Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

This fight is for everything.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

No Justins, No Peace

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Republicans don’t trust women.

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool – Music and Culture

Medium Cool – Music and Culture

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

We’re nearly at the end of Black History Month, and I realized that we haven’t talked about that at all on Medium Cool, and maybe not even on Balloon Juice more generally – though there has been talk of the “audacity” of a certain black female artist who dared to make some country music.  How dare she suggest that country music might have its roots in something besides good ‘ole redneck boys?!  Doesn’t she know her place!?

Anyway, let’s use this space to talk about the cultural roots of all sorts of music.  It seems to me that culture spreads in all directions.

And we’re off.

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I don’t follow Beyoncé, and I’m in general not a fan of country music — I don’t dislike either of them, I’m just unfamiliar with both the artist and the genre, and therefore don’t feel qualified to opine. But I did hear Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” a few weeks ago, and loved it! I like the idea that even at my vast age, I can still be open to appreciating new (to me) music. Good stuff.

  2. 2.

    owlbrick

    A big tip of the hat to Rhiannon Giddens, playing banjo on that Beyonce track… a major figure in bringing recognition to Black country and roots music.

  3. 3.

    RSA

    This is most of the contents of a PBS page, on 20th century popular music, but it’s hard to know what to leave out. It appropriately recognizes the influence of African Americans on almost everything we listen to today.

    The most important influence on 20th century music? African Americans and the musical culture they brought to this country – developed within the bonds of slavery.

    Even before the 20th century began, blues music was evolving across the country out of the traditional African slave spirituals, work calls and chants. Of all the developing genres, the blues would be the most far-reaching, with its influence felt in everything from jazz to rock, country music to rhythm and blues, and classical music.

    That said, jazz’s influence on the world music scene would be nothing short of transformational. Jazz saw its early development in the African American communities all throughout the South – with rhythms reflecting the diversity of cultural influences from West Africa to the West Indies, from ragtime to the blues.

    With similar roots to blues (and blues as one of its roots), jazz also took from another American art form – ragtime – to create its unique syncopated sound. Its early detractors were many, from Henry Ford to Thomas Edison, but racism was often the reason for cries of “it’s immoral.” Yet the insistent, danceable, heartfelt sounds quickly spread American culture to the far corners of the globe.

    Its ever-mutating style turned itself into swing music, soul and cool jazz. Jazz’s knock-on effect was further seen in rock and roll’s development in the United States in the 1950s. Artists from Elvis Presley to Chuck Berry created their rock and roll using the musical influences of boogie-woogie and blues, along with jazz. Rock’s popularity quickly spread around the world, with groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones often crediting early 20th century American music such as blues for their inspiration.

    Soul music, which grew up alongside rock and roll, also developed out of African American gospel, and rhythm and blues traditions. As the century wore on, rhythm and blues boy bands such as New Edition (which could have stayed merely a bubblegum pop band of black youth created for a mainly white audience) took control of their music and helped create the new jack swing movement. A fusion of hip hop and R & B, new jack swing helped laid the groundwork for the next two decades of popular music.

    The end of the century saw the birth of hip-hop music and culture. In the mid-1970s in the Bronx, New York DJs began isolating percussion rhythms from songs and talking over and between the songs.

    Rap music, with its semi-autobiographical lyrics and deep rhythms were just one more evolution in the blues tradition that had started at the beginning of the century, and one further, enormous transformation in the world of music created and nurtured in the African American community.

  4. 4.

    TBone

    A precursor to Led Zeppelin I had never heard of till a few days ago.  Scottish psychedelic folk.

    https://youtu.be/nu0brlGGQ2Y

    Per Wikipedia: “…1968 was the band’s annus mirabilis with the release of their two most-celebrated albums, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter and the double LP Wee Tam and the Big Huge (issued as two separate albums in the US). Hangman’s reached the top 5 in the UK album charts soon after its release in March 1968 and was nominated for a Grammy in the US. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin said his group found their way by playing Hangman’s and following the instructions.[8]

    Who knew?

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    @TBone: More than 7 links throws you into moderation.

    So if you’re copying from Wikipedia, the king of links, it’s good to use “paste and match style” or whatever your system calls it, so you can paste the text without all the links.

  9. 9.

    TBone

    @WaterGirl: thanks, I thought I stepped in it again and was befuddled! Whew, sigh of relief 😊 it ain’t easy being green (like Kermit sang!) I will not do THAT again 😆

  11. 11.

