Bob Schwartz

Tag: Rosanne Cash

March 29, 2024

Listen without prejudice: While we try to get past identity, can we get past musical genre too?

Beyonce

There are now as many musical genres and sub-genres as stars in the sky.

Speaking of stars, we cannot escape learning that Beyonce has a new album that is identified by many as country music. Her PR folks are stressing that it isn’t a country album, it’s a Beyonce album, all the while stirring the genre pot for maximum coverage.

The best and most creative pop music frequently crosses genres. The individual Beatles grew up loving to listen to everything—music hall, R&B, Little Richard, rockabilly, country, rock, etc.—and turned that love into a lasting catalog of ever-listenable songs. (If you want pure country, listen to the Beatle’s I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party below.) Years later, Kurt Cobain put his love of the Beatles into the strangely melodic sound of grunge.

George Michael had something else in mind when he titled his 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice. But that message also applies to musical silos, or for that matter cultural silos of all kinds. When you listen, or read, or watch, pay less attention to the tags and more attention to the actual work and its qualities for you. It isn’t a crime to love a particular track or artist. It isn’t a crime to not love a particular track or artist. Just listen to it on its own terms, whatever it’s called. Otherwise you might miss something.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

Leave a comment
October 3, 2017

Rosanne Cash: Country Musicians, Stand Up to the N.R.A.

The wonderful and gifted musician Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, wrote an eloquent and stirring piece in the New York Times, Country Musicians, Stand Up to the N.R.A.  It is addressed to her fellow country artists. In part:

For the past few decades, the National Rifle Association has increasingly nurtured an alliance with country music artists and their fans. You can see it in “N.R.A. Country,” which promotes the artists who support the philosophical, if not economic, thrall of the N.R.A., with the pernicious tag line “Celebrate the Lifestyle.”

That wholesome public relations veneer masks something deeply sinister and profoundly destructive. There is no other way to say this: The N.R.A. funds domestic terrorism…

A shadow government exists in the world of gun sales, and the people who write gun regulations are the very people who profit from gun sales. The N.R.A. would like to keep it that way.

The stakes are too high to not disavow collusion with the N.R.A. Pull apart the threads of patriotism and lax gun laws that it has so subtly and maliciously intertwined. They are not the same.

I know you’ll be bullied for speaking out. This is how they operate. Not everyone will like you for taking a stand. Let it roll off your back. Some people may burn your records or ask for refunds for tickets to your concerts. Whatever. Find the strength of moral conviction, even if it comes with a price tag, which it will. Don’t let them bully you into silence. That’s where their power lies — in the silence of rational voices and in the apathy of those who can speak truth to power.

In case you don’t visit the NRA Country site, here are the citizens of NRA Country that Rosanne Cash is talking to.

Leave a comment