Conference Agenda

Richard A. Peterson (1997d) claims accusations of inauthenticity from country music traditionalists frequently target Music Row since the latter’s rise in the 1950s, due primarily to this musico-industrial complex’s promotion of pop-oriented styles in pursuit of greater financial success, beginning with the “Nashville Sound.” While true, this omits a key religio-social context based in the ideology of the Fundamentalist movement, whose members have consistently formed the core of the genre’s fanbase (as noted by Shearon 2017, Malone 2006b, and A. Fox 2004, among others).

Specifically, it is Music Row’s transgression against the Fundamentalists’ “congregational” model (Barbara Hargrove, 1979), which gives ultimate authority to individual congregations, as mirrored in the pre-Row reality in which success depended on the artist’s adherence to the concept of authenticity championed by individual programs. Instead, the Row’s unmatched consolidation of industrial influence more closely resembled the hierarchical polity of the “episcopal” model used by the mainstream Protestant denominations from which the Fundamentalists split in the 1910s, just a few years before the first records of the country music genre were cut. As noted by Joli Jensen (1998), this shift turned popular shows like the Grand Ole Opry into a mere symbolic center for the genre, which in this context represents a usurpation of its “congregational authority.”

A noteworthy illustration of this pre-Row system comes from the controversy over Western Swing superstar Bob Wills’s use of drums for a 1944 appearance on the Opry, a program that forbade the instrument because it was not regularly used in string-band music, which they considered the genre’s most authentic form. This rule was championed by the Opry’s then-emcee, Roy Acuff, a traditionalist fiddler and singer, who was also the son of a Fundamentalist preacher (Wills’s defiance of the rule, incidentally, led to a years-long ban from the program). Through such examples, we see that traditionalists’ targeting of Music Row with accusations of inauthenticity—articulated famously in Bluegrass artist Larry Cordle’s 1999 song, “Murder on Music Row,” which claims this entity “killed country music”—is not only about musical style, but also its arrogation of individual programs’ authority within their musical communities.

Country music also has a long-standing reputation as a genre that is associated with southern, white, rural and conservative values. Recently these associations have been challenged by black artists composing and performing country music such as Beyonce and Shaboozey, as well as crossover artists previously associated with pop such as Post Malone. Despite these recent inroads, this paper will demonstrate that the lines surrounding the genre appear to be primarily cultural rather than musical.

This study examines the boundaries surrounding the genre both sociologically, as evidenced by awards, marketing, and social media, and musically, as evidenced by analysis within the framework laid out by Allan Moore and added to by Megan Lavengood. A list has been compiled of “the greatest country songs of all time”, distilled by referencing published lists from outlets such as Billboard and Rolling Stone. These examples have been analyzed and compared to music by Beyonce as well as other contemporary country artists.

The analysis demonstrates that recent hits by artists such as Morgan Wallen and Sam Hunt have less in common musically with the greatest country songs of all time than songs by Beyonce, and more in common with contemporary hip-hop. While Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter spent a brief time atop the country charts, the falloff was steep and artists like Wallen, Hunt, Malone, and Shaboozey retain popularity. This analysis, when paired with a synthesizing of recent events through sociological and historical frameworks, illuminate that the cultural facet of genre definition plays a larger role than musical aesthetic. The complexity of these issues is compounded when examining the roles that institutions such as the Country Music Association, and the Recording Academy of the United States, play in the dissemination of music and culture.

Bluegrass music, an independent subgenre of country music, draws on an amalgamation of musical structures rooted in African American originated styles, various European traditions, and older styles of American string band music. Despite this broad range of influences, revisionist narratives of the music’s history persist in bluegrass culture. One such narrative often cites Ireland as a "point of origin" and frames bluegrass predominantly as a musical descendant of Irish traditional music. This narrative erases the critical impact of African American creativity on bluegrass music by evoking a whitewashed and folklorized history and leans on reductionist notions of Irish traditional music. According to Jack Daly (2023), the process of "folklorization" is the result of a cultural actor that stands to benefit from re-buffing actual events by hijacking the narrative of a given event. Through this lens, I analyze media that engages the Euro-centric origin myth as part of a system that has historically rewarded extractivist behavior by privileging novelty and nostalgia as marketing strategies. In particular, I focus on media from 1990s to present day. To frame my analysis, I build on existing scholarship by Erika Brady (2013), Patrick Huber (2013), Karl Hagstrom Miller (2010), and Allen Farmello (2001) to contextualize the implicit and explicit reinforcement of the feedback loop that rests on a folklorized past.