Rock, R&B, Hip Hop, and Jazz are often called upon as familiar examples of the transformation and expansion of music genres and of how this progression effectively blurs long-touted distinctions among many popular styles; but I want to discuss Country—more to the point, I want to discuss Darius Rucker.
Artists and genres have a reciprocal relationship in that artist creativity breaks new ground and grows the genre (or generates a sub-genre). This inspires new collaborative partnerships which in turn grow the community further, attracting still new artists and listeners. Their creativity reshapes the genre . . . and so on. For Country fans, this has been a jagged little pill to swallow. Even in what White folk love to call post-racial America, Country music is a well-guarded haven for homogeneity. “That’s not true! What about Hootie, er, Darius Rucker? That boy can sing,” some say. Rucker has had top twenty hits on Country music charts, performed at the American Country Music awards and the Grand Ole Opry, and even won artist of the year in 2009; so yes, he is successful as a Country performer. However, his music videos betray the subversively articulated message of “not too close, now, friend” that characterizes the notion of post-racial America. Admittedly, and fortunately, times have changed and institutional racism is illegal. But we know that isn’t far enough.
During a time of heightened scene-melding and ubiquitous youth culture that indiscriminately consumes music and culture from seemingly divergent sources, we should expect to see more mainstream Black Country artists than ever before—and we are. Darius Rucker is the best selling, most talked-about Black artist on the scene today and perhaps even the most successful cross-over Country artist today (although, contemporary pop Country closely resembles the kind of Adult Alternative Hootie and the Blowfish stylized—if they’d had a fiddler). But Charley Pride was commercially successful too, most notably with “Kiss an Angel Good Morning”. DeFord Bailey played the Grand Ole Opry too (the first Black artist to do so, in fact) and reshaped the role of harmonica in Country.
In 2011, the kind of growth and change-of-direction I expect from Country is not simply showcasing more Black artists but to, in the definitive tradition of storytelling in Country music, show more Black actors in Country music videos—particularly, when the artist/narrator is Black. By this measure, I am entirely disappointed with Country.
On Rucker’s official YouTube Channel, we find four music videos (besides the live performance of “It Won’t Be Like This For Long): “History in the Making,” “Don’t Think I Don’t Think,” “Alright,” and “Come Back Song,” only one of which contains Black actors. In “Alright,” we see a young Black couple sharing good times with a young White couple on a sandy beach. However, this image is undermined by the Gap-commercial quality of the entire video—an advertisement for diversity. From children playing hopscotch, to old-timers sipping lemonade, this video attempts to encapsulate everything ‘alright’ about life. I guess having Black friends is part of the richness of life. The more important opportunities to show Black folk as actors in the kind of everyday life Country speaks to and about are in “History in the Making” and “Don’t Think I Don’t Think.” Those songs are about new and persistent love, heartbreak, regret and loss. Rucker tells us all about it, but against the backdrop of two young White people roaming through a house clutching each other. Or, here’s my favorite, while crooning, “I left out in a cloud of taillights and dust; swore I wasn’t coming back, said I’d had enough,” a shaggy-haired White guy wearing a mesh trucker-cap drives off down a dusty road. Later, he remembers how he and his [White] woman used to get it on in the kitchen—all while Rucker’s in a fallow field providing the soundtrack to their most recent breakup.
Really?
Seriously?
This doesn’t creep out anyone but me? Old Black guy sings while you get it on next to the blender?
What I really want to know is when Country will make the big leap, the important one. When will Black folk do more than entertain White folk and be full participants in the music they love and create? Eminem has White folk as primary actors in his videos and it just makes sense. He’s White! Some stories transcend race, but why make it a point not to change the color of the actors so that the storyteller himself doesn’t look like them? Especially in Country where authenticity as “one of us” is paramount to artist success? Or maybe that’s the problem. Maybe Country is so stuck on ‘us’ and ‘them’ that Rucker can only be “one of us” if the actors in his videos are “one of us”.
That’s not progress. That’s racist.
Article by Dalia Bishop
Dalia doesn’t let sleeping dogs lie. She throws their legs in the air and waves ‘em like she just doesn’t care. Her top three favorite flavors for things—anything, really—are butter, grape, and red. She blogs at www.missinform.wordpress.com with increasing regularity and tries, with some degree of discipline and effort, to keep it really real at www.twitter.com/missinform
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Really? I mean REALLY?
