Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, February 28, 2012
City What Is a Hick?
Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 8:45 AM
A few of the responses to this perfectly innocent post have led me to believe that some people see the words "redneck" and "hick" as one and the same thing. However, when I use the word "hick," I do not mean an uncultivated, rude, uncouth white man who likes trucks and often finds a snake his boot. My meaning is always and only this: "An unsophisticated provincial person." A hick (like the white male with boots and trucks) is a person from and raised in the limited, dumbing, dim rural world. That person can be of any color, ethnicity, or sex. So, country music is simply music for country people—hicks. If a city person likes country music, then this is something the French call nostalgie de la boue (nostalgia for the mud).
1
I love your comment from the last thread to the effect that you couldn't possibly be trolling us. The French call that something too, you know.
2
Unsophisticated? I daresay Chaz, the men who went to the moon and back were far MORE sophisticated than YOU will EVER be. They'd have to be, in order to accomplish what they did.
So, you're still WRONG, despite this obvious attempt at backpedaling.
So, you're still WRONG, despite this obvious attempt at backpedaling.
4
@2) as for the astronauts, yes, you are right. they are not hicks. but they did badly suffer from the form of nostalgia i mention in this post.
7
Charles, you simple minded buffoon. Have you actually left a city?
I grew up in a rural area. I also speak three languages, obtained multiple degrees & now work in government policy. My parents were: a high school teacher and a banking regulator who has worked in various countries to tighten regulations respecting fraud.
I also know how to feed & care for chickens, the proper time for spring planting, how to shingle a roof, how to fix small electrical and plumbing problems, can drive a tractor competently and have the wits to know intelligence comes in varying forms.
The city seems to have made you small minded Charles.
I grew up in a rural area. I also speak three languages, obtained multiple degrees & now work in government policy. My parents were: a high school teacher and a banking regulator who has worked in various countries to tighten regulations respecting fraud.
I also know how to feed & care for chickens, the proper time for spring planting, how to shingle a roof, how to fix small electrical and plumbing problems, can drive a tractor competently and have the wits to know intelligence comes in varying forms.
The city seems to have made you small minded Charles.
9
@7) the one important thing zimbabwe taught me is to have only a little patience with rural people. too much is a waste of time. they really are rude in their ways. where ever i go i find that city people are many and rural people are one.
10
@7: you do realize that you are an anomaly, right? most of the "hicks" i have known are not the children of teachers & bankers. they do not speak 3 langauges (charles is also the anomalous product of a rurual upbringing). that is an exception. the exception does not disprove the generalization.
dwight yoakam & steve earle do not mean that hank williams jr and toby kieth don't exist.
dwight yoakam & steve earle do not mean that hank williams jr and toby kieth don't exist.
14
@ 9 & 10, there are as many types of white people who grew up in the country as there are white people who didn't grow up in the country.
I can think of a lot of generalizations about Africans. But heaven forbid I say any of them out loud.
I can think of a lot of generalizations about Africans. But heaven forbid I say any of them out loud.
17
@7: I grew up in a rural area.
I assume from this that you no longer live in the country? Why not, if hicks such sophisticated and polite company?
Charles is being a bit hypocritical here, though. If someone made similarly unflattering observations about poor urban blacks, Charles would be lecturing us about the evils of racism.
I assume from this that you no longer live in the country? Why not, if hicks such sophisticated and polite company?
Charles is being a bit hypocritical here, though. If someone made similarly unflattering observations about poor urban blacks, Charles would be lecturing us about the evils of racism.
18
My affinity for certain artists and forms of country music was developed in the city, in bars where it was played either by a band or on the jukebox, on lazy afternoons where the mood called for it, on intra-city drives in frustrating gridlock. I came to appreciate the sounds, voices, arrangements and subject matter without ever setting foot in a rural environment. I do not listen to it in order to take my mind into any goddamn pasture. "Affinity for the mud" my ass.
20
@17 - nope, still do. Just don't work there, but appreciate my upbringing.
There's a work ethic learned on a farm that is really tough to find elsewhere.
