Dixie Chicks Among Esteemed Outlaws by Ashley Sayeau

Philadelphia Inquirer - February 16, 2007

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16709871.htm

On Sunday night at the 49th annual Grammy awards, the Dixie Chicks took
home five awards, including best album, record and song of the year.

It was a long road, indeed, for the Chicks, whose enormous fan base and
ticket sales famously plummeted in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines
remarked on the eve of the Iraq war that the group was "ashamed the
president of the United States is from Texas." Within days, radio
stations were refusing to play their music, and fans were demanding
refunds. Death threats were later issued.

Throughout the ordeal, the group remained admirably unapologetic,
insisting that dissent is (or at least should be) a vital liberty in
America. They further maintained this position in their album Taking the
Long Way (which won the Grammy for best album) and especially in the
song "Not Ready To Make Nice," in which they directly addressed their
critics: "It's too late to make it right/ I probably wouldn't if I
could/ Cause I'm mad as hell/ Can't bring myself to do what it is/ You
think I should."

Despite the group's successes, the grudge has held, particularly among
the Nashville music establishment. The Country Music Association
completely snubbed the Chicks at its awards ceremony in May.

Such an affront on the part of country music is not only cowardly, but
also quite antithetical to the genre's history. For, while country music
today is often equated with pickup trucks, rebel flags, and men with
mullets, it also has a brave and, dare I say, liberal streak in its
closet.

Take Johnny Cash, for instance. Not only did many of his most famous
lyrics center on "the poor and the beaten down," including a poignant
attack on this country's treatment of American Indians, but also Cash
was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, as in his famous song "Man in
Black": "I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have
been/ Each week we lose a hundred fine young men."

And then there is Willie Nelson, who on Valentine's Day 2006 released a
love song about gay cowboys, titled, "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly
(Fond of Each Other)." Perhaps more seriously, he has been an avid
supporter of presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, who, while arguing
for universal health care and a swift withdrawal from Iraq, is probably
the furthest left of any Democratic candidate.

Women in country music - like the Dixie Chicks - have a long tradition
of being particularly bold in speaking out against some of the very
conventions their record labels and conservative fan base celebrate.
Back in 1933, the Carter Family, which consisted of A.P. Carter; his
wife, Sara Doughtery Carter; and her cousin, the groundbreaking guitar
player Maybelle Addington Carter, sang about a young woman who chose to
commit suicide rather than marry. In Sara's sorrowful croon, we hear her
say, "I never will marry/ I'll be no man's wife/ I expect to live single
all the days of my life." Needless to say, she later divorced A.P.

Perhaps most memorable are some of Loretta Lynn's lyrics, particularly
from the 1960s and 1970s. Released in 1966, her song "Dear Uncle Sam"
was an early anti- Vietnam protest song. And though she once feigned
dozing off while listening to feminist advocate Betty Friedan speak as a
fellow guest on The David Frost Show, Lynn was a pretty controversial
women's advocate. In "I Wanna Be Free," she wrote of the liberating
effect of divorce: "I'm gonna take this chain from around my finger/ And
throw it just as far as I can sling 'er." She did the same thing for
birth control in "The Pill": "The feelin' good comes easy now/ Since
I've got the pill."

As daring as some outlaw artists have been, the country music
establishment has often proved even more dogged in its conservative
views. Lynn has purportedly had more songs banned than any other country
music singer. And Cash, never completely at home in the country music
world, once said that "the very idea of unconventional or even original
ideas ending up on 'country' radio" was "absurd." No wonder, then, that
in his gay cowboy song, Willie Nelson lamented that "you won't hear this
song on the radio/ Not on your local TV."

With the November election, particularly with strong Democratic gains in
Virginia and Missouri, Republican politicians may have to rethink their
long-standing Southern strategy. Similarly, with last Sunday night's
awards, country music should embrace the fact that its greatest assets
have never been scared of controversy or doing the right thing.

To quote the great Dolly Parton - who has sung a few feminist, antiwar,
and progressive anthems herself - "You'll never do a whole lot unless
you're brave enough to try."

[Ashley Sayeau is a freelance writer currently living in Buffalo, N.Y.,
was raised in Tennessee, and has written on women and politics for a
variety of anthologies and publications, including The Nation, Salon and
Dissent.]

