SHORT THREAD. My irritating lecture for the day. I appreciate the work happening to make people aware of the black roots of and connections to country. BUT labeling every black Southern/Western legacy artist "country" risks delegitimizing the crucial genres they also represented.
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Blues matters so much in popular music, partly because, like hip hop, it formed a nearly autonomous world where black culture makers dominated. Blues is a black art form. It's easy to forget that now bc it's become a white-guys-with guitars thing (pace , the king)
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Gospel really was and largely is a remarkable separate sphere with its own industry, its own musical language and its own sense of purpose. So much springs from gospel but it also stands independently as another center of black power.
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Rhythm and blues at the dawn of rock made superstars of many black artists, including women like Etta James and rock originator Ruth Brown. Black rock and roll pioneers deserve to be included in that most restrictive genre's history.
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The lost history of artists of color in the folk revival deserves its own telling (I have bee working on this a bit). Odetta, Buffy Sainte Marie, Len Chandler, Joe & Eddie, Terry Callier, Taj Mahal, and more were central to folk music.
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Anyway, in the rush to say "they're country too" let's not forget the worlds these artists made and the way they asserted themselves and sustained their communities. And learn the history. It's cooler to be aligned with Son House or Clara Ward than with Florida Georgia Line
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And every American should listen to the blues every day, here's a track to start with, thx bye youtube.com/watch?v=fj33EG
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Yes, actually appreciate this a lot. Tons of people became country music historians via tweets this week.
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