Documentary: Americana Appropriation
Americana music has long suffered from an existential split. Purists long for the days of the Bakersfield sound of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens but can only stand by and watch as Toby Keith and Tim McGraw top the charts and stake their own claims as representatives of real American music. However, the lines are not always so clearly drawn. Recently, popular bands have started to incorporate the sounds of Americana, blues, and bluegrass, with the traditional stylings taking on new and different forms. Frat boys all over have grown fond of Old Crow Medicine Show, and chances are you’ve heard a few songs from Mumford & Sons.
Last week on his show, Mark Waterman (SFS ’13) hosted a series of radio documentaries about the appropriation of Americana music in popular music today. Graham Wolf (COL ’11) produced the pieces as part of a capstone project in a recording class here at Georgetown.
“Over the past two decades, Americana music has surged,” says Wolf in opening the first part of his documentary series. “Pop and rock genres appropriate blues, folk, and bluegrass influence. Brooklyn hipsters play banjos. The White Stripes, Avett Brothers, and other roots bands enjoy the limelight. Americana is making a comeback, but why now?”
In a series of interviews with musicians, radio hosts, and professors around the DC area, Wolf tries to understand the recent popularity of these “roots” musicians and to further explain the reasons that they are where they are today.
The work, in three parts, attempts to answer that question. Part 1 is titled “Nostalgia” and it takes a look at the emotional connection we have with these traditional sounds. Americans can claim Americana and bluegrass as their own, Wolf says, as things distinctly American, and for this reason they are drawn to tunes that incorporate the national style.
PART I: “Nostalgia”
Americana Appropriation: Part 1
Part 2, “Pain” looks at the words that accompany these traditional tunes. Americana music has long spoken of heartbreak and hard times, and even today us poor heartbroken folks can find comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our suffering.
PART II: “Pain”
Americana Appropriation Part 2
Lastly, Part 3 looks at technology, and how increased access to recording equipment and technology has given musicians the chance to make a name for themselves with little more than a computer and a cheap microphone.
PART III: “Technology”
Americana Appropriation: Part 3
What do you think? Has Americana music really made a comeback? And if so, why?
I think what this article needs is a link to this website’s VERY FINE Decemberists review.
Have you read what Chuck Klosterman had to say about the whole “indie-Americana” versus mainstream country? Basically, all of the rusty weathervane indie stuff is just a hipster appropriation without relevance or an audience, while the brawny-armed and big-breasted country unit shifters really represent American music and are amongst the most relevant music being produced today. Then he more or less admits that he never listens to mainstream country, so take what he says with a shaker of salt. Really, I think he was just looking for an excuse to praise the Dixie Chicks, even if it meant he had to give a shout-out to an armchair redneck like Toby Keith.
As for me, I recently gave my dad The Tallest Man on Earth, and he more or less felt at home with guy’s voice as the kind of “singing cowboy” he used to listen to.
Tom, you will always be The Enforcer in our hearts.
I don’t know anything about what Chuck Klosterman says, but it seems to me that he is only half-right. Yes, the indie-appropriation stuff is often bullshit, little better than the work of these “unit-shifters.” But lots of these bands draw huge crowds and are quite relevant (the Black Keys, perhaps).
As for the mainstream, I won’t go so far as to say there isn’t some talent there. The Dixie Chicks are truly talented and unfairly maligned. But I’d say the overwhelming majority of the Cashville stuff is a perversion of the legacy of American music it claims to represent. The “country music” of the superstars has become one big gimmick mostly consisting of mindless patriotism and pickup truck commercial songs. I guess that these folks can be considered “relevant” by virtue of their record sales and fan bases, but by that logic we’d just all sit around listening to Top 40 radio all day and proclaiming it the most relevant music around.
Interesting about Tallest Man though. I initially had a hard time getting comfortable with his voice. Don’t know if I’d ever compare him to the singing cowboys of days gone by.