There's a work ethic learned on a farm that is really tough to find elsewhere.
21
The astronauts of that era were rednecks. There's nothing surprising about this. All it takes is a case of Pabst and a lot of self-congratulation to get some idiot to be convinced to go into space. Astronauts are unnecessary to the space program, and the least important part of it. All of the engineering and science know-how, that came from the huge body of support-personnel is the real brilliance of any space program.
No surprise that white-trash convinced to fly into space listen to white-trash music.
No surprise that white-trash convinced to fly into space listen to white-trash music.
25
Charles you are close minded. You are ignorant. You assume the superiority of your experience. These are all traits of the hick. As well as rudeness. Examples:
To quote you in an above comment: "[rural people] really are rude in their ways."
To paraphrase you in one of any given slog posts in recent years: "Rape victims are forever ruined."
Yes, you are so sophisticated and polite, aren’t you? So refined. Not provincial or antiquated at all. (Can your hick mind recognize sarcasm, I wonder?)
You hold no compassion, no consideration, no solicitude for humans except those you pre-authorize like an amoral credit card company. You are your own worst nightmares. Your mind is the mud, but I have no nostalgia for you.
To quote you in an above comment: "[rural people] really are rude in their ways."
To paraphrase you in one of any given slog posts in recent years: "Rape victims are forever ruined."
Yes, you are so sophisticated and polite, aren’t you? So refined. Not provincial or antiquated at all. (Can your hick mind recognize sarcasm, I wonder?)
You hold no compassion, no consideration, no solicitude for humans except those you pre-authorize like an amoral credit card company. You are your own worst nightmares. Your mind is the mud, but I have no nostalgia for you.
26
@17: That's what I was thinking. Charles is exhibiting his bias and racism here, but he's not going to get taken to task by most readers because of their own biases. It's easy to forget that those on the extreme left can be prone to ignorance, racism, etc., just like those on the extreme right. But I give Charles more chance at overcoming his ignorance because he lives in a city and is forced to rub shoulders with many different folks.
27
It is funny that he is claiming culture by claiming the right to use pejorative terms against random collections of individuals.
Remember, the Discovery Institute and Mars Hill are in Seattle, idiots are everywhere, the fact you want to lump a large group of individuals who are unconnected into a group that you find your self to be superior to proves that you are a bigot and I hope this is a wake-up call.
You are the part of the problem, not the solution as it seems you imagine.
Remember, the Discovery Institute and Mars Hill are in Seattle, idiots are everywhere, the fact you want to lump a large group of individuals who are unconnected into a group that you find your self to be superior to proves that you are a bigot and I hope this is a wake-up call.
You are the part of the problem, not the solution as it seems you imagine.
29
the definitive explanation of hicks is sean penn in all the king's men.
his speech shows why democrats today lose all the hick vote and hick wanabe vote to republicans.
bascially the democrats need to go tell they "y'all are hicks, and you're getting fooled by the gop" but the democrats being all urban and sophisticated are too scared or too wimpy to actually have that fight and call it out loud -- that would be being "judgmental" and they prefer to maintain their snobbish attitude towards the millions of hickish voters that the one percent play like violins to maintain class control here.
love the hicks, call them hicks, tell them they are hicks, THEN tell them they're being used and they are fools, THEN maybe they will respect democrats. But being too scared to talk to them, and too snobby, leaves them in the hands of the right wingers who are the hick herders for the one percent.
his speech shows why democrats today lose all the hick vote and hick wanabe vote to republicans.
bascially the democrats need to go tell they "y'all are hicks, and you're getting fooled by the gop" but the democrats being all urban and sophisticated are too scared or too wimpy to actually have that fight and call it out loud -- that would be being "judgmental" and they prefer to maintain their snobbish attitude towards the millions of hickish voters that the one percent play like violins to maintain class control here.
love the hicks, call them hicks, tell them they are hicks, THEN tell them they're being used and they are fools, THEN maybe they will respect democrats. But being too scared to talk to them, and too snobby, leaves them in the hands of the right wingers who are the hick herders for the one percent.