    TBone

    PSA in his ‘Reason to Smile’ today, Dan Rather spoke of a Netflix documentary about the making of the ‘We Are the World” collaboration called “The Greatest Night in Pop” and I haven’t yet seen it but plan to.  No more links 😆

  12. 12.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    Didn’t you hear? The Turks took that.

    Why did you even think the main beef of the Gates of Vienna lot was about? Those cats just really want their polka standards back from the perfidious infidel.

  13. 13.

    eclare

    @TBone:

    Lionel Richie was on Kimmel recently promoting that documentary, it sounds good.  He talked about including Cyndi Lauper over Madonna.

  15. 15.

    glc

    I recall seeing  juke boxes with early rock’n’roll way at the end of the listings. I believe the category header was “Rhythm and Blues” and in any case it was probably there for the black customers but at some point white kids started playing the music in that section generally over their parents’ objections. I understand it was also called “race music” though in my part of the world  I didn’t encounter that expression.  Probably not the marketers’ term for it. I believe that the rock and roll stayed in that place in the catalog for quite a while even when the music was all over AM radio. Anyway when the family went to a diner I got a nickel or two for the jukebox (or, more properly, for the interface at the table, with a flippable menu). My English teacher (who was also a  family friend) was  very unhappy with the lyrical conventions of the genre. He did not voice musical objections.

    I enjoyed “Elvis”.  I meant to see “Priscilla”as well, vaguely, but I tend to miss most of the things I intend to see, in practice.

    (In other news, having finished Stross’s “Regency romance” [this is not my own view] Season of Skulls, which is very funny, I’m reading Translation State by Ann Leckie, which is quite satisfyingly odd.)

  16. 16.

    TBone

    @eclare: cool, thanks!  I’ll be giving it a whirl soon.  I was just thinking of a class I took in Community College (I played hooky from 7:30am first period gym class for the entire first year of  high school and was caught right before the end of that school year, so it was a make up credit class). We went all the way back to the beginnings of music (drums), through Gregorian Chants to classical.  Haven’t thought about that class in years but I’m glad I skipped gym!  Who wants to run around outside in shorts and a T-shirt in September’s early morning frost?  Tangent over.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    This is a good song.  The “visualizer” stuff, though, seems to be a cost saving measure as opposed to an actual video.  Same image over and over again for the duration of the song.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @TBone: I loathe “We Are The World” every bit as much as “Do They Know It’s Christmas”.  Both came from the same basically decent place, but the results were horrendous.

  21. 21.

    MomSense

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I learned the viral tik tok dance to that song. It’s a lot of fun.  One of my favorite dances to that song is by the Irish clogging brothers.  It’s such a cool mash up of Irish and American country.
    For those who question Beyoncé’s country chops, there is a great video of her performing with the Dixie Chicks.

  22. 22.

    TBone

    @Villago Delenda Est: I wasn’t a fan at the time either but I remember Live Aid (around the same time?) and thought the look back might be fun.  It was an all nighter according to Dan Rather and apparently there was some grumpy feuding.

  23. 23.

    Memory Pallas

    @TBone:

    I certainly knew! I took The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter LP out of my local New York Pubic Library branch as a kid, because the people posed on the cover looked sort of Tolkien-y. By the 1980s, I could no longer listen to lovely music without a dollop of irony in it. But now, I can again! And I do!

  24. 24.

    prostratedragon

    @Baud:  Can’t quickly find a citation, but have heard it was one of the first big worldwide dance crazes, even to some popular styles in e.g. the Phillipines in the late 1800s. The rhythm does feature in lots of things. Of course it was preceded in Europe by several African dance rhythms such as folia, sarabande, and chaconne that began spreading centuries before.

    Eddie Gonzales y Grupo Vida

  26. 26.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @glc: We just watched Priscilla last night.  It was interesting to see a movie of that subject matter but with Sophia Coppola’s signature style.  Elvis was an asshole thou, and the whole courting of Priscilla was super-creepy.  Which the movie definitely highlights.  The hairdo’s are the real star of the film!

  32. 32.

    Suzanne

    I am thinking about the painter Ed Mell, who died this week at the age of 81. It is no exaggeration to say that he changed the way I saw Arizona and its landscape, the sense of proportion of the earth to the sky.

