Talk:Country music

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 February 2019 and 3 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rrerastephanie.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

problems at a glance

First off, how is it that country music has been granted "generations" in its evolution? In Rock music specific reference is made only to "second generations" of subgenres heavy metal and punk, and then only in a passing manner, and there is no such pigeonholing for Jazz or Blues. The "generations" are in no way obvious or natural or intuitive: I sincerely doubt that the country musicians of the early 1930s started thinking of themselves as "the second generation." Given the centrality of this conceit to the article, I challenge its maintenance and demand that a very specific source for the origin of those divisions be presented — and NOT merely citing someone else (certainly NOT multiple "creators"!!) who might have mentioned something somewhat similar in a book or article — else the divisions themselves are blatant original research and all mention of "generations" ought be scrubbed. As mentioned above, decade-by-decade structure makes somewhat more sense, though only somewhat.

(Effort ought to have been made to make this somehow conform with the amazingly stupid List of country performers by era — stupid because someone like Merle Haggard can appear in FIVE "eras," redundancy that gratuitously inflates that trivia pile.)

Second, aside from passing reference to Regional Mexican, there is virtually no mention of country music in any language other than English. At the very least, Jim Reeves certainly had a huge following in South Africa and recorded a couple of albums in Afrikaans. Given the degree of music fanaticism in Japan for various genres, there certainly must be Japanese country lyrics; they definitely have produced credible bluegrass instrumentals for decades.

Third, whole chunks are pretty much unsupported personal essay, and vulnerable to outright deletion. Start with Country music#Performers and shows and Country music#Latin America.

That brings me to a fourth point: how is it that a clearly pop or rock or blues tune (nowadays even hip-hop) becomes "country" simply by being sung with a nasally twang? Jim Reeves (among others) went quickly from rock-&-roll/rockabilly to pop, yet everyone would agree that his entire catalogue is "country." Marty Robbins was by turns in rock-&-roll, pop, "Polynesian," and ballads about men shooting each other. Basically, a city-raised kid who's never seen a horse up close can establish a career by glorifying various "blue collar" and "rural" stereotypes for the amusement of comfortably wealthy managers whose idea of "my country roots" consists entirely of driving the Lincoln Navigator to the Grand Canyon for three days a year.

Fifth, the article is entirely too long. At 130K, it's too bloated to read through and too bulky to navigate easily with mobiles. At a guesstimate it could be improved by paring it back to ~85K. Anyone who feels driven to preserve the content should figure out how to split it.

And in the process, big gray paragraph swathes ought to be trimmed down and broken up, and some effort made to reduce overreliance on one-paragraph sections (for that matter, two-paragraph too).

Finally, as noted in a previous post above, there's an underlying (propagandistic) thread running through this article that country music is somehow representative of "the little guy," the working man. This is romantic claptrap. For instance, the genre demonstrates a recurring theme of wholesale theft from the music of African-Americans — slaves entertaining their owners, minstrel shows, "blues modes," rapping — yet excluding black composers, musicians, and performers: aside from Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, name a non-white country artist. Clearly, there's basis to argue that country's "little guy" MUST be white (at least mostly, certainly not Italian!) and Christian (at least nominally). Country is proudly reactionary, and leans heavily upon Reaganesque "good ol' days" myths such as discussed in The Way Things Never Were (1999). For the purposes of a Wikipedia article, any furtherance of the mythos MUST be clearly attributed to specific sources, and then as their mere opinion unless backed by credible research.

For starters.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:31, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Country music for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Country music is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Country music until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:59, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Complicated history with regard to race

User:Kerry_H1 added a very important sentence, which I will quote below.

The genre has had a complicated history with regard to race in the U.S.

1. "Country music reckons with racial stereotypes and its future". ABC News. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
2. "Morgan Wallen and country music's race issue is no surprise". CNN. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
3. "Country Music Continues To Confront Racism". NPR. Retrieved February 22, 2021.

I like where this is headed, but I think it deserves its own section. Especially broadening the topical issues of race in Tennessee's music industry, which deserves note. We should however highlight that in the Western music scenes this was not the case, as indigenous and Latin communities have created entire subgenres that thrive. I'm shocked that there isn't an article on Navajo country music, or that several of the New Mexico music artists continue to lack articles on this site. 71.228.115.97 (talk) 08:50, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the work being done now on the section will be much more productive. Perhaps we can expand into a more broad "criticism" section? 71.228.115.97 (talk) 23:42, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Cliff Carlisle...citation and text in question

The section on the "first generation" of country artists ends with a sentence on Cliff Carlisle that identifies him as "hillbilly", whereas his WP article makes no mention of the term. I don't doubt that as a yodeler he may qualify, but it would help to have a source to support the claim. The citation that's provided links to the Vernon Dalhart article on pages 14-15 in Tony Russell's Country Music Originals, which doesn't mention Carlisle at all. Matters worse: the sentence says Carlisle (among others) recorded blues throughout the 1920s, which is true of others but not Carlisle since he didn't begin recording until 1930. BTW, Russell's book does have an article on Carlisle, on page 163. I have no idea what's in it because I don't have an internet archive account and can't access the book's full text. Allreet (talk) 00:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

