Beyoncé is as ‘country’ as anyone else

I grew up listening to Pete Seeger, Josh White, and the Beatles, but let’s stop there. To the people who criticize Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, I’m definitely not “country.”

Fifty years ago, before many critics were born, I was drinking a flat draft beer at a dive bar on Broadway in Nashville. The players in the house band were all talented musicians who were taking a break from the sardine life of being crammed into a bus with the star’s road band. Even musicians want to spend time with their kids or just rest in a stationary bed.

The Grand Old Opry had just moved to Opryland, leaving Ryman Auditorium with locked doors and cracked paint. Commercialization had been a part of the culture ever since the genre was given the name “country,” but the sophistication of rock and pop influences was just starting to take off. There was still a lot of music to listen to that was the foundation of the genre.

While country was definitely the mainstay of the Nashville scene at the time, it was packed with musician-friendly clubs where you could hear every type of music imaginable. One night I was lucky enough to be home when an assembled band was playing. Buddy Spisher was playing fiddle. Buddy Herman is on drums. Piano: Hargus “Pig” Robbins. Bassist Henry Strzelecki. Neil Franz is in charge of pedal steel. And Lenny Breaux from Maine plays guitar. The band was the de facto figurehead of the people who invented the sound of country music, but on that night they played everything from rock and show tunes to bebop and jazz.

In the mid-1970s, Nashville still had a lot of the Jim Crow South in its veins. My Volkswagen was a “foreign” car with a Yankee tag, so I was worried someone would cut the stem of my tire while parked on Broadway. I was just a white kid with long hair, but I was still scared to death of the Tennessee State Patrol. Being a black man in Tennessee was never easy, and at that point Charlie Pride was close to the only black man to reach big stardom in country music. So I’m not trying to remember the good old days of inclusiveness, but most of the musicians were just thinking about the music and not caring about the amount of melanin in their skin or anything else. . As long as you have a chot, no problem.

I’ve been listening to “Cowboy Carter” and I have to say it’s great. I don’t really like the over-commercialization of music, but if it’s commercialized like “Cowboy Carter,” I’m open to it.

As for the trolls who stand at the gates of what they think is country music and decide who gets in, they need to study the roots of their music – it’s never all white music. do not have. They ride broncos that look rural, but are actually Trojan horses for white supremacy.

I understand that prejudice is primarily based on fear, and I understand how people feel when they are scared. However, if that fear leads to exclusion, please exclude me. It’s just sad and ugly when someone comes along who preaches about replacing division and hate with love, as Beyoncé does, and then someone tries to silence or shut them out because of that. .

Music genres are business names, not music. If Beyoncé isn’t “country” then who cares? I’m no redneck either, but I’m sure I’ve thrown more bales than most of the self-proclaimed gatekeepers. I love people who aren’t afraid to put love before hate.

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