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Performing Nashville pp 15–53Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Performing the South

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Part of the book series: Leisure Studies in a Global Era ((LSGE))

Abstract

This chapter will explore the formation, discovery, and continuation of country music and the imagined south. By discussing the images, sounds, and themes of an imagined southern identity, I will illustrate the importance of a perceived authenticity in the promotion and performance of the music, the artist, the place, and, most importantly, the fan experience. This discussion will directly connect the history of country music performance, broadcasting, commodification, and promotion to both the historical and current state of the genre and its fan base, who expect evidence of realness and reinforce this through their dedication to and involvement in the performance of the country music tradition while visiting Nashville.

To understand this connection, a review of media’s role in the country music genre is crucial. From the earliest recordings in the 1920s to the advent of radio, music videos, television, and the Internet, country music has long presented itself as a genre rooted in the romanticized past while maintaining an enthusiastic interaction with the present and its modern technologies. Country music was created in response to new technologies, and it remains continuously popular because of them. An analysis of these technologies, their importance in the creation and dissemination of country music, and their role in the development of the country music and Nashville brands will further illustrate the past/present relationship that makes Nashville, country music, and the fan experience in Music City unique. Through a discussion of multiple dichotomies, I will also illustrate that country music goes beyond a sound and is also a sonic signifier of an idealized America and a set of select American ideals.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The above discussion on authenticity and tourism literature was previously printed in my unpublished dissertation “We Are the Blues: Individual and Communal Performances of the King Biscuit Tradition” and can be accessed at diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:182523/datastream/PDF/.../citation.pdf

    While the musical genre discussed in this book is country music, my previous graduate work on the blues and tourism in the Arkansas Delta inspired this project and introduced me to a body of literature that applied to the multifaceted country music tradition and performance in Nashville.

  2. 2.

    The concept of otherness is a recurring theme in Western philosophy, which suggests difference from one’s self and everyday reality. Edward Said famously described the “other” as the opposite, that which is different from and inferior to the West (1979). Otherness may be a stated desire for many music fans, realized through an interaction with the landscape, the host community, and the musical genre, but I would suggest that for a large number of music fans, the other is not perceived as inferior but rather as a romanticized ideal. Through the theatrics of tourism, visitors to the music city experience a performed other. Therefore, the guest community, for a brief period, is able to become the other and perform notions of their “authentic selves” in a theatrical space that presents the music and its place of creation and continuance as evidence of an American utopia.

  3. 3.

    Several studies address such an interaction, including MacCannell (1976, 1979), Smith (1977), Fine and Speer (1981), Bruner (1991), Urry (2002), Waitt (2000), Cantwell (1993), Reader and Walter (1993), Wang (1999), Filene (2000), Cohen (2002), Badone and Roseman (2004), Gibson and Connell (2005), and Kim and Jamal (2007).

  4. 4.

    The iconography discussed on the cover of “Old Dan Emmit’s Original Banjo Melodies” can be accessed through the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection online archive, Sheridan Libraries Special Collections, Johns Hopkins University, http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/catalog/levy:020.099

  5. 5.

    Will S Hays, “Oh! Give Me A Home in the South,” can be accessed at the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1872.12119.0/?sp=2

  6. 6.

    Diane Pecknold points out that this tension between the rural and the modern is also at play in the presentation of Nashville. She points out: “Rhetorical mobilizations of Nashville as the home of country music have frequently mediated the tension between the genre’s core working class and rural ideologies and its material position as a hugely profitable global entertainment industry” (Pecknold 2014, p. 30).

  7. 7.

    For a detailed discussion of the impact of the phonograph on music, popular culture, and notions of space in the modern era, see Katz (2010) and Doyle (2005).

  8. 8.

    An 1871 publication of Will S. Hays’ “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” can be accessed through the Historic American Sheet Music Collection at Duke University. http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/sheetmusic/b/b08/b0840/b0840-1-72dpi.html

  9. 9.

    For a discussion of this clash of cultures, see Matthew Davis, “Introduction,” Clash of Cultures in the 1910s and 1920s, Ohio State University, Department of History, https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/clash/default

  10. 10.

    For a detailed discussion of WSM radio and the history of the Grand Ole Opry, see Ellison (1995), Kosser (2006), and Havighurst (2007).

  11. 11.

    For a detailed discussion of the creation and commercialization of Nashville’s recording industry, see Jensen (1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Robert W. Fry

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Fry, R.W. (2017). Performing the South. In: Performing Nashville. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50482-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50482-1_2

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