit "Alcohol"?) and many more.

Here's hoping the Opry producers retain one tradition in particular, which
might startle regular Carnegie concertgoers: advertisements for sponsors
between every few songs, delivered onstage by an M.C. This weekend is
supposed to be a cultural exchange, right? Well, maybe some enterprising
orchestra conductor, hungry for comic - and financial - relief, will discern
in this shameless tradition one more opportunity to make New York just a
little bit more country.