I have long felt a qualitative difference
between the blues and country music. I enjoy the blues. On my iPod I
have albums by Robert Balfour and Junior Kimbraugh, a few singles from
John Lee Hooker (I should note I have a VERY old iPod that I have maxed
out at perhaps 500 songs), and have spent many happy hours at blues
bars, particularly in Memphis and Chicago.
At the same
time, though, I have never felt the blues as cathartic. It is music
which entrances you, or makes you move. But it fundamentally feels–to
me, and this is paradigmatic subjectivity–like time is standing still,
that no matter what you do the situation cannot be transcended. Blues
is a break from existence, not a deepening of experience, of tragedy,
from which you emerge renewed. There is no form which it is trying to
create. It is merely trying to prevent emotional stagnation.
There is no code in blues music, no sense of honor and dignity, which is abundant in country music.
Country
has many songs about boozing, jail and cheating. It also has many
songs about hard work, patriotism, God, honor, and family. It is a
comprehensive look at life as it is actually lived by most of us: full
of contradictions, high and low moments, tragedy and comedy, with most
of us looking ridiculous most of the time, but also capable of quiet
moments of dignity.
This is one man’s opinion.
Edit: I will add that this basic mindset was inherited fully by rock and roll and all its off-shoots, including techno, heavy metal, rap, and others. I read yesterday that Michael Phelps liked Deadmau5, who I had never heard of. Watch this video. Is this life affirming music? The one mouse symbolically kills the other. Nobody cares. This is music in which fantasy is all. Nothing is real. It is a break from reality, presumably fueled for many by marijuana or Ecstacy.
Or consider the image of the rock star, which I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about. What does it say about our culture that our icons are self absorbed and self destructive narcissists whose lives revolve around the most primal of sensations? What does rock music build? Nothing.
On the contrary, the rock star says to you that your life is insufficient if you are not “living large”. If you are raising kids, paying your bills, living a quiet life, that is not enough. You are losing out. There is so much out there, if you just go get it. And people try. They try and go get it.
I lived in California for a number of years. What I remember, particularly in northern California, is that virtually everyone I met who grew up there has some sort of grotesque and ridiculous story of their home life, of self involved and selfish parents putting their kids through ridiculous exercises. This is the outcome of the hippy movement, which oriented around unstructured sensation.
Life is not just about the pursuit of sensation. In fact, such a pursuit leads to the destruction of all the worthy sensations, particularly true love, which involves loyalty, the capacity to put your own immediate needs aside, and time.
In my honest view, it is only barely an exaggeration to say that it is country music fans, nearly alone, who have prevented the wholesale decline of this nation into complete moral mediocrity. They are the large red segments seen in every State when the national votes are tallied.
We see bright, shiny lies up in the elevated halls of our political elite. We see bright spotlights, and adulatory media coverage of its chosen true sons. But none of it is real, and common sense alone is needed to see this.