© 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer

==========

Wild And Blue: The Politics Of Country By Sandy Carter

Z Magazine - September 1994

http://zena.secureforum.com/znet/zmag/articles/sept94carter.htm

Some of the fondest memories of my west Texas childhood are linked to
the lonesome moan of the pedal steel guitar and the soulful honky tonk
voices of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Ernest Tubb. In the 1950s,
as I was entering grade school and gaining some awareness of the world
around me, these sounds served up essential clues to my sense of time
and place.

A few years later, however, I perceived that some considered country
music inferior to other forms of popular music. Southern accents, nasal
voices, and bad grammar, I learned, were the most visible signs of this
inferiority. So I became self conscious about my drawl and with some
vigilance and discipline began modifying my twang according to standards
I took to be more enlightened.

But the full arsenal of Southern stereotypes was not so easy to escape.
In my 20s, as I began living and working in other parts of the country,
I came to realize that people outside the South, particularly
politically progressive people outside the South, judged white
Southerners and nearly all aspects of their cultural heritage as
backward. And this snobbery often found its most candid expression in
mocking and ridiculing country music.

The elitist views that define popular prejudices about the country
tradition greeted the music at its commercial birth. In the 1920s, when
country music first felt the pressures of commercialization, rural
traditions of all kinds were experiencing tensions and challenges
brought on by industrialization. Country sounds suggesting older and
more settled ways seemed inherently at odds with rapid social and
technological change. The music expressed a longing for stability and
order and deep-seated fears of the temptations of the modern world. At
the same time, the music could not help but reflect hopes of escaping
the hardships associated with traditional rural life.

Conflicted feelings also derived from the Southerness of the music.
While the music of Stephen Foster and the writings of Mark Twain fueled
romantic notions of the South as an exotic land of enchantment, the
region also evoked images of slavery and the Civil War, the Scopes
monkey trial, and the Klan. Thus for many, country music, regardless of
its subject matter, was nothing more than the sound of ignorance and
racism. Retaining a stubborn self-consciousness of its white, rural,
Southern, working class origins, country music today continues to
attract and repulse listeners by stirring the same opposing images.
Nonetheless, in a span of 70 years, country music has grown from
regional to national and international popularity. And presently, the
music is cresting at a commercial high-water mark justifying marketing
claims that country is now "America's pop music."

With mass popularity, however, some of the most distinctive qualities of
country music have been diluted. Listening to the musical styles
dominating country radio, one hears a generic McDonald's styled product
so stripped of "hayseed" connotations that it virtually erases the line
between country and various forms of easy listening white pop and bland
1970s styled corporate rock. While harder and more traditional country
sounds have not disappeared, the market driven industry bias toward an
urban-suburban contemporary sound has certainly muddled the definition
and origins of the musical idioms known as country.

Like other music forms of our culture, country music is an amalgam of
influences. Its sound, song structure, and lyrical text reveal a heavy
debt to African American musical styles, particularly blues and gospel.
Rhythmically, country draws most on the dance meters of English and
European country dance tunes. As to lyrics and narrative style, country
storytelling has roots in Southern Protestant sermonizing, barroom
banter, front porch story swapping, and the general character of
regional oral traditions. Other distinctive characteristics relate to
the way the music is performed. Unlike many pop performers, country
singers write much of their material bringing a subjective, direct voice
to their performance. Like blues singers, they aim for intimacy more
than technical sophistication. In the singer's voice and story lay the
central appeal of country music.

Though country music is a vocal music above all else, its instrumental
sound is unique and immediately identifiable. It begins with the guitar
and is filled out with fiddle, banjo, mandolin, dobro, bass, pedal steel
guitar, and harmonica. The distinctive country sound comes from the way
the musicians play these instruments with flat picks, finger picks,
bottlenecks, and bow. In contrast to the smooth, melodic approach of pop
and classical music, country players, again showing an African American
influence, favor a rough-edged attack with strings popped, scraped,
hammered, and frailed. Mirroring the unadorned vocal sound, instrumental
solos and fills are deliberately "unrefined." The emphasis is on sounds
that counterpoint the social and emotional realism conveyed by the
singer and the song. Accordingly, country sounds are harsh, rowdy,
romantic, humorous, and rousing. Most of all, they are mournful.

