Human ingenuity in the face of crumbling infrastructure. One man’s quest to save a bird that might already be extinct. The cultural schism dividing a major musical genre. A personal essay braiding space and family. And a jungle trek gone horribly, horribly awry. These are our editors’ favorite reads of the week. 1. The Balkans’ […]
country music
Posted inEditor's Pick
Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville
“Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Black Vanguard in White Utopias
“Country music issues a promissory note to its white listeners. The promise is that no matter how much the world around them may be changing, a country radio station or concert will be a safe space for white sentimentality.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Dolly Moment
“Only a society that willfully believes itself ‘post-racist’ could produce such a queen.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
Why Mother Maybelle Carter’s Work Was Never Done
“In a few years’ time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Reading List
Cryin’, Dyin’, or Goin’ Somewhere: A Country Music Reading List
Although the sound of the music has changed, country’s themes have endured.
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, History, Quotes
If You Love the Music of the Carter Family, Thank Leslie Riddle
“First, you exclude black people from the festivals. Then write them out by not recording them. And pretty soon, ‘you have this manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.'”
Posted inNonfiction
The Story of Country Music’s Great Songwriting Duo
Before they released “Wichita Lineman,” the greatest unfinished song of all time, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb lived surprisingly parallel lives.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
Weird in the Daylight
The story of Sadlack’s Heroes, the Raleigh dive bar that helped galvanize the alternative country scene in the 1990s.