Why Do We Want to Rediscover Places and Sounds Every Few Decades? : A Response
Reading “Plucked from obscurity: why bluegrass is making a comeback” by Emma Johns, I was delighted to find coverage of the bluegrass genre in mainstream publications such as The Guardian. The full story can be found here:
As I thought about the story Johns’ was telling, I began to think about the ways bluegrass has consistently been used in mainstream media to signify something different. As Johns’ points out, the genre is emerging into new spaces as social media allows for more direct sharing and movements become more amplified. It is crucial that we do not (continue) to present generalizations and stereotypes, particularly about rural communities when discussing the genre because whether intentional or not, the genre comes attached to ideas about whiteness, rurality, and Appalachia. As we in regional or places-based studies have witnessed, to continually share false narratives, however well intended, results in continued systemic oppression and privilege. Articles and stories about places or cultures are inherently political, and stories about rural/urban cultural differences are always, in the end, about power. These hidden functions of power are particularly important to note in the current US political climate as they almost always reinforce stereotypes or dominant bias’.
While personal narratives and story-based features are unquestionably needed, in the hopes of continuing discussions regarding the history and future of the bluegrass genre, I would like to briefly address a few beloved stories that can undermine what I see as Johns’ attempt to tell a positive story about the genre.
First, bluegrass music, has a radical history as a loud vessel of protest. To be clear, the “protest” music found in bluegrass is not only the “melancholic” “longing for home in the Blue Ridge Mountains far away” presented in the article, but also direct and driven messages of truth to power. It is beyond time for us to go beyond worn (yet economically beneficial) stereotypes of “ancient tones” to celebrate the radical history that is actually found in the genre. For example, Ralph Stanley’s public endorsements of Barak Obama, Hazel Dickens’ radical protest songs on behalf of miners, Sam Gleaves, and Kathy Fink to name a few. The more pressing question, is what do we mean by protest music? Gospel, home-driven lyrics, and murder ballads all tell stories of power but are not recognized as “protest” within dominant understandings of the word.
Bluegrass music, commercial from the begging as Robert Cantwell and others have pointed out, was about moving away, upward mobility, and presenting oneself in contrast to the hillbilly stereotype that was created through Local Color Fiction writing in the Reconstruction period and perfected via the War on Poverty. This point leads me to grapple with the article’s use of James Dickey (author of the book-turned-film, Deliverance) as a vessel for conversations about the possibility of bluegrass music and the statement that “[i]t’s a surprise, in some ways, that a music so evocative of the south and its early 20th century history hasn’t made it into more US fiction” (Johns).In all honesty, it’s even harder to find a cultural artifact (US fiction or otherwise) that portrays the states, that does NOT include bluegrass references or the associated hillbilly stereotypes. To define America requires a definition of what isn’t American — a role Appalachia has filled thanks to never-ending stereotypes in popular culture. The politics of representation at play on soundtracks is staggering and impossible to avoid, re-affirming the stereotypes presented by the genre’s common history.
Again, bluegrass music, commercial from the onset was built via shared media and entertainment and has thrived largely in result of the wildly liberal use of bluegrass to accompany any Hollywood or small screen portrayal of the rural south. While Big Stone Gap and Cold Mountain are certainly easily accessible mediums, that is in no way an exhaustive list. A simple search of award-winning films will provide numerous bluegrass songs and soundtracks. Further, we must be aware of the nuanced ways bluegrass enters into our day to day lives from commercials to prime-time television and beyond.
I‘d like to suggest that it is not so much that acoustic music is in vogue or overly attractive to the current hipster generations, but that we (dominant culture) want desperately to find something new, different, and “authentic”. It is the continual surprise or excitement around such events that reveals particularly narrative we tell about ourselves within and in relation to the bluegrass genre.
Bluegrass music is not the folk tradition of the south.
Bluegrass is no longer (and after deeper analysis, never was) ONLY learned at one’s father’s knee — a problematically gendered myth within the genre.
Unfortunately, bluegrass allows us to tell and believe in binaries: north/south, old/new, hip/traditional, urban/rural as seen in the article. I would like to challenge these popular oppositions. They are easy. They are marketable and certainly serve specific political, social, economic, and cultural functions. However, bluegrass cannot historically be distilled to insider/outsider, urban/rural binaries. We cannot claim that a metropolitan scene is securing the genre’s future any more than we can claim the genre has strictly rural, Appalachian roots. Rather, we can affirm that bluegrass offers a space for meeting. And yet, we must be careful not to romanticize or idealize this possibility.
The implied naturalization of talent showcased in the Dickey quote selected by Johns’ is romantic but ultimately incredibly problematic, building upon notions of other-ness and exceptionalism that have not only been proven untrue but also harmful. For those interested in the role of Deliverance in creating a national “hillbilly” image see: http://hillbillymovie.com
Johns’ love affair with the American bluegrass festival is interesting and has potential to showcase interesting findings about notions of nationalism, American-ness, and community. We must however be careful not to erase or manufacture history to meet the demands of the current moment.
