Oh, Jolene....

Just a note that was inspired by this post by Mads:

".... Country music has always been home to African-American artists. Burns shows that, just like in rock, jazz and pop, every facet of country — from its instrumentation to repertoire to vocal and instrumental techniques — is indebted to African and African-American traditions, but commercial decisions by white industry executives led to their exclusion from the genre for decades.

The black influence on country music starts with the banjo, which often conjures the hazy image of a white pastoral South. But the instrument is a descendant of West African lutes, made from gourds, that were brought to America by slaves and which became a central part of slave music and culture in the South. Soon, the instrument was standardized, appropriated and spread to white audiences through minstrel and blackface shows — which deeply informed the rise of hillbilly music, a term that would later be rebranded as “country music.”

 Many of the songs that early hillbilly artists played were likewise inherited and adapted from black sources — like slave spirituals, field songs, religious hymnals or the works of professional black songwriters. In Country Music, Burns traces how “When the World is On Fire,” a hymn arranged by a black minister, was turned into the Carter Family’s 1928 hit “Little Darling, Pal of Mine” — which was then turned into Woody Guthrie’s quintessential “This Land is Your Land.” Meanwhile, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” was written by James A. Bland, a black New Yorker who would hardly have found himself welcome in parts of Virginia had he still been alive in 1940, when it was named the official state song."

@time

And in case you were wondering how Beyoncé fits here:

Black women have been present since the earliest days of country’s existence as a recorded and commercially marketed music form. But a custom of cultural redlining has not only kept Black women out of country writing rooms, off country airwaves, off rodeo stages, off the country charts; it has also worked to keep the few Black women who managed to evade the gatekeepers off the entertainment pages, and out of the history books.

This would change. Nobody sitting in the room that night knew it, but there was a little girl toddling around a two-story house in Houston who would bring the long era of -erasing Black country sounds and stories to an abrupt end. The calculated erasure that began at one large public party with expensive tickets in 1983 ended during another, Super Bowl LVIII, when Beyoncé released “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages.”

@time

Quick note: Shockingly, I am not a Beyoncé Stan. Do I like some of her music? I do. I've posted here about how much I liked one of her songs (Pure/Honey, with House Music and Queer inspo) and I used to like 'Single Ladies' (yes, I'm old). But I had to write something concerning the idea some have of 'cultural appropriation' and of the 'intrusion' of a Black artist in Country music. Not a thing, either of those statements. Oh, and I don’t have to be a Stan to recognize when some fuckery is afoot. 

Also, this is not about Beyoncé being or not a good singer or liking her artistic output or her crediting every single person who happens to collaborate in her songs. It’s about people not knowing shit about music and yet flapping their gums and talking nonsense without the slightest background knowledge about anything. Which is why social media exist: to give everybody and their aunt the chance to spew shitty takes on the internet.

And as Beau said, Dolly is fine with this take on Jolene. So why is everybody so pressed? And talking about Dolly? I'm a Stan. She can do no wrong. She can even cover Jerry Lee Lewis and still be fab. So there you have it. Not ever since Whitney's version of "I Will Always Love You" for The Bodyguard have I been more interested in that intersection of Black women covering Country music and people talking shit about that fact. 

Yeehaw!

XOXO