Did you ever see a robin weep When leaves begin to die

That means he's lost the will to live I'm so lonesome I could cry

--Hank Williams

Historically the most dominant and unmistakable quality of the country
sound is sadness. One of the great stereotypes plaguing country music is
the cry-in-the- beer loser drowning the pain of romantic loss in some
dark tavern. But the heartbreak in country music runs deeper than
cheating, drinking, and divorce. The sad tale country music has to tell
goes back to the devastation the region suffered during the Civil War,
the loss of rural identity, and the great migration of Southerners to
urban centers in the Midwest and West during the 1940s and 1950s.
Understandably, country music is homesick music, permanently colored by
feelings of longing and lost innocence.

The loss at the heart of the country song has been expressed through two
divergent impulses. When the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers came to
Bristol, Tennessee in August 1927 to perform before record scout Ralph
Peer and a Victor Talking Machine, they brought with them distinct
bodies of material representing seemingly contradictory themes and
values. In the Carter Family's huge repertoire of traditional songs
resided the morally decent old-time virtues of work, family, humility,
and Christian fellowship. By contrast, Rodgers, an ex-railroad brakeman
from Meridian, Mississippi, wrote tunes with roots in blues and jazz,
folk and cowboy songs, work gang hollers and pop. Though Rodgers wrote
his share of songs glorifying the home and family, his work also
celebrated the lives of hell-raisers, hoboes, wayward lovers, criminals,
rounders, and ramblers.

Both approaches proved immediately popular. By 1933, the year of his
death from tuberculosis, Jimmie Rodgers had become country's first
crossover success and in the South his status was near mythic. And by
the time the Carter Family disbanded in 1943, their music was well-
known throughout the United States, as well as parts of Canada, Mexico,
England, Ireland, and Australia. Aside from establishing the commercial
viability of country music, the breakthroughs of Rodgers and the Carter
Family gave the shared musical culture of the white South coherence.
Though commercialization accelerated the homogenization of sounds, by
documenting the diversity of local and regional styles it also helped
Southerners gain a fuller sense of their common cultural heritage. The
music labeled "hillbilly" dramatized what they suffered, survived, and
left behind. It offered solace and understanding, realism and escape.
But most of all, it was music that responded to change with a
reassertion of tradition. The Carter Family's religious tunes and
sentimental ballads and Jimmie Rodgers' chronicles of the rambling man,
in different ways, mapped the boundaries of tradition and the dire
consequences of its breakdown.

Because of this emphasis on Southerness and tradition, country music has
long been associated with all that is reactionary. However, while
country music generally expresses a conservative outlook, the view of
country as an exclusively white, male-dominated, right-wing tradition is
unfair and one-dimensional. At no point in its history has country music
expressed a consistent political ideology. Although performers such as
W. Lee O'Daniel, Jimmie Davis, and Roy Acuff have run for political
office and many country musicians have endorsed candidates and aired
opinions in public, the music resists easy ideological labeling. Every
hard- headed patriotic diatribe like "Okie From Muskogee" can be matched
by songs like Waylon Jennings's multicultural, egalitarian anthem
"America" and James Talley's ode to populist rebellion "Are They Gonna
Make Us Outlaws Again?":

Now there's always been a bottom

And there's always been a top

And someone took the orders

And someone called the shots

And someone took the beatin', Lord

And someone got the prize

Well, that may be the way its been

But that don't mean its right

More importantly, since country music has always been a voice for small
farmers, factory hands, day laborers, the displaced and unemployed, its
harsh portraits of work and everyday life carry an implicit critique of
capitalism. Instead of overt political protest, country songs prefer to
deliver social criticism through poignant descriptions of economic
hardship and family sacrifice. Some of the best examples of this style
of protest are Merle Haggard's "Mama's Hungry Eyes," Dolly Parton's
"Coat Of Many Colors," and Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter."