30
@28 Country folks do travel into Seattle from time to time. At least they did when I lived there.
31
"in the limited, dumbing, dim rural world"
Tell that to Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Annie Dillar, and Jack Kerouac, you tired old hack.
Of course, you will point out, all were 'city people' who only later emigrated to the country. Which is a defense based on a dichotomy that is not only generally inapplicable, but, like all dichotomies used to name and judge human beings, inevitably hurtful.
Hack. Troll. Good fucking job.
Tell that to Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Annie Dillar, and Jack Kerouac, you tired old hack.
Of course, you will point out, all were 'city people' who only later emigrated to the country. Which is a defense based on a dichotomy that is not only generally inapplicable, but, like all dichotomies used to name and judge human beings, inevitably hurtful.
Hack. Troll. Good fucking job.
32
@30 - but how would Charles know? We don't all just go to sell at farmer's markets and drive tractors up and down the streets!
He'd just see someone muddy & assume they were country rather than homeless (maybe?). Or he'd see someone poorly dressed and make assumptions... I'm really not sure how he'd learn to change his attitude unless someone specifically tells them they're from a rural area. Not just by sitting behind someone on a train and seeing their skin colour and headscarf.
He'd just see someone muddy & assume they were country rather than homeless (maybe?). Or he'd see someone poorly dressed and make assumptions... I'm really not sure how he'd learn to change his attitude unless someone specifically tells them they're from a rural area. Not just by sitting behind someone on a train and seeing their skin colour and headscarf.
34
"...the limited, dumbing, dim rural world."
Wow. Seriously? No, not an insult at all. Every person from a small town or rural area is dumb and dim. City folks is smarter'n us all, ayup.
Wow. Seriously? No, not an insult at all. Every person from a small town or rural area is dumb and dim. City folks is smarter'n us all, ayup.
35
Charles, using this logic of place then Blues must also be "hick" music. It started out in rural areas and migrated to cities, just as country music has done. Are blues aficiandos hicks as well? Actually, there must be more unsophiticated uneducated people in cities and suburbs than in rural areas, it's a simple matter of population distribution.
36
No one has ever been further from home than those who went to the moon. For these men, it was not simply nostalgie de la boue, but nostalgie du terre as well. I imagine they brought music from their roots to remain humble throughout such an unprecedented journey.
37
I do find it interesting that someone as superstitious as Charles (think of any of his posts about animals) believes he's sophisticated. Education ≠ sophistication.
38
The central implication of Charles' post is that a person may be so tainted by their roots and upbringing as to be rendered permanently inferior to other members of society.
Which is the same logic that got us, among other things, the eugenics movement and the word "nigger".
I know that as a white man using this word, I am not only invoking but inevitably hurtfully brandishing centuries of physical and psychological dominance. I do so to make as strong a point as I may about the dangers of embracing the naming and judgment of whole groups of people. The casual derision of others is a sometimes-attractive rhetorical style. Let us not forget what it is truly an embrace of.
Which is the same logic that got us, among other things, the eugenics movement and the word "nigger".
I know that as a white man using this word, I am not only invoking but inevitably hurtfully brandishing centuries of physical and psychological dominance. I do so to make as strong a point as I may about the dangers of embracing the naming and judgment of whole groups of people. The casual derision of others is a sometimes-attractive rhetorical style. Let us not forget what it is truly an embrace of.
39
What bothers me is the obvious value judgment placed on anyone called a hick. It's a dismissive and degrading term, and can only be used by and between people who are part of that community. When a city person calls a country person a hick, that is rude. I find the blatant hierarchy established by his comments to be pretty unsavory...
40
There's a problem with your analysis: country music is not now, and never really was, a rural music. It, like blues, is really a music about country people coming to the city and feeling lonesome. It came to its first fruition in the 20s, which is exactly when cities started to fill up with economic migrants from the fields. This trend has continued to accelerate in the decades since. Country music is a music of city folks, often fourth generation by now.
