Culture wars in music

[danny la rouge]

Neither of those are incompatible with xenon’s point about rugged individualism, particularly when you combine it with what I was saying about proportionality vs equality. In the first song, she emphasises hard work as a moral duty. In the second, it’s emphasising equality of opportunity, not of result.

Being a conservative doesn’t mean just hating everybody else — that’s an unhelpful caricature. Those songs perfectly encapsulate long-standing conservative beliefs about the importance of giving everybody the opportunity to get their head down, work hard and look after their family.

Well, we’re changing the terms of the debate by moving to conservative with a small c. You introduced that term after @xenon’s post. We’d need to define what we’re talking about.

The first song expresses working class pride. The second expresses the sentiment that “we’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns”. I’d call those both “enlightened” attitudes, which is what was asked for.

 

[kabbes]

Well, we’re changing the terms of the debate by moving to conservative with a small c. You introduced that term after @xenon’s post. We’d need to define what we’re talking about.

The first song expresses working class pride. The second expresses the sentiment that “we’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns”. I’d call those both “enlightened” attitudes, which is what was asked for.

If you want to claim this is “enlightened” then we’d need to define what we’re talking about.

The first song doesn’t express any kind of working class solidarity. It merely expresses pride in how hard mom and pop worked, within the context of classic American conservative morality. The second expresses a classic American pride in their (European, Christian) immigrant roots, and a recognition that other (European, Christian?) immigrants deserve the same opportunities to work hard and find a place within the community. I would say that any sense that these things are enlightened in the way I understand it is a projection.

 

[danny la rouge]

If you want to claim this is “enlightened” then we’d need to define what we’re talking about.

The first song doesn’t express any kind of working class solidarity. It merely expresses pride in how hard mom and pop worked, within the context of classic American conservative morality. The second expresses a classic American pride in their (European, Christian) immigrant roots, and a recognition that other (European, Christian?) immigrants deserve the same opportunities to work hard and find a place within the community. I would say that any sense that these things are enlightened in the way I understand it is a projection.

City of Immigrants doesn’t restrict the fellow feeling to “European Christian” immigrants. There’s no mention of Christianity. There’s a mention of prayer, but no religion is specified. There’s mention of black and white, so European is a stretch. There’s a reference to a belief in a “sacred promise a statue made”, which clearly refers to:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses

We already know it’s New York because he said it’s a city “that never sleeps”.

Also, we know it’s Steve Earle, who is a self-proclaimed socialist. So he may be conservative at a stretch, but he isn’t Conservative. He explicitly called Trump a fascist, although he also thinks the left has lost touch with the working class (as do I).

 

[danny la rouge]

And furthermore, we know the climate and context in which he wrote the song. So along with the above, it’s not “projection” to think we know his intentions.

 

[kabbes]

I’ll give you that Steve Earle is a left-wing political activist (although that doesn’t necessarily come with being on the “enlightened” side of the culture wars, of course). I’d also argue, mind you, that City of Immigrants is not really a country song, albeit that it heavily draws on country roots. I’m not sure you can meaningfully have a country song about living in New York, can you?

My point is that when you look at the lyrics in and of themselves, you have to be careful about reading into them what you want to or expect to read into them. Are the lyrics of City of Immigrants a celebration of multicultural diversity, or do they celebrate the American Dream, with its values of integration and assimilation? The mention of “prayer” is a notable inclusion too.

 

[danny la rouge]

I’ll give you that Steve Earle is a left-wing political activist (although that doesn’t necessarily come with being on the “enlightened” side of the culture wars, of course). I’d also argue, mind you, that City of Immigrants is not really a country song, albeit that it heavily draws on country roots. I’m not sure you can meaningfully have a country song about living in New York, can you?

My point is that when you look at the lyrics in and of themselves, you have to be careful about reading into them what you want to or expect to read into them. Are the lyrics of City of Immigrants a celebration of multicultural diversity, or do they celebrate the American Dream, with its values of integration and assimilation? The mention of “prayer” is a notable inclusion too.

Or do they say, like Woody’s “this is my land, this is your land”, that there’s another American dream that isn’t that of Koch or Trump?

* Regarding country music set in New York, there was a great sociological paper on wearing cowboy boots in the city that I read as an undergraduate in the 80s I wish I could remember the title of. But the point is, country music and its signifiers long ago left the land.

 

[isvicthere?]

Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony in particular.

Controversial country song Rich Men North of Richmond makes US chart history

Oliver Anthony becomes first artist to debut at top of Billboard Hot 100 despite having no prior chart history, with a song that has drawn backlash for its stereotypes of welfare recipients

www.theguardian.com

Seem to be doing some damage in the US charts.

And a bit coy about the ambiguous lyrics but both are currently darlings of conservatives.

More so than previous right wing musicians like, guess, Ted Nugent etc.

When I first read about this, I thought it was a revival of some old song with reactionary lyrics, repurposed for a rightwing agenda. But apparently not. Seems it´s new and this guy wrote it himself.

