On November 2, 2016, four female musicians from Texas performed for an audience of fellow artists, industry insiders and fans. They were accompanied by fiddle, banjo, harmonica and an ensemble of Delta-Jazz instruments harkening to hot, dirty summer nights in barns, front porches and pastures across the South.
They sang a mashup of two songs. The first was written and recorded by the girl from Houston.
It told the story of a dying man’s advice to his daughter, which boiled down to this: If a man like me comes around, protect your mom and sister. Shoot him. It’s your Second Amendment right.
The second song had been written and recorded by the other three, one of whom grew up in the dusty West Texas town of Lubbock. The other two, sisters, were raised near Dallas but have spent their adult lives in the Texas Hill Country.
Their tune lamented how country music no longer had the soul it once had. It name-dropped Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. It was from “Home,” an album highly lauded for its bluegrass virtuosity.
Their voices soared with Lone Star twang embedded deep in their souls.
If you hate country music and are unaware of the performance I have just described, your eyes may be glazing over. If you love country music but are ignorant of the story, you may be leaning forward and whispering, “Tell me more.”
Regardless, if all you know about this story is what I have told you, the next part may surprise you.
Alan Jackson, one of the most celebrated country singers ever, walked out of the performance because it wasn’t “country enough.” Others expressed similar sentiments.
Not “country enough?”
Fiddles, banjoes and harmonica?
Guns?
Second Amendment?
A sadness that country music is no longer what it used to be?
Their five-minute performance was the musical equivalent of chicken fried steak made by my Maw Maw in a screaming-hot cast iron skillet. How could anyone believe it wasn’t “country enough?”
In 2016, the subgenre derisively known as “Bro-Country” was at the height of its popularity. Bro-Country was essentially arena-rock music with rich, suburban white men with southern accents singing songs about girls with short shorts sitting on tailgates. Many of these songs included embarrassing attempts to appropriate hip-hop.
Bro-Country sounded far less like traditional country music than what these four women from Texas were singing. It was the musical equivalent of Chicken Fried Steak grown in a lab.
Throughout the 2010s, Alan Jackson sat through numerous awards show performances by Bro-Country artists. He probably hated them all. Yet, as far as I can tell, he never walked out of a single one.
What was it about these four preternaturally talented Texas girls, burning up the stage with sounds from the South, that was a bridge too far for him?
Three on that stage at the 50th Country Music Association (CMA) Awards formed the band known as the Dixie Chicks. In 2003, they had effectively been exiled from the Country Music industry for criticizing George W. Bush over the Iraq war.
This 2016 performance was viewed as their highly anticipated return and a moment of hope that the world had changed. It was naive hope, but hope nonetheless.
Later, in 2020, they would change their name to “The Chicks” to “meet the moment” of racial reckoning in the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
The singer from Houston was an up-and-comer named Beyoncé. Her contribution, “Daddy Lessons,” was a track from the critically acclaimed album “Lemonade,” released earlier that year.
She had teased the album in February at the Super Bowl with a nod to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X during her halftime performance for “Formation.” The video for “Formation” was released the day before.
Saturday Night Live brilliantly captured the uproar and racial implications of that monumental weekend with the sketch “The Day Beyonce Turned Black.”
So when Beyoncé broke the internet and dropped two country-infused songs during this year’s Super Bowl, it wasn’t her first rodeo.
One of those songs, Texas Hold ‘Em, has received some controversy, with an Oklahoma radio station initially refusing to play it. They later backtracked. But it has been mostly well-received. The line-dance-ready tune has sparked a wave of enthusiasm among those who have long celebrated the Black roots of country music.
Some have responded to this moment by saying, “It’s about time since Black people invented country music.” This is partly true. Much of the instrumentation of traditional country music came to North America from enslaved Africans. But it doesn’t tell the entire story.
A more complete picture of what we label “Country Music” is that it was originally immigrant music. It arrived on this continent in the 17th century from impoverished European immigrants seeking a better life. It arrived here by violence, with the forced migration of enslaved Africans and, later, with the savage relocation of Indigenous Americans.
These immigrants sang about longing for the old home. They sang about their struggles, their hopes and how they were overcoming.
They sang about specific places and people. They sang about their God. They sang in code to break free from the powerful who had backed them against the wall.
Their songs bore the sounds of their unique cultures. But, by the early 20th century, these immigrant songs had been shared back and forth between communities for so long that they began to sound strangely similar.
This was too much for the businessmen seeking to capitalize on newfound technologies in the recording and distribution of music. More money could be made and more “social stability” maintained if the music was split into genres and marketed separately to each community.
The music created by European immigrants and their descendants was called “hillbilly music.” It would later be called “Country.”
The music created by the descendants of enslaved Africans was called “race music.” It would later be called “R&B.”
This “divide-and-conquer” story isn’t just the story of country music. It is the story of America.
It is a story that Good Faith Media’s Starlette Thomas describes, unpacks and seeks to dismantle through her work with the Raceless Gospel Initiative. It is a demonic story with roots in the garden.
The story was reenacted that night in early November 2016, with all its ancient plot lines. It had everything–
Four women with soulful voices bleeding joy and exuberance for an eager crowd;
People of all shapes, kinds and shades on a flat stage sharing the moment;
The reciprocation of honor for the contribution of each voice and instrument;
Redemption;
A beloved kin-dom.
And a powerful white man looking at the scene unfold and declaring, “This ain’t right. It doesn’t belong here.”
The following week, the same story would be reenacted nationwide at the ballot box.
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Click here to read more by Craig Nash.
Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