    His primary artistic influence is likely Maynard Dixon. If you don’t know Dixon’s work, rectify that.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @TBone: Live Aid was a totally different thing, in my mind…all that talent giving it up and in the process raising millions that could be used to make a real difference.

  35. 35.

    TBone

    @UncleEbeneezer: I have a male friend who was in a band with another female friend and he does Elvis to a T, including the hair. Wicked sense of humor.  It was a rockabilly, rock, and country band (now defunct due to age). Reed is the lead and Debi is female vocals.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ccY71TsCwzs

    The Double Clutchin Weasels.  We had a LOT of fun in the local bars, those were the days!

  37. 37.

    UncleEbeneezer

    My favorite Black Comedy podcast the Black Guy Who Tips are friends with and invite Vernon Reid and Corey Glover from the rock band Living Colour on semi-regularly and they always do these deep dives on Black influence on music in America.  Vernon (the guitarist) is a really great follow on social media and he damn well could be a Music Historian, his knowledge is so extensive.  Their discussions about what it’s been like to be one of only a few Black bands in the majority-White, hard-rock/metal genre have been enlightening.  They have lots of stories.

  45. 45.

    BeautifulPlumage

    I hung out at many a square dance event growing up but never realized it was a made-up thing to counter the black jazz & dance popularity of the 30’s. I think Ford was big mover of it. Will try to look up a reference.​
     

    ETA spelling!!!

  46. 46.

    Yarrow

    The Beyonce’s “Texas Hold Em” always reminds me of Lyle Lovett’s “L.A. County.” At least the opening/chorus of “Texas Hold ‘Em.”

  47. 47.

    TBone

    @Suzanne: I saw a short on TCM that said director John Ford wanted his scenes to look like those famous paintings.  I think it was Dixon’s work if I remember correctly.

  48. 48.

    Yarrow

    @eclare:  You really should watch it. It’s awesome and hilarious. I mean, you know what you’re getting but it’s done really well. Very fun.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @WaterGirl: I’m not objecting per se to the image (I mean, cripes, what a chassis!) but just to the concept of visualizer as a substitute for an actual performance.  Lyrics might be nice, though!

  55. 55.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @RSA: ​
     

    Its early detractors were many, from Henry Ford to Thomas Edison, but racism was often the reason for cries of “it’s immoral.”

    I should have tagged your comment. My parents were big into square dancing, and we learned it in school, but I never realized it was a racist reaction to black music & dance.

  56. 56.

    MomSense

    @eclare:

    The funniest thing about that movie is that in the promotional interviews he did before the release he talks about the first time he saw a Eurovision contest.  He was with his wife’s family in Sweden( I think) and after dinner his brother in law suggested they watch.  Will sat mesmerized for three hours unable to speak.  Now I think his zoolander character was based on Eurovision contestants.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    The Who had a rivalry with Jimi Hendrix and there was a bit of a competition to see who could one-up other at Monterey Pop and Woodstock.

    One of The Who’s box sets is 30 Years of Maximum R&B. I’m sure they were inspired by it, and they covered at least one of Mose Allison‘s songs (Allison was white), but I think it’s a stretch to call them an R&B band.

    Still, it’s really, really clear that Black Americans, and those inspired by them, had a huge influence on modern popular music of all kinds.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    I confess, this is the first time I’ve actually listened to Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold’Em.”

    Holy crap, that’s a good country song. And about ten times as country as most of the stuff currently on the country charts, to my ears.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @owlbrick:

    A big tip of the hat to Rhiannon Giddens, playing banjo on that Beyonce track

    Aha! Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at her involvement. She’s so great.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    The Beyonce song was interesting, but I was expecting the video to end with John Cleese stabbing the guards at the gate with his sword.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Yarrow: Lovett’s “That’s Right, You’re Not From Texas” always makes me sad. Because he says “but Texas wants you anyway” and frankly I don’t believe it.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    (Lovett puts on a great show though, I saw him at what was then called Great Woods about a million years ago)

  69. 69.

    Citizen Dave

    Major major Who (the band, not the Doctor) fan.  Was always perplexed by their use of (well known poster) of Maximum R&B.  I think because Daltey was trying to sing like James Brown and similar guys, and they just had a different view of “R&B”.  And it was just a phase for them.