As to the issue of race, country music's sentimental attachment to Dixie
is often taken as an endorsement of white supremacy and slavery. Country
music's glorification of the South, however, derives mostly from an
idealized notion of working the land and the real life movement of
millions off the land during the years of the Great Depression and World
War II. Not surprisingly, hundreds of country tunes plead the case of
the farmer and celebrate the beauty of Southern landscapes. By contrast,
since the birth of the country music industry in the 1920s, very few
country songs have offered direct commentary on race relations in the
South, and certainly no popular song has advocated a return to the slave
system. This doesn't mean, of course, that white Southerners or the
country music industry are free of racism. Rather, it suggests that the
homesickness in country music is based primarily on the erosion of rural
identity.

Still, it is obvious that "whiteness" is dominant in country music.
Despite the tradition's enormous debt to African American music and
other ethnic music cultures, non-white performers are still exceedingly
rare in country music. When voices of color have gained popularity in
the country field, it has generally been through songs and styles
evidencing only traces of their racial origins. Nonetheless, in recent
decades Mexican-Americans such as Johnny Rodriguez, Freddy Fender, Tish
Hinojosa, and Flaco Jiminez and African Americans such as Charlie Pride,
Stoney Edwards, and Big Al Downing have won acceptance with country
audiences. And occasionally, there are tunes like Bobby Braddock's "I
Believe The South Is Gonna Rise Again" that break the mold:

The Jacksons down the road were black like we were

But our skins were white and theirs was black

I believe the South's gonna rise again

But not the way we thought it would back then

Some of the strongest stereotypes attached to country music revolve
around the social and sexual roles of women. To many people Tammy
Wynette's 1968 hit "Stand By Your Man" typifies the passive, long
suffering mentality of the unliberated country woman. In truth, the
female perspective in country music is much broader and far more
assertive than this superficial stereotype can allow. The richest and
most authoritative evidence of this reality can be found in Mary Bufwack
and Robert Oermann's Finding Her Voice: The Saga Of Women In Country
Music(Crown Publishers Inc., New York). This 541 page narrative tracing
the lives and music of country women from the late 19th century up to
the present, shows how country music has encouraged white working class
women in their struggles to survive and resist "economic exploitation,
sexual subjugation, and limited opportunities."

Exploring the folk origins of country music, Bufwack and Oermann argue
that women were the primary folklorists for early rural music,
memorizing the tunes and lyrics that provided the basic entertainment
for the family and community. And in their own original ballads, women
expressed sexual fantasies and discontents in songs loaded with images
of romantic longing, promiscuity, violence, and death. Bufwack and
Oermann also reveal more active and socially oriented resistance in the
depression era songs of Sarah Gunning, the composer of "I Hate The
Capitalist System," and Aunt Molly Jackson, who began making up class
conscious songs and walking picket lines before she was ten.

It was not until the 1950s, however, that women in country music began
to gain commercial equality with men. Following Kitty Well's surprising
1952 hit "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"--a woman's retort to
Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side Of Life--women singers such as Patsy
Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette started achieving
record sales and stardom rivaling country men. The appeal of the modern
country female star, Bufwack and Oermann note, in many ways mirrored
general trends in country music. Country tunes of the 1950s and 1960s
still focused on subjects of work, family, and religion. But reflecting
an audience that was now struggling to come to grips with the realities
of urban life and wage labor, the music increasingly dealt with
alcoholism, infidelity, and divorce. Reacting to these problems from a
distinctly female point of view, country women stepped forward with
songs displaying tougher attitudes. Sad songs of betrayal prevailed, but
women now would sing also of sexual freedom and nights on the town. And
in love songs, women would voice a straightforward demand for
relationships based on fair play and an end to double standards.

Some of the purest samples of this new toughness came in a string of
popular tunes by Loretta Lynn. With a basic hard country sound and a
writing style favoring down-to-earth blue collar bluntness, Lynn laid
down the law to men in songs such as "Fist City" and "Don't Come Home
A-Drinking (With Loving On Your Mind)." With her singles "The Pill" and
"One's On The Way," Lynn also became the first popular country singer to
publicly advocate for birth control. These attitudes and Lynn's
reputation for gearing her shows to women, earned her a legion of
devoted, fanatical fans, including a large lesbian following.

