Rhiannon Giddens and Country Music’s Mixed Roots
from Part IV - Boundary Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2023
In 2017, Rhiannon Giddens reflected on a recent performance as part of the first African American string band to play the Grand Ole Opry. As she recalled, “people started calling it a Healing Moment. But I have to ask: a healing moment for whom? One or two Black groups, or one or two Black country stars is not a substitution for recognizing the true multi-cultural history of this music. We have a lot of work to do.” These words are a touchstone for assessing Giddens’s first two solo albums, as works that reclaim and re-member the racially mixed roots of country music alongside other distinctively American genres. The analysis pushes against paradigms in which musical sounds align neatly with racial categories, specifically the presumed whiteness of country music. Giddens’s work makes clear that, though convenient, racialized conceptions obscure more than they reveal about US music and the people making it.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.