41
I was raised in the suburbs by hicks from the sticks. They loved trucks, hunting,country music, western movies, and kept broken down vehicles in the yard. They were racist, homophobic, mysogynist, and generally ignorant. They vote republican if they bother to vote at all.I hated that life and I now live in the city to avoid it. These people exist and It's not small minded to acknowledge that. None of my family members are astronauts, however.
42
"Hick" is a relative term - if you plunked any of us down in the middle of a sufficiently fancy social gathering, we could easily be the bumpkin in the group.
Charles has spent much of his life trying shake off his own hick roots having grown up middle class in a 3rd world country. Hence, his move to London, his obsession with the Western philosophical cannon, and, well, posts like this one. I certainly can't fault him for that - my own life trajectory is pretty similar.
Charles has spent much of his life trying shake off his own hick roots having grown up middle class in a 3rd world country. Hence, his move to London, his obsession with the Western philosophical cannon, and, well, posts like this one. I certainly can't fault him for that - my own life trajectory is pretty similar.
43
@40: Country music is a music of city folks
You've obviously never been to a hootenany or a barn dance. Neither have I, actually, but such music existed in rural America long before Memphis started commercializing it. Regardless of what country music has become today, it most certainly does have roots in the country (e.g., the Appalachian mountains).
You've obviously never been to a hootenany or a barn dance. Neither have I, actually, but such music existed in rural America long before Memphis started commercializing it. Regardless of what country music has become today, it most certainly does have roots in the country (e.g., the Appalachian mountains).
44
The clear answer here is that Charles is working undercover for the Republicans. That's the only explanation as to why he would post something so patently ignorant, so obviously mean-spirited, and so perfectly suited for the Republicans to point to while jumping up and down, gleefully shouting "MEDIA ELITE!!!!"
45
Hick hike hock (hic haec hoc to purists).
Or hickory dickory dock.
Hick comes from Dick, says dicktionary.
Or a mispronounced thick.
48
A year or two ago I was hanging out in another house's common room, and had the good fortune to listen to a shitfaced Southern guy explain how the slur "redneck" is more of a problem today than the slur "faggot". Other people informed me that this particular guy is known to drink and derive. As in, drunk calculus, literally.
49
@40 on second thought slightly correct. Country originated in Appalachia with Scottish and Irish immigrants, the blues comes from the plantations. Both are originally entirely rural. The argument can be made for the urbanization of the music in later years.
50
I'm afraid Charles is unfit to properly communicate with the slog community. That is, dumb down his language to satisfy the asshats that collectively make up the internet. Sure, as long as you post funny cat videos, some provocative line from a Santorum speech, any red meat to satisfy the oh-so 'liberal' and 'enlightened' residents of seattle, you will be hailed as a modern internet marvel. But drop the slightest provocation, a glint of deviation from the standard slog-gawker-newyorker nexus, and you scream TROLL! The sad realization of the internet is the conflation of troll with gadfly. Apropos the topic that started this all, Marx once referred to the peasantry as the 'idiocy of rural life.' I believe we now have the idiocy of cyberlife.
51
@49, when did the first country record come out? When did the first blues record come out?
Those were city products. Country didn't become popular until people started moving to the cities, buying records and listening to the radio, in the 20s, and wanted sounds that reminded them of a largely idealized version of home. That idealized version has taken hold of what people imagine to be the reality, but that imagining is a created product.
Your "Appalachia" roots were not popular with or even known to people outside of the specific hollows and corners they were being sung in -- that's in fact WHY the antique source material survived for so long. No one else knew what the hell it was; and authentically "country" people in other parts of the country -- farmers, in other words, which before the 1910s and 20s was almost everyone -- played and listened to completely different music (classical music, what would later be called "show tunes", vaudeville numbers, etc.)
The "authentic" Appalachian country sound as documented by folklorists like John and Alan Lomax was also heavily larded with popular music of the day, leading to some embarrassing episodes of them recording "authentic folk music" that was actually straight out of Tin Pan Alley. By the time folklore started to be a thing, there was no more "authentic purity" anymore, if there ever was.
