What Is Country Music?.

Catalog description

What is country music---a type of sound? Certain lyrics? Music for a particular region? Music for a type of person, and if so, which communities? This question might seem straight forward, but as we'll discover music fans have disputed country music's meanings for its entire existence. Rather than interpret it as a genre universally identifiable, we'll analyze country music as a marketing category. In looking at its history, we will also use it as a lens to think about larger questions in U.S. history regarding race, gender, class, region, age, politics, and capitalism.