The tap root of authentic music is authentic culture, and when a culture dies, so does the music it generated. Years ago, country-music legend Loretta Lynn, quite correctly, pronounced country music dead.
The Southern Anglo-Celtic agrarian culture that had generated the country-western-blue-glass genres had been eroded by industrial mass and mono-culture, by political centralization, and by the philistinism of the music industry. In "Gone Country", Alan Jackson had warned us about opportunists, imposters, and profiteering outsiders.
Artistically, it's a long way down from Roy Clark and Glen Campbell and Patsy Cline to Reba McIntyre and Taylor Swift; from class and high talent — both vocal and instrumental — down to tawdry and trashy and tech-assisted mediocrity. But now, from the ashes, rises a phoenix.
The current furor over Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town" -- an anti-crime and anti-communist and pro-America protest anthem -- now rages on. The fan masses are bestirred, and big celebs are taking sides. Country music, rooted in the South, is now fast-evolving into a patriot-protest genre. In response, tyrants in DC and Leftists everywhere are now wetting themselves like atheists on Judgment Day.