The Carter Family, the first country superstars, were from rural Virginia but recorded and broadcast in cities. Ditto Jimmie Rodgers. The Grand Ol' Opry is in the middle of a large city. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and all the rest of the traveling Western Swing bands were city bands, and were a product not only of a country tradition but in particular a traveling jazz "territory band" tradition (one that was key to the development of blues and R&B as well). The biggest audience for Western Swing after WWII was Los Angeles! Nostalgia for "barn dances" and so on owes more to urban radio and television programs like "Louisiana Hayride" than to any actual hayrides or barn dances.
The blues is the same story. Yes, there were a handful of itinerant solo performers, and distant, murky traditions of field hollers and other slave-created forms, but they reached the ears of large numbers of people through the agency of city folk. Robert Johnson and the other Delta performers were thoroughly urbanized, as comfortable on the streets of Chicago as in small-town Mississippi.
And it is important to realize that "blues" was never associated with the Delta guitarists in those earliest times; that came later, after the folklorists uncovered the records of Johnson and Charlie Patton, who were unknown to white people and indeed most black people of the time. Blues was an urban music first. Mamie Smith was from Cincinnati; Bessie Smith lived in Philadelphia; Ma Rainey in Chicago. Blues was not an indigenous sound, but grew up with and out of jazz.
Jazz itself came out of New Orleans because it was the entrepot of the southern economy and the Hispanic and French Caribbean, but those sounds didn't fully turn into jazz until Louis Armstrong hit Chicago in 1922. He never recorded in New Orleans (which was itself a large city).
So, yeah, there are rural roots. But the music we know is and always has been urban, reflecting and indeed driven by the urbanization of American society in the teens and twenties -- an urban change. Note that 1920 -- close to the time of birth of both country and blues as genres -- marks the moment when the US tipped from majority-rural to majority-urban. Most of those urban people were recent arrivals, from northern farms, southern farms, or overseas. They brought with them not so much authentic musical traditions as authentic musical dreams. The nostalgia was for old things, old comforts in a strange new land, but the expression was new. The Carter Family (and Robert Johnson) were fully modern creative artists, not voices out of an unknowable past.
More...
Those were city products. Country didn't become popular until people started moving to the cities, buying records and listening to the radio, in the 20s, and wanted sounds that reminded them of a largely idealized version of home. That idealized version has taken hold of what people imagine to be the reality, but that imagining is a created product.
Your "Appalachia" roots were not popular with or even known to people outside of the specific hollows and corners they were being sung in -- that's in fact WHY the antique source material survived for so long. No one else knew what the hell it was; and authentically "country" people in other parts of the country -- farmers, in other words, which before the 1910s and 20s was almost everyone -- played and listened to completely different music (classical music, what would later be called "show tunes", vaudeville numbers, etc.)
The "authentic" Appalachian country sound as documented by folklorists like John and Alan Lomax was also heavily larded with popular music of the day, leading to some embarrassing episodes of them recording "authentic folk music" that was actually straight out of Tin Pan Alley. By the time folklore started to be a thing, there was no more "authentic purity" anymore, if there ever was.
The Carter Family, the first country superstars, were from rural Virginia but recorded and broadcast in cities. Ditto Jimmie Rodgers. The Grand Ol' Opry is in the middle of a large city. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and all the rest of the traveling Western Swing bands were city bands, and were a product not only of a country tradition but in particular a traveling jazz "territory band" tradition (one that was key to the development of blues and R&B as well). The biggest audience for Western Swing after WWII was Los Angeles! Nostalgia for "barn dances" and so on owes more to urban radio and television programs like "Louisiana Hayride" than to any actual hayrides or barn dances.
The blues is the same story. Yes, there were a handful of itinerant solo performers, and distant, murky traditions of field hollers and other slave-created forms, but they reached the ears of large numbers of people through the agency of city folk. Robert Johnson and the other Delta performers were thoroughly urbanized, as comfortable on the streets of Chicago as in small-town Mississippi.
