I despise country music and I’m not too keen about the music you generally hear in church, either.
This was not always the case.
There was a time — and it doesn’t seem all that terribly long ago — that both were a comfort, a joy, a friend.
But they are strangers to me now, commercial, corrupt and, quite often, vacuous and pretentious.
I made this pronouncement to Tess on Sunday night as we were watching a segment on 60 Minutes that featured Blake Shelton, who I was informed, is one of the top names in today’s country music world, primarily because of his exposure on the TV show “The Voice.”
One of the lines from his one of his biggest hits goes — and I am not making this up — “chew tobacco, chew tobacco, chew tobacco, spit.”
As you can see, Shelton is the Bob Dylan of the genre.
Not by a long shot.
If you were living in some distant land and all you knew about the South came from the lyrics of today’s country music, you would quickly assume that Southerners are all dim-witted tobacco-chewers whose primary passions are cold beer and pick-up trucks. We’ve become a caricature, a celebration of hick-dom.”
Maybe I am going too far, I admit. After all, Lefty Frizzell’s “Hey, Good Lookin'” didn’t exactly speak to a great philosophical truth.
The distinction I make is that the country music of the previous generation didn’t champion those crude aspects of rural life as much as it simply acknowledged them. That’s important.
I can get just as worked up about “church music,” too, which has a Top 40 quality to it as well. It’s called “Contemporary Christian” music. There are radio stations devoted to it, with a Top 40 and even an annual awards show.
It’s a far cry from the music I grew up, where the music came from The Baptist Hymnal, led by a “music minister” in a thread-bare suit, who stood stiffly at the pulpit and lead the congregation to accompaniment of a badly-tuned piano or an organ.
Today, we have “worship leaders” and “praise teams,” backed by heavily-amplified bands. Some even have light shows. It all has a concert air to it and you sometimes wonder if the “praise team” isn’t a bit annoyed when people in the congregation lend their off-key voices to the performance.
I don’t remember our old music minister ever standing up and saying, “Now, let’s all sing Robert Lowry’s run-away hit, “Shall We Gather at the River?!”
Perhaps this is too harsh a criticism and I recognize that I am far out of the mainstream now in regard to both country and church music. I suspect I will soon have plenty of emails to confirm it, too.
But isn’t that the way it is with most of the things we love and embrace? We want them to remain pure and unspoiled. We have sort of a proprietary interest in the matter and if we are not prepared to sacrifice tradition for popularity. We like the old ways.
That is why I am particularly intrigued by a program that will be held Saturday at the Rosenzweig Arts Center, which will feature a “Sacred Harp” singing, also known as shape note singing.
Originating in Colonial America around the time of the Revolutionary War, it is perhaps the only genre of American Music that seems to have defied the pressure of commercialism and the inevitable distortions that come with it.
Admittedly, I don’t know much about the music. I do know that after Colonial times, it survived mainly in the South, particularly in Georgia and north Alabama and that it has somehow remained true to its origins. It is four-part harmony sung without musical accompaniment. There are song leaders, who stand in the middle of the congregation, which sits in sections of treble, alto, tenor and bass, all facing each other. It is a communal, participatory form of music.
What little I know about it, I like. It seems authentic, simple, personal.
That’s hard to find in today’s music, no matter the genre.
I would not be surprised to find there are those who attend Saturday’s event who, indeed, chew tobacco.
They don’t sing about it.
I’m good with that.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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