Darius Rucker is an excellent song writer and musician. How many artists, black or white, has been a part of a successful group and had a successful solo career? Not many. Your time would have been better spent highlight his career. Nitpicking at one of his videos is frankly, just stupid. Sorry there aren’t enough black people in his videos for you. The quality of his music doesn’t have anything to do with the color of people in his videos. Maybe he should have couple light skin girls in bikinis, ya know, so his videos can resemble other brother’s music videos. Will that make you happy?
Hi Tif, and thanks for the comment. I like Hootie and the Blowfish and I appreciate Darius Rucker as a solo country artist–but that doesn’t matter. The article isn’t REALLY about Darius Rucker at all, either. The article is about country music and its unchanging cultural landscape, even in the midst of someone as potentially impactful or important as Darius Rucker.
I am a country music lover, honestly I am just plain ole music lover . Ray Charles summed up perfectly why some (not all) black people like country music, because of the real stories, which we really don’t get in other music genres now (mainly r&B and hip hop). If you want country music you have more black people then you are going to keep waiting. People don’t care if the people on the video is all-white, all-black, all-half Asian, etc. Just as long as it has a moral and you can understand where the video is coming from. While everybody music is trying to be artistic, country music is just simple, and there is nothing wrong in being simple.
Smoking Ace, let’s be honest: pop country is a commodity and commodities have intended consumers. How foolish would it be not to take the target audience into account when casting, directing, and producing the media they consume? You’re kidding yourself if you think that it isn’t intentional that every-single-one of his videos to date do not have Black folk as primary talent. I doubt it’s his fault; he’s on a major label and likely has little to no artistic freedom. But my point is precisely that the genre as a whole is resistant to change because it rightfully makes the assumption about its audience that they aren’t ready for Black actors in a country music video. Accepting Darius Rucker was hard enough.
The fact that you think this is unimportant, “that people don’t care about that” underscores how affectively subversive the racism is. We already know that without positive representation of P.O.C. in mainstream media, we further internalize colonization and racism. Thus, “The Cosby Show,” for obvious-example. Music videos are absolutely no different.
The fact that you think this is unimportant underscores how subversive the message is. We already know that without positive representation of P.O.C. in mainstream media, we further internalize colonization and racism. Thus the Cosby Show, for obvious example. Music videos are absolutely no different.
Rucker is an interesting case study for this topic, given that he’s a black guy who’s fully emerged in traditionally white culture. He’s found fame and fortune singing contemporary country music, a genre dominated and supported by whites, and he’s married to a white woman. What’s my point? A man’s greatest two external influences are his profession and his family- both of his are white. I’m fine with that, however it does speak to the fact that his ‘blackness’ (or ours)is probably not something that’s on the top of his list of priorities to promote. I doubt the lack of color in his videos has ever even crossed his mind, as the lack of color in his life has obviously not been a factor to him. Depending on how one chooses to view it, this either speaks to his credit for being able to operate independently of racial constraints OR it speaks to his shame for not being willing to challenge the “norm” of his situation so that it becomes the “norm” for all (or at least more) blacks.
Until country music gets some black folk who seem to actually relate to other black folk I’m afraid this conversation can’t be as complete as it needs to be.
To be honest, I think it’s more symbolic of the civil war that’s on the verge of blowing up in the black community.
The war between the hood and the bourgeois…and the bourgeois are beginning to win.
that would be the most retarded thing for black people to engage in since the jheri curl. any “hood” person trying to oppose black people uplifting themselves is about as dumb as a box of rocks; and any self-proclaimed “bourgeois” black person who can’t see that all their degrees, money, and 9 chances out of 10 Eurocentric fed intellect, doesn’t stop the powers that be from lumping them in the same socially constructed ‘dirty nigger boat’ as their colored comrades is just as foolish. Neither class of people should buy the hype.
A civil war between black people (beyond what we’ve already been engaging in since we were forced into this country) truly would prove us to be intellectually inferior.
You guys are crazy if you think this has never crosses his mind (the lack of colored people in his music videos). Darius Rucker is an artist, but he wants to make money. EVERYONE tends to like things more if they remind them of themselves. Bottom line, there are not many black people who like country, therefore the audience is primarily white. Thus, a white family will relate to an audience better.
I admit, I found it strange when the family was white, I thought the video would be a reflection of himself. But what is he to do? Make the couple interracial (which would probably not go over very smoothly) The easiest thing to do was to do the white cast. He probably has no interest in making any racial statements, or messages because, let’s be honest, whenever a black person opens their mouth about race most people have the “here we go..” reaction (it’s not worth the trouble). He just wants to make his music, nothing else.