And it is important to realize that "blues" was never associated with the Delta guitarists in those earliest times; that came later, after the folklorists uncovered the records of Johnson and Charlie Patton, who were unknown to white people and indeed most black people of the time. Blues was an urban music first. Mamie Smith was from Cincinnati; Bessie Smith lived in Philadelphia; Ma Rainey in Chicago. Blues was not an indigenous sound, but grew up with and out of jazz.
Jazz itself came out of New Orleans because it was the entrepot of the southern economy and the Hispanic and French Caribbean, but those sounds didn't fully turn into jazz until Louis Armstrong hit Chicago in 1922. He never recorded in New Orleans (which was itself a large city).
So, yeah, there are rural roots. But the music we know is and always has been urban, reflecting and indeed driven by the urbanization of American society in the teens and twenties -- an urban change. Note that 1920 -- close to the time of birth of both country and blues as genres -- marks the moment when the US tipped from majority-rural to majority-urban. Most of those urban people were recent arrivals, from northern farms, southern farms, or overseas. They brought with them not so much authentic musical traditions as authentic musical dreams. The nostalgia was for old things, old comforts in a strange new land, but the expression was new. The Carter Family (and Robert Johnson) were fully modern creative artists, not voices out of an unknowable past.
52
The Appalachian sound was popularized when those Appalachian pickers and fiddlers left home to find work in the cities. That's all I'm saying. When the music entered the popular imagination it became a commercial commodity and was transformed (for better or worse). To deny the rural traditions that gave birth to the music is to overlook a hundred plus years of musical evolution. There was plenty of cultural synthesis and experimentation long before American urbanization (banjo, meet fiddle)
You ask "when did the first country record come out? When did the first blues record come out?Those were city products".
Acoustic recording was perfected in the 1920. The technology wasn't going to be found in the shitkicker town the Carter family was in; of course they were going to have to record in a city when it came time to cash in. The cities did not bring about the genesis of the music, but were in fact the incubators where artist could monetize their music and spread it to new audiences.
You ask "when did the first country record come out? When did the first blues record come out?Those were city products".
Acoustic recording was perfected in the 1920. The technology wasn't going to be found in the shitkicker town the Carter family was in; of course they were going to have to record in a city when it came time to cash in. The cities did not bring about the genesis of the music, but were in fact the incubators where artist could monetize their music and spread it to new audiences.
53
The etymology of "redneck" is somewhat muddled, but most of the early instances of the term are referring to the red-scarf-wearing coal miners who were trying to unionize. You know. Socialists. Just like Mudede.
Oroboros wins again.
Oroboros wins again.
54
@52, a country person who leaves the country to go find work in the city, which is what you're describing, HAS BECOME A CITY PERSON. This is the fundamental transformation of both black and white America in the teens and twenties. And their music has become city music.
Acoustical recording was in fact commonplace long before the 1920s; I have a hundred examples, black and white, going back to the 1880s. It was ELECTRICAL recording that was introduced in 1925. There were no country recordings before then because it never occurred to either city or country people to make them; and the country recordings that were made after Ralph Peer showed up in Bristol with his recorder were not historic but contemporary; the Carter Family (who were among that first bunch) were self-consciously marketing their brand of sophisticated, stylized "old time" music in exactly the same way as every pop singer has since then.
Just as importantly, the MARKET for this music was a city market. Country music has always been primarily consumed by city people.
Note that the music that spread across the country, which we would recognize as country music today, even if "old time", reflected a very small portion of the different musical traditions of the pre-recording era. The old pre-modern era -- and not just the music -- was much, much weirder, stranger to us, than we can imagine as modern people.
Acoustical recording was in fact commonplace long before the 1920s; I have a hundred examples, black and white, going back to the 1880s. It was ELECTRICAL recording that was introduced in 1925. There were no country recordings before then because it never occurred to either city or country people to make them; and the country recordings that were made after Ralph Peer showed up in Bristol with his recorder were not historic but contemporary; the Carter Family (who were among that first bunch) were self-consciously marketing their brand of sophisticated, stylized "old time" music in exactly the same way as every pop singer has since then.