    Enjoyed a couple of John Coltrane albums today, including his “new” live one from 1961 or something.  He played flute for 5-6 minutes to start My Favorite Things before going to his sax.  Transcendent

    A few minutes ago finished Season 5 of Fargo.  Fantastic.  First season of that one I’ve watched.

  71. 71.

    piratedan

    The PBS documentary on Country Music wasn’t afraid to call out roots music as one of the foundations of country music.  Burns noted that some of the founding members of the genre were POC and like a LOT of things in this country, White People did their best to appropriate it.  The documentary also noted the popularity of Charley Pride and Johnny Rodriguez and Freddy Fender and their collective impact in the genre.  Burns also noted that Black influences are more prevalent today with Giddens, Darius Rucker and other artists not shying away from the genre with some cross-over effects (Lil Nas X).

  74. 74.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Yarrow: All I know about it is via the late Doug Sahm and his bands.  There’s gotta be a lot more, but I haven’t listened to too much music in the last couple of years.

  80. 80.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ll see you one Bambi Thug and raise you a Lordi, Hard Rock Hallelujah (Eurovision winner 2006)

    ETA: Man, Eurovision has sure come a long way since the 90s and the reign of Schlage…

  84. 84.

    laura

    I can’t wait to buy Beyonce’s country album on Record Store Day- can’t wait to see the who all’s who play with her, cant wait to see her take this album on the road, but most of all, I Can’t Wait until she comes for Rock and Roll. I wish I could lurk in her design process- she is amazing.

  88. 88.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Citizen Dave:

    Maximum R & B was a phase for The Who. Before they started writing their own songs, they were playing covers of Motown what we would now call soul.

  90. 90.

    Suzanne

    @rekoob: I love those Baumann prints!

    I bought a Kiyoshi Saito print last year and I love it so much. I have a Robert Kipniss print, too, that I got as a gift.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: @different-church-lady:

    Made me look… HighSnobiety.com:

    Of course, music videos can be extravagant projects that take a chunk out of one’s budget. This plus the reality that in today’s social media-heavy landscape, artists have to put out significant amounts of music in order to constantly engage shrinking attention spans, means artists also have to make more music videos than ever. Additionally, saturation in the market leads to the aesthetics of an artist and their music being leaned on more heavily – how else does one stand out?

    This combination of circumstances has helped birth the “visualizer,” a cute catch-all term that can describe anything from a colorful, commissioned animation to a filmed non-performance video of the artist with little in the way of moving parts. The term originates from “music visualization” functions in electronic media playing software. If you’re above the age of 20, you’re likely to remember these old visualizers; twisting, colorful graphics that moved with the frequencies of the audio.

    The term had since been used over the years in long psychedelic audiovisual experiences posted to YouTube from channels like Amanda Darling. But it was notably adapted on Lil Uzi Vert’s YouTube channel on October 10, 2017, when he released visuals for every track off of his record Luv Is Rage 2, with each title sporting the phrase “official visualizer” in brackets. This included viral YouTube visualizers for “XO TOUR Llif3” (which has since been removed) and the single “The Way Life Goes,” which has since eclipsed 70 million views; the latter video features a looped stop-motion clip of play-doh-like clay compounds, performing optical illusions with paint and shape and eventually forming a portrait of Uzi.

    Looks like yet another example of Black American artists stretching a medium.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Raven: @Gin & Tonic:

    My J grew up in Concord and loved going in to Boston to hear live music at The Rat and similar places.  Don’t think she ever saw Mose though.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    laura

    I’m going to see Asleep at the Wheel open for Willie Nelson at the Greek Theatre in April. I’m stoked!

  100. 100.

    Redshift

    I was listening to The Big Broadcast (NPR old time radio show) and they had a 1947 interview with Ethel Waters, who I’ll admit I was not familiar with. She was the blues singer turned actress who became the first Black woman in Broadway and so much more. The interview was fascinating, because they asked a few questions and then just let her talk at length.

    Now I really want someone to do a revival of the swing version of the Mikado she mentioned as an aside (referring to “Three Little Maids from Harlem.)

  106. 106.

    Scout211

    @TBone: Now that was something else! I love P!nk.  And Shirley Bassey, OMG. What an amazing voice she still has. Well, that was 16 years ago at age 70, but still.  Wow.

  116. 116.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sister Golden Bear: Way late to the thread, but I always thought “Love Will Tear Up Apart (Again)” would have been an awesome Ethel Merman cover. Glad to hear someone is out there making stuff like that happen!

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