Although few country music women of the 1950s and 1960s made music as
self-consciously for women as Lynn, the emergence of country women
superstars put "the woman's perspective" on substantially more equal
terms with that of the working man. By 1984 about one-fourth of the top
country singles and albums were by women. And today's country and pop
charts are overflowing with country women--Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd,
Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Trisha Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea,
Patty Loveless, Pam Tillis, and K.T. Oslin, to mention only a few. Most
significantly, the commercial appeal of the current generation of
country women seems directly linked to a feminist oriented lyric. Lorrie
Morgan, for instance, takes clear control of her relationships in "What
Part Of No," "Watch Me," and "5 Minutes." Michelle Wright shows off a
similar attitude on "Take It Like A Man." And Martina McBride rebels
against an abusive husband on "Independence Day." As these examples
suggest (and many others could be given), the most progressive and
defiant strains of contemporary country music are being created by
women.

While the politics of country music eludes many popular prejudices and
neat categories of left and right, the fundamental conservatism of the
message cannot be denied. Country's conservatism, however, comes not
from taking a particular stand on particular issues, but in the way it
reads and resolves conflict. Country music may be one of the truest
forms of popular music in giving voice to the bitter realities of class
and the sorry state of male-female relations. But in offering few
avenues of escape and rebellion, country music tends to settle struggle
in favor of the powers that be. Change in country music comes mostly
from individual hard work and sacrifice, luck, and God. The music's
vision of community is insular and backward looking. And as a result,
failure breeds feelings of self-blame and resignation.

Nonetheless, country's stoic acceptance of things as they are cannot be
taken as an unqualified endorsement of the status quo. The great
strength of country music has been its ability to capture white working
class life as it really is and without the projection of false hope.
Country music knows you can't always get what you want or what you need
no matter how hard you try. In this realistic assessment of limits, the
music contradicts capitalist ideals of progress, fairness, and happiness
through consumption. Accordingly, throughout most of its commercial
history, country music has been dismissed as something beneath and apart
from mainstream culture.

Fully aware of country music's "negatives," the Nashville music
establishment has periodically regroomed the sound and image of the
tradition with hopes of winning respectability and crossover appeal. In
the 1950s and 1960s, it was the smooth, urbane "Nashville Sound," in the
1970s it was the tasteless pop country of John Denver and Olivia
Newton-John, and in the 1980s it was Urban Cowboy role playing. Although
all of these trends gave country a temporary commercial boost, hard-core
country fans and musicians reacted to each with a purist backlash
(bluegrass, the Bakersfield sound, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings'
"outlaw" movement, neotraditionalism) that eventually brought the market
back around to traditional sounds.

In the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, country music has slowly ascended again
to mainstream popularity with sounds and images revealing few traces of
country's old-time rough edges. This time around country's new audience
seems to come from aging white boomers and younger middle-income
suburbanites who've tired of classic rock and can't tolerate aggressive
youth sounds (metal, hip-hop, alternative rock) or easy listening pop.
For these listeners, country supplies a guitar based rock influenced
sound, adult subject matter, and yearning for a more simple and decent
way of life.

Unfortunately in meeting this demand, the music industry has again
resorted to formula: muscles in big hats, starched boot cut Wranglers,
choreographed sexy moves, and pale, twang-free impersonations of
heartbreak. But at the borders of country, in the progressive new voice
of women, left-of-center hillbilly folk (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tom
Russell, and Iris Dement), country rock (Rodney Crowell and Travis
Tritt), traditional bluegrass (the Johnson Mountain Boys), and tradition
conscious hard country (Dwight Yoakam and Marty Brown), you can still
hear the raw emotions and wild and blue themes of a truly populist art
form. The "old" story country music has to tell is too real and too
rooted to be forgotten.

[Sandy Carter was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Amarillo,
Texas. While attending the University Of Texas at Austin, he became
active in the late 60s anti-war, student, and civil rights movements.
During the last three decades he has been active in organizing around
workplace, community, and mental health issues. Since the early 80s, he
has been living in the Bay Area. His writing on music, politics, and
popular culture has appeared in the Bay Guardian and The San Francisco
Chronicle. "Slippin' & Slidin," his column on music and popular culture,
appears monthly in Z Magazine. He currently works as a high school
counselor in Novato, California.]