Country Cogitations

I've been away from country music too long. Recently I've picked it up again.

Listening to iTunes through earphones on an iPad, usually in a random mix with other musical styles, when a country tune comes up, I feel like I just have to grin. Why?

Country's not "my" music. Why do I feel as if it is?

Why does the start of each new country song feel like a homecoming to me?

There are so many types of country music. What makes it all country? Ditto, all the eras of country music?

It's not just that I've researched country music history. That's an intellectual pursuit. It's only added to the mystery.

Backwoods Celt

I know a lot of the music's roots are in the Appalachian hill country, where Scots-Irish arrivals settled centuries ago. Their music is alive in country today, yes. But there're so many other influences that are also alive in today's country music.

Plus, the poor Southern whites that originated country music at its outset were often England-derived lowlanders, not "Celtic" Scots-Irish uplanders. There's a mystery as to how low-country poor-white music could fuse in America with the music of the "hillbilly" descendants of the original Scots-Irish. These two peoples came from different British backgrounds, right?

And how could these two have-not Southern cultures, both so isolated from mainstream America, have imbibed so many other musical styles -- blues, shape-note hymns, Victorian parlor songs, etc.? Given their isolation and poverty, why did they imbibe other styles at all?

Bob Dylan

My theory is that "twang" is what unites all country music. But what is "twang"? Got to be more than just a southern drawl ... because to my ear someone as non-country as Joan Baez is country when she sings Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried." Bob Dylan, too.

Taylor Swift

Can't figure it out: if country-crossover/country-pop/countrypolitan has sold so big typically ... if "everyone" knows when they're hearing an old-style "traditional country" song, even if they hate it ... if Taylor Swift is the hottest thing going today ... then why don't more people identify country music as "their" music?

There are a number of purists among country music fans. But country music braids so many influences together. It's always done that. What's "pure," and why do purists insist on it?

Maybe it's that there's a danger that too much blending will erase the line between country music and other music entirely.

And that might erase the line between country and mainstream culture. Who really wants that to happen? I couldn't grin at a country song if it were just another song.

The intellectual in me has tried mightily to show that what makes country "country" has to do with musical scales. There does seem to be a special way in which country "twang" uses a standard seven-note diatonic scale that flirts with a five-note pentatonic scale. Just as blues superimposes a "blues scale" over a standard scale, country does something similar.

But so what?

Yes, maybe the ear picks up that twangy scale instability, and likes it. Or doesn't. But most people don't care about the musicology of it all.

Or the sociology. Or the genealogy.

I love country because it opens me up. Truth is, I'm topheavy ... too much brain, too little soul. Country zooms in on my heart and soul. It finds the nooks and crannies I'd like to think aren't there.

It can only do that if it comes from a place that's not middle class.

Blues does the same. So does that good ol' rock'n'roll. Ditto, cajun-zydeco. When I make "country plus" mix CDs out of my iTunes tracks to play on my car player, I include those. They're all roots music.

But country speaks to me especially loud, speaks of people who look like me but get shut out (or shut themselves out) of the rewards of being middle class and mainstream. Life never deals them that proverbial ace in the hole, and after all, can't we all identify with that?