The sentence I just mentioned - errors and all - is repeated in the History section, though it adds that Carlisle recorded into the 1930s. Allreet (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

The book mentions that he started recording in 1930 (the citation covered a number of pages, not just pages 14-15), so we should adjust that. Hzh (talk) 14:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

New Zealand omitted

How come New Zealand isn't mentioned at all in this article? I'm quite sure country music is popular there, given that it's an English speaking country. 93.143.225.229 (talk) 11:47, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

A lead rewrite is in order

Hi all,

I apologize for blowing in so boldly earlier this month with lead and infobox edits. These edits were reverted, which is why I'm here in the talk section. I am here to say that I cringe when I read this lead, and it seems to have turned even worse since I last touched it. It's unwieldy, unorganized, and overall a big stinking mess.

My concerns, as follows.

Unsourced lists of genres appear three times in the article introduction: once in the infobox and twice in the lead text. Clearly these are a longstanding problem, since they were brought up over four years ago (#Problematic, non-cited declaration) and nothing has constructively changed since then. In my lead rewrite from ~the 5th of this month, my primary goal was getting rid of these lists. I highlight the following cases:

• "church: Southern gospel, spirituals" (in infobox). "Church music" is an incredibly broad category, one that spans 2,000 years of Christian religious music. Therefore, I assert that references to "church music" are non-constructive bloat, and that the traditions it describes would be better served under a "traditional American" label or the like, alongside secular folk traditions.

• ...and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole... Creole music, which is African-American, is not clearly distinguished from predominately white Cajun and Appalachian music. This is but one example of the article's poor treatment of different ethnic musical traditions, and the (often blurry) divides between them.

• "...and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country." One editor who rolled my changes back claimed I had a prejudice against including country's "origins in Western music." I have no prejudice against this; my prejudice is against poorly written references to these origins. And of all my issues with this lead, this selection is the one that drives me furthest up the wall.

As with the rest of the lead, reference to Western music is followed by an indiscriminate vomit of genres. Contemporary styles of Western music, such as Red Dirt and Texas country, seem to be listed as antecedents of country as a whole. Hawaiian music, which is important in its own right as the originator of steel guitar, is tacked on as an afterthought. Additionally, Tejano and New Mexico music have not-insubstantial overlap with northern Mexican music; like with the already-mentioned poor treatment of African-American music, country's relationship to Mexican music should be more clearly highlighted.

This statement is followed by six consecutive citations, most of which should be placed in the middle, after commas, so the reader can tell where specific assertions originate from. Also, none of these are strictly "cowboy music."

• It has historical roots in the indigenous music of North America, Celtic music, early music of the British Isles, jota, Irish traditional music, singing cowboys, corrido, ranchera, norteño, French folk music, African-American music, and other traditional folk music traditions. This is uncited and entirely superfluous. The information here, where substantiated, should be merged into a single, unified account of country's contributing musical traditions.

Most of the listed traditions are too tenuous to warrant inclusion: these include Native American music, Celtic, Irish, early British, and French folk music, and jota. Mexican (corrido, norteño, ranchera) and African-American music, on the other hand, deserve more attention than they currently receive. Also, "singing cowboys"? The last time I checked, those were from Hollywood movies. (This is even how the article body uses the term! Come on!) "Cowboy ballads" is a better, more accurate turn of phrase, if we're to include anything like it at all.

There is a similar issue in the "origins" section of the infobox, which lists some of the traditions from this list: either substantiate your claims, or don't add them at all.

I have additional concerns about the general article tone and content, but these are addressed well enough by other users (see #Problematic, non-cited declaration, #Recommended Sub-Section Changes - Topic too big for one page, and #problems at a glance). All in all, my main issue is the terrible lead and introduction. The rest can wait, it's contentious enough on its own.

If I have not been clear enough, I hope I can articulate myself better throughout the rest of this thread. Have a great day. 15:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC) Marisauna (talk) 15:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

As a scot I can blatantly hear the celtic folk influence in the early recordings. I'd find it weird not to be mentioned. It's cited in the CMA museum. But wouldn't be offended either by the way, it would just be a weird omission. All of those listed do not seem tenuous at all to me but accurately describe the root of the genre. 92.7.174.253 (talk) 00:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Country and Western Music

Country and Western music are not the same. Country music is from Southeastern US, not Western US. Western Music is “cowboy music” from old Wild West US. Cowboy songs are story telling songs. A radio disc jockey worked at a radio station in the States somewhere and mixed genre of country music and western music songs played in the radio station and coined the term/genre of Country and Western Music. But the two genres are not the same. Country music is not also termed Country and Western. 2001:569:F95F:9400:70AF:AB64:657D:61A8 (talk) 04:34, 12 March 2023 (UTC)