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Sounding The American Heart: Cultural Politics, Country Music, And Contemporary American Film, Barbara Ching
Sounding The American Heart: Cultural Politics, Country Music, And Contemporary American Film, Barbara Ching
Barbara Ching
"When you hear twin fiddles and a steel guitar, you're listening to the sound of the American heart," sings a young boy's faltering voice in the opening frame of Christopher Cain's Pure Country (1992). The words of this song ("Heartland") assure us that while we listen to this music we "still know wrong from right." 1 This opening sequence thus celebrates its viewers as it stakes a claim to both the film's and country music's power to unequivocally represent the best qualities (the "pure") of the United States (the "country"). When placed in a history of the relationship between film …
Wrong’S What I Do Best: Hard Country Music And Contemporary Culture: Introduction And Table Of Contents, Barbara Ching
Wrong’S What I Do Best: Hard Country Music And Contemporary Culture: Introduction And Table Of Contents, Barbara Ching
Barbara Ching
This book is about hard country music for two reasons. First, it's impossible to really understand country music, now one of the most popular forms of music in the United States, without recognizing that its "country" is a disputed territory where a mainstream-oriented pop production style reigns over a feisty and less fashionable form-"hard country." Second, hearing hard country music offers an important perspective on the bewildering cultural situation, often called postmodernism, in which we find ourselves. Conversely, once we recognize the postmodern rhetoric of cultural distinction embedded in contemporary hard country, we can hear the music as something more …