Entertainment rumor rag, TMZ, whipped up a teapot tempest featuring country musician Luke Combs’ successful cover of “Fast Car”. With the pretense of taking the Washington Post down a peg or two, TMZ attacked a column that addresses some awkward reactions to the single’s chart-topping presence in country music’s rankings.
TMZ cherry picks the piece, and then assembles a straw man question of protest: “[W]hy didn’t TC resonate with the same audience Luke has???” Further along, TMZ has the temerity to suggest “[I]t seems like people are scoffing at the notion that Tracy’s missing out/getting snubbed amid Luke’s use of it.” It would be laughable watching TMZ role play a trivial racism debate for readers if significant number of them weren’t already squeamish about being reminded that prejudice is alive and well, even within the country music industry.
The singer/song writer who penned the folk tune back in 1988, Tracy Chapman, congratulated Combs for his accomplishment and admitted she was honored to have her work recognized by the country charts. However, The Washington Post article raised some valid questions about country music and artist representation.
The WaPo article cited a study by data journalist Jan Diehm and musicologist Jada Watson, covering country music radio for the year of 2022: fewer than 0.5 percent of songs played on country radio were by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists. Watson’s earlier investigation revealed that songs by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists were largely excluded from radio playlists for most of the two decades prior. Given those metrics, I would suggest that country music remains as segregated as a Jim Crow-era municipality.
The racism debate, as stirring a conflict it may appear to some imaginations, is a distraction from a far more crucial discussion: the recognition that American music owes the Black experience in America.
To put it more bluntly, without the Black experience, there would be no distinctly American music like jazz, blues, gospel, rock ‘n roll, rhythm and blues, hip hop and–yes–even country, that listeners have loved and admired for decades. By Black experience, I refer not just to 400 years of cruel and sadistic bondage, but also the terror and dehumanization of the Jim Crow era and the crucible endured by those committed to the struggle for civil rights beginning in the mid-20th century.
To muster such an appreciation or acknowledgment, most Americans are missing in action. We have collectively forgotten that before “crossover” artists like Elvis Presley or Pat Boone performed music written by Black artists, jazz and blues whose original recordings were largely ignored by a white distribution and listening market. Understandably, this misled white listeners about the origins and lived experiences informing the covers performed by white artists.
As silly as the outrage ginned up by talking about or ignoring racism is, a nation’s self-knowledge weighs in the balance in the conversation about art forms and their origins. In a country like the U.S., which aspires to conduct guided by self-governing efforts, there is nothing to fear when we gain a deeper self-understanding of the nation’s cultural gifts.
Previously Published on Medium
Steve Jurvetson on Flickr under CC License