On March 5, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the strangeness surrounding the musical genre known as country music.  Relating back to the previous discussion that we had, due to the constant dangers and lack of work due to the Great Depression, a large influx of both white and black U.S. citizens made the trip from the rural South to the cities of the North, but not without eventually realizing that they, in fact, missed the lives that they had left behind and ultimately felt homesick.  This was where another case of musical displacement reared its strange and perplexing head.  After all, if record labels could sell what they marketed as black, authentic music to the British, who would then in turn take inspiration from it and sell their own music based on that back to white people in America, then why couldn’t record labels be able to find a way to take advantage and profit off of the sudden longing felt by both whites and blacks to return to the good old country life?  And that is exactly what they did.  This was the birth of country music, a genre of music that record labels used to get rich quick off of selling an idealized, romanticized, and stereotypical version of southern life to people who had just recently left it, and for southerners now working in military industrial complexes and most likely working various factory jobs, this was welcomed with open arms.  Jimmie Rodgers was the first of many “country music stars” to rise from this particular period, and he wouldn’t be the last, nor would the practices done during this era be thrown away and forgotten so easily.  For example, at this point in time, Hawaiian steal guitars had slowly become commonplace within country music, alongside fiddles and violins as it was believed that these were considered the ultimate symbols of United States wholesomeness that country music couldn’t be without.  And to a certain extent, that was true.  With all of these factors and elements to fall back on, acts such as Buck Owens and the Buckaroos would become the first and only country act to book a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1963.  Later on, Syd Nathan, a Jewish immigrant in Cincinnati, a major industrial city with black and white migrants, opened Key Records, which gave rise to Cowboy Copas, who sang his first hit record, “Filipino Baby” in 1946.  This would later pave way for acts such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, one of the first rock and roll acts of the 1950s, bluegrass music, and many other musical contributions to the world of music in general.  It seemed like no matter how segregated politics was for the United States in the end, there always seems to be holes in the wall where other peoples’ cultures would seep through and integrate into.

While discussing the strange history and impact country music had on society and the music industry as a whole, a topic that was brought up was what exactly did country music stand for?  It was a daunting question to say the least.  For starters, country music’s political stance seemed to be complicated, and it just seems to get messier and messier from there.  Cowboy Copas’ song, “Filipino Baby”, when listened to, can seem downright sexist, as Copas describes the girl in the song in great physical detail, arguably reducing her to nothing but body parts and fetishizing women of color in a way that, back in the day, a black person couldn’t possibly sing about a white, blond girl.  Was this what country music was?  Sexism, machoism, the stereotypical male and American way?  Perhaps, but here was the counter argument: the song had a verse that informed the listener that the singer married this “Filipino baby” and loved her and was happy with her.  That alone actually sounds innocent enough.  So which was it?  Was country music degrading or was it simply simple and pure emotions that could unfortunately be misinterpreted in the wrong way?  To offset this, another country artist, Merle Haggard, had a song titled, “Irma Jackson” which basically had the same exact message “Filipino Baby” had but avoided all of the negative trappings and actually added a little bit of social commentary on the side.  In the end, the class agreed to agree to disagree about country music’s true meaning, as there was ample evidence for both sides.  For me personally, I’d like to think that country music is innocent enough.  As I have said before in previous writings, I doubt anyone cares enough to go out of their way to hate on somebody or degrade someone else’s people, so chances are that these country songs are simply pure and simple thoughts, emotions, and ideas that were stretched to fit a whole song and simply can be interpreted the wrong way because of it.  While I can certainly believe that music labels were attempting to cash in on vulnerable feelings, I doubt people actually wrote country songs in an attempt to send subliminal hateful and detrimental messages to the populace (and if that’s what ended up happening, I am more than willing to believe that it was just due to a crazy coincidence and an irresponsible populace).