If the country music aesthetic seems to be everywhere these days, you’re not wrong. We’re less than two months into the new year, but Western wear is taking over the most important cultural stages and the country is increasingly making its way into Spotify playlists.
Louis Vuitton’s music guru and new creative director Pharrell Williams drew inspiration from cowboys for the brand’s fall 2024 menswear collection at Paris Fashion Week in January. debuted the silhouette. Beyoncé arrived at the Grammy Awards wearing a custom jacket from the collection and a white cowboy hat. One of the most talked-about performances of Grammy night was Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’ duet of Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a country cover of Combs’ arrangement. Thanks to this, it rose to the top of the Billboard charts last year.
Hours before Beyoncé dropped a new song from her country-themed album Act II, Post Malone wore a country-inspired outfit of a turquoise bolo tie and Wrangler jeans to perform a folky acoustic version of “America.”・Sang “The Beautiful”. Scheduled to be released in March. Lana Del Rey announced her next country album a few weeks ago.
In fact, national signifiers are creeping into the general zeitgeist. Regardless, while America may be embracing country’s sound and style, it doesn’t seem like country is ready to embrace America as a whole.
After Beyoncé released two singles after the Super Bowl, “Texas Hold’em” and “16 Carriage,” on an Oklahoma country radio station, KYKC refused to play her new songs at the request of listeners. The station manager’s refusal was simply, “Because we are a country music station, Beyoncé will not be aired on KYKC.” This statement not only negates her new album, but also Beyoncé’s previous forays into country music, such as the song “Daddy Lessons” from her 2016 album Lemonade. . It’s worth noting that the song caused a stir in the country community when she performed it live with The Chicks at the 50th Country Music Awards.
After receiving hundreds of emails and calls from outraged fans, KYKC finally added Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold’em” to the rotation. Given the historical origins of country music, this act of gatekeeping is not just exclusive. This is a classic example of cultural appropriation.
Country music has long been considered a genre created by white people for white people. However, this concept is empirically false. Its roots were heavily influenced by black music and shaped by black traditions. Karl Hagstrom Miller, a cultural historian and associate professor of critical and comparative studies at the University of Virginia, argues in his book that country music grew out of the popular music of the South. The genre reflected racially integrated expressions of the time, such as hillbilly and folk practices, as well as jazz and blues.
Suffice it to say that country music is black music because it is drawn from black creators. Its melodies were taken from hymns performed in black churches. Its styling was borrowed from black musicians. The banjo, a staple of country music, was created by enslaved Africans. The idea of excluding black people from this genre is not just ridiculous; That’s cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation occurs when members of one culture possess or possess elements of another group’s cultural identity or related markers, whether intentionally or not. Scholars classify cultural appropriation into four types:
- Cultural exchange – the reciprocal exchange of social facts between peer communities of equal power, such as the co-production of hip-hop by black and Hispanic youth in the South Bronx.
- Cultural shift—a cultural element that is co-created from elements of many cultures, such as the heterogeneity of U.S. culture.
- Cultural Domination – The exploitation by a less influential community of the social facts of a dominant community, such as hip-hop kids adopting skater culture.
- Cultural exploitation – the use of a community’s cultural practices and products by a dominant community without reciprocity or permission.
This fourth form of cultural appropriation, or cultural exploitation, is a major target of contemporary critique, exemplified by country music’s rejection of Beyoncé and Lil Nas X, for example.
Cultural exploitation is a story as old as time. Black works, including sounds, styles, speech, and gestures, have been borrowed, imitated, reworked, and sold to white audiences by white Americans without the permission or compensation of black creators. From swag surfing at Chiefs games to the media trying to attribute credit for the fade haircut to Travis Kelce, this is an ongoing practice in America. Why is country music different? The abuse of this power differential not only puts Black cultural producers at an economic disadvantage, but also erases their existence.
When I first heard about Kelce’s Fade and its status as its own work, I thought it was beside the point. It was as if many people like me, who had adopted this cultural aesthetic for decades, never existed until it was acknowledged by white Americans. And when it was recognized, its ownership was not vested in the creator. It’s harmful. Even Kelce rejected the appropriation, calling the fraudulent transfer of ownership “absolutely ridiculous.”
You may wonder why hairstyles are so personal. It’s more than just a hairstyle. It’s an identity project that reflects who I am and where I come from. Misappropriating its ownership would essentially ignore the 20-odd years I wore it. Similarly, excluding black people from country music ignores the fact that black people played an important role in the birth of country music.
Furthermore, preventing artists like Beyoncé from participating in the genre would be to ignore the fact that she is from Texas and that her rural aesthetic is a cultural silhouette of her identity. This doesn’t take into account the fact that blacks made up a quarter of the cowboy jobs after the Civil War. The editing of these stories in our cultural folklore supports the enterprise of erasing Black people from American history, and this is the most important part for marketers.
Auburn University’s John Dyke suggests that the idea that country music is an exclusive expression of white customs was simply a marketing ploy to create a more persuasive genre among white Americans. are doing. This structure effectively excludes Black artists from the genre and creates a gate of disqualification that polices what is for “us,” even if it is at least partially made by “us.” Introduced a keeping mechanism.
As mass storytellers, marketers have the ability, or dare I say, the obligation, to rectify this situation. We have the platform, the technology, and the resources to call out exploitation when we see it and to ensure that America’s stories are not ghostwritten by their creators. This is work we have to do as an industry.
During my time at Wieden+Kennedy, I had the opportunity to contribute to this effort for our client Courageous Conversations. Courageous Conversations is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising racial awareness through social dialogue. To combat the censorship of the Black experience in American history through book banning, the team at Courageous Conversations and Weeden New York explores how to honor the dreamers who believed in the American Dream while paving the way to it. This raises the question of whether it can be erased.
This is the exact question we should be asking of country music and its gatekeepers. How can we celebrate this genre without honoring the creators who paved the way?
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