Just as importantly, the MARKET for this music was a city market. Country music has always been primarily consumed by city people.
Note that the music that spread across the country, which we would recognize as country music today, even if "old time", reflected a very small portion of the different musical traditions of the pre-recording era. The old pre-modern era -- and not just the music -- was much, much weirder, stranger to us, than we can imagine as modern people.
55
I think Sylvester Weaver is the earliest recorded blues and ragtime artist, 1923 for the New York based Okeh lable. Weaver was an accomplished guitarist. WC Handy is also considered a songwriting pioneer for blues, 1912. Certainly the 1900-30s period, with the migration from the south to the industrialized north, the Depression, and Prohibition along with recording technology made it possible for individual musicians to hear each other and be influenced by what they heard. The entertainment industry saw a boom, Hollywood was born, and underground clubs provided live platforms for music (jazz and blues specifically).
In 1941, a gentleman by the name of Alan Lomax was sent by the American Library of Congress to record (portable recording gear) to capture "indigenous American folk music" in the countryside. Fortunate for Mr. Lomax he came upon a farm worker who knew Robert Johnson's repertoire note for note- Muddy Waters. While still working on a plantation, Lomax recorded Waters. Those recordings are "The Plantation Recordings" and are not only pre-Chicago Muddy Waters, but might explain how Robert Johnson's legacy went on to influence the next generation when Waters migrated to Chicago in 1943.
I'm afraid I'm ignorant about country and western music. Perhaps Mr. Lomax or another emissary went out to record "indigenous American folk music" in other parts of the US?
In 1941, a gentleman by the name of Alan Lomax was sent by the American Library of Congress to record (portable recording gear) to capture "indigenous American folk music" in the countryside. Fortunate for Mr. Lomax he came upon a farm worker who knew Robert Johnson's repertoire note for note- Muddy Waters. While still working on a plantation, Lomax recorded Waters. Those recordings are "The Plantation Recordings" and are not only pre-Chicago Muddy Waters, but might explain how Robert Johnson's legacy went on to influence the next generation when Waters migrated to Chicago in 1943.
I'm afraid I'm ignorant about country and western music. Perhaps Mr. Lomax or another emissary went out to record "indigenous American folk music" in other parts of the US?
56
Well, urban or rural, tonight I'm gonna play a rag on my banjo while the boy plays his squeezebox. Happy trails Fnarf.
57
@53, I think I'm more convinced by the most straightforward-sounding etymology of "redneck" - it describes (white, rural) people who have sunburnt necks from working outside all day, as well as the attitudes typical of these people.
As someone from a pretty redneck-ish place, I think "hick" is definitely more offensive than "redneck" - to me, "hick" automatically implies backwardness, while "redneck" basically describes a social demographic and accompanying subculture. I know people who would readily describe themselves as rednecks, but definitely not as hicks.
As for country music, it's the real and honest white man's blues. It has deep and sophisticated cultural roots, as others have pointed out. There's really no reason to be condescending about it. I tend to agree that the majority of contemporary country music is pretty bad; but then, I think the majority of any genre of music is bound to be pretty bad.
As someone from a pretty redneck-ish place, I think "hick" is definitely more offensive than "redneck" - to me, "hick" automatically implies backwardness, while "redneck" basically describes a social demographic and accompanying subculture. I know people who would readily describe themselves as rednecks, but definitely not as hicks.
As for country music, it's the real and honest white man's blues. It has deep and sophisticated cultural roots, as others have pointed out. There's really no reason to be condescending about it. I tend to agree that the majority of contemporary country music is pretty bad; but then, I think the majority of any genre of music is bound to be pretty bad.
58
Funny how a man whose whole life seems to revolve around finding racism (and creating it when he can not) can be so baldly and repugnantly prejudiced to people who are different from him. You probably are more superior than the men of intense brilliance, ability, and courage who went to the moon because you listen to more "cultured" music and write inconsequential articles for a very limited readership. You have accomplished so much compared to them Charles. Kudos.