 

[mojo pixy]

All of us are immigrants
Every daughter, every son
Everyone is everyone
All of us are immigrants
Everyone

A total aside, but that singer Steve Earle played the Narcotics Anonymous dude in The Wire who was Bubbles' mentor. He also sang the theme tune on S5 IIRC

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

A total aside, but that singer Steve Earle played the Narcotics Anonymous dude in The Wire who was Bubbles' mentor. He also sang the theme tune on S5 IIRC

Yep, also one of the end of season montage songs - Season 2 I think. He was in Treme as well.

 

[chilango]

I saw Steve Earle a few year back (he was great btw) and his merch table had t-shirts with a hammer & sickle on them.

(I mean he was playing an ex-Communist Party cultural centre, but I doubt he printed them for just one gig).

 

[kabbes]

Is the suggestion here that communists have famously enlightened attitudes towards immigrants and those of other faiths, creeds and sexualities?

 

[maomao]

I’m not sure you can meaningfully have a country song about living in New York, can you?

 

[chilango]

Is the suggestion here that communists have famously enlightened attitudes towards immigrants and those of other faiths, creeds and sexualities?

Nah, it was a just tangential anecdote about Steve Earle.

 

[Elpenor]

This is the best country and western song ever

 

[hitmouse]

If you want to claim this is “enlightened” then we’d need to define what we’re talking about.

The first song doesn’t express any kind of working class solidarity. It merely expresses pride in how hard mom and pop worked, within the context of classic American conservative morality.

Yeah, I don't think you can meaningfully contrast Coal Miner's Daughter with Rich Men North of Richmond (going by looking at lyrics here, I'm listening to other music right now and cba to spend half my evening listening to country). In fact, if anything Oliver Anthony's lyrics have more explicit class conflict in them: "I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day/Overtime hours for bullshit pay.../These rich men north of Richmond/Lord knows they all just wanna have total control". Obviously it's possible for that to exist within the same song as the more reactionary stuff.
I'd also be wary about conflating Anthony with Aldean too much - Anthony's song seems more like, how do I phrase this without sounding like some patronising Marxist who has All The Correct Ideas, a relatively spontaneous expression of a worldview that has some contradictory aspects, Aldean seems more like a deliberate and calculated appeal to rightwing ideology.
Without wanting to romanticise country's past too much, I think that, while Anthony's pride in hard work fits neatly within the tradition including some of the stuff dlr posted as enlightened above, Aldean's lyrics about "cuss out a cop, spit in his face" really is a break from the work of classic outlaw country artists, who would've been more likely to sing about cussing at cops than why you shouldn't do that.
Also: Rob Ray had a thoughtful post about this song over on the Trump thread, and there's a whole thread of left-wing country here. I remember really liking this article about Lil Nas X and the ideas of hiphop and country.
Finally, it's weird that I can't think of any musicians called Culture War or Culture Wars. I'm sure someone must've used the name at some point, but I've never heard of them. Culture Shock, Alien Kulture, Resistant Culture, but no Culture War.

 

[NoXion]

As always, the class war play-acting from reactionaries is curiously selective.

Rich Notherners Bad, but the Rich Men South of Richmond are just dandy? Something doesn't add up.

 

[petee]

As always, the class war play-acting from reactionaries is curiously selective.

Rich Notherners Bad, but the Rich Men South of Richmond are just dandy? Something doesn't add up.

i will not listen to or read the lyrics to the song, but DC is almost directly north of richmond. perhaps he means that.

 

[pbsmooth]

i will not listen to or read the lyrics to the song, but DC is almost directly north of richmond. perhaps he means hat.

I think the ol' civil war might be instructive here.

 

[hitmouse]

This is the Rob Ray post I was thinking of:

Accommodates is maybe too strong but certainly understands and addresses. This is top of the iTunes chart at the moment in the middle of a row about its contents, and I think it's indicative, to a degree, about the centrist (and left tbh) crisis:

[original post had the full song lyrics quoted here]

As a snapshot of the contradictions of the aggrieved right, it's picking up on real factors which get buried below the whining about welfare recipients and high taxes. But for that it could be a leftie blues song.

These are factors which have their causes misdiagnosed either through manipulation or ideology or cultural influences, but which centrist economics has zero answers for and the left has been absolutely pants at countering.

 

[petee]

he's woke

 

[isvicthere?]

I just listened to it for the first time. He´s got a powerful voice, and sings with passion. If you just listen to the first verse, there´s not much to disagree with; he´s basically impugning the billionaire class who are making the lives of the 99.9 recurring percent miserable.

However, from the second verse, where he starts with the Q-anon bullshit and welfare claimant bashing, is where he loses my sympathy.

 

[pbsmooth]

yes, it's the specific things he mentions that set him apart a little from what's gone before.

 

[isvicthere?]

An earlier iteration of the culture war from arguably simpler times.....

 

[krtek a houby]

An earlier iteration of the culture war from arguably simpler times.....

Didn't MH backtrack on that years later, when he was smoking marijuana for medical reasons?