Whose Country Music?

Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-First-Century Country Music Culture

Author: Paula J. Bishop and Jada E. Watson

Paperback

Questions and challenges the systems of gatekeeping that have restricted participation in twenty-first century country music culture.

Participation in country music culture has long been dictated and restricted by entrenched systems of gatekeeping. This collection contests those systems and challenges the received narrative, examining contemporary issues in country music through feminist, intersectional, and post-colonialist theories.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Questions and challenges the systems of gatekeeping that have restricted participation in twenty-first century country music culture.

Description

In a period in which racism and gender inequity are at the fore of public, political, and scholarly discourse, this collection challenges systems of gatekeeping that have dictated who gets to participate in twenty-first century country music culture. Building on established scholarship, this book examines contemporary issues in country music through feminist, intersectional, and post-colonialist theories, as well as other intertextual and cultural lenses. The authors pose questions about diversity, representation, and identity as they relate to larger concepts of artist and fan communities, stylistic considerations of the genre, and modes of production from a twenty-first century perspective. Addressing and challenging the received narrative about country music culture, this collection delves into the gaps that are inherent in existing approaches that privileged biography and historiography and expands new areas of inquiry relating to contemporary country music identity and culture.

About the Author

Paula Bishop teaches in the Music Department at Bridgewater State University. She earned her PhD from Boston University with a dissertation on the Everly Brothers and has presented and published on the Everly Brothers, the Nashville songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and feminism and country music. Jada Watson is an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. Principal Investigator of SongData, her research uses market data to address representation in country music. This work was cited in a brief submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission opposing radio deregulation, and the Recording Academy's Report on Inclusion and Diversity.