59
@57 - As I said, the etymology is somewhat muddled, and yes, that's the way the term is used now, meaning someone whose neck is burnt red from the sun. But here's Wikipedia's entry relevant to this context:
The earliest printed uses of the word red-neck in a coal-mining context date from the 1912-1913 Paint and Cabin Creeks strike in southern West Virginia and from the 1913-1914 Trinidad District strike in southern Colorado. It is not known where the term originated. It originated as a negative epithet. Apparently, coal operators, company guards, non-union miners, and strikebreakers were among the first to use the term "redneck" in a labor context when they derided union miners with the slur. According to industrial folklorist George Korson, non-union miners derisively called strikers "rednecks" in the Appalachian coalfields. The best explanation of redneck to mean "union man" is that the word refers to the red handkerchiefs that striking union coal miners in both southern West Virginia and southern Colorado often wore around their necks or arms as a part of their informal uniform.
The earliest printed uses of the word red-neck in a coal-mining context date from the 1912-1913 Paint and Cabin Creeks strike in southern West Virginia and from the 1913-1914 Trinidad District strike in southern Colorado. It is not known where the term originated. It originated as a negative epithet. Apparently, coal operators, company guards, non-union miners, and strikebreakers were among the first to use the term "redneck" in a labor context when they derided union miners with the slur. According to industrial folklorist George Korson, non-union miners derisively called strikers "rednecks" in the Appalachian coalfields. The best explanation of redneck to mean "union man" is that the word refers to the red handkerchiefs that striking union coal miners in both southern West Virginia and southern Colorado often wore around their necks or arms as a part of their informal uniform.
60
"A hick is a person from and raised in the limited, dumbing, dim rural world."
Your are a close minded a-hole who only sees the world in stereotypes. I hope you have fun with that.
Go back to making movies about bestiality.
Your are a close minded a-hole who only sees the world in stereotypes. I hope you have fun with that.
Go back to making movies about bestiality.
62
Seeing as how most "rural" problems are basically class problems, I can't be the only person who finds it ironic for a Marxist to be (unironically) trashing rural people.
Think about it: what is the difference between a poor, rural town and a poor neighborhood in a big city? I can come up with some petty things (traffic, race composition, scenery, etc), but nothing substantial. I get the impression that Mr. Mudede would never argue that poor neighborhoods are simply poor because the people in them are a bunch of dumb shitheels beyond any help. So why would this magically be true of poor rural towns?
If Mudede wants to crack jokes about dumb country trash, that's fine. I wasn't offended by the original "hicks on the moon" post; I laughed! It's just stupid to take those jokes and treat them like they're some sort of serious social theory. Not even offensive really; just idiotic.
You should have just told another hick joke rather than trying to defend your first one, Mudede.
Think about it: what is the difference between a poor, rural town and a poor neighborhood in a big city? I can come up with some petty things (traffic, race composition, scenery, etc), but nothing substantial. I get the impression that Mr. Mudede would never argue that poor neighborhoods are simply poor because the people in them are a bunch of dumb shitheels beyond any help. So why would this magically be true of poor rural towns?
If Mudede wants to crack jokes about dumb country trash, that's fine. I wasn't offended by the original "hicks on the moon" post; I laughed! It's just stupid to take those jokes and treat them like they're some sort of serious social theory. Not even offensive really; just idiotic.
You should have just told another hick joke rather than trying to defend your first one, Mudede.
64
Charles, country music evolved from rhythm and blues. You saying that people who live in the city and listen to country is just... so many kinds of dumb.
65
I didn't read the comments before I posted. Fnarf and others said what I meant much more eloquently!
66
@62: I do not think anyone cares so much about joking about country trash, it was the idea that these heroes (men who dare to leave the safety of our planet for the sake of us all are heroes) were trash just because they like country western music. The problem was Charles was attempting to bring down these heroic men because they have different sensibilites from him. Which is an oddly rural sentiment if you ask me.
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