When I was very small, Saturday afternoons were dedicated to radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and Milton Cross. Grand opera was my mother’s passion and if stacks of 78s appeared in the house they were from the works of Wagner, Bizet and Mozart. My first LPs were compositions by Beethoven, Shubert and Brahms. I tried learning to play the violin, but was too awkward to produce anything but a terrible squeak. In my early teens I was given student tickets to the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra where I stood at the back of the highest balcony.
In my twenties I tried to master the flute, but that came to an abrupt end when the police appeared at our house with complaints from neighbors about the saxophone. For the past 19 years Wendy and I have spent Sunday afternoons at concerts of the L A Philharmonic and the LA Opera. I offer the history to define just how far I have lived from the land of Country Music.
In my country music safari Burns introduced me to its various provinces including African American, Gospel, Cowboy/Western, Bluegrass, Honky-tonk, Nashville, Country Blues, Folk Rock, Hillbilly and Appalachian tolk. If there is one resident whose name everyone knows, it is probably Jonny Cash. The original instruments were the guitar and the fiddle---distinguished from the violin only by the way it is played and the pecular sound it produces. Other plucked instruments became common.
Country music stars quickly arose with record albums often selling in the millions. And just as quickly they disappeared. If a few made it big, they ended up in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry. Almost all the performers came from Texas or other southern or border states, and grew up in rural areas. Early fascination with the regional music in most cases constituted their musical education while they attached themselves to prevailing stars.
There were couples, family groups and in later years five or six piece bands. The classic country sound is nasal. Specially written songs constitute about the entire
repertoire. The songs are earthy, sad and closely tied to the way of life common in southern or western rural areas. The words are simple, and offered in the dialect of the region from which the singer comes.
There is a certain sadness about most of the lyrics; lost love, heartbreak, personal misery, being abandoned or betrayed by a lover, a goal that could not be reached, the death of a family member. Or they are a celebration of a particular way of life. Happy songs are few and lyrics about anything beyond one’s trials are almost non-existent. Focus on the personal journey is the common theme.
Political commentary does not exist. If Trump wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans out, country music has walled itself in as if the rest of the world did not exist. However, I think it would be fair to suggest that among country music lovers in voting for President, Trump would win by a huge margins.
The only religious sentiments are focused on heaven. In fact the theme song of the Ken Burns series was the oft-repeated spititual:
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by Lord, by and by?
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky Lord, in the sky.
The above is only a version offered by a rank outsider. Talk to a citizen and you will probably get a very different reading.
My sojourne has caused me to ask how many other territories of the United States are there about which I am just as ignorant, and what are they? Perhaps it is my world that is drastically limited by my politics, education, upbringing, culture, religion and perspective. Before I die I might explore other of these unknown provinces.
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