[audiobook] Traditional Songs for the 5-String Banjo by Wise Publications at Arts-Photography

Description

In her provocative new book Rednecks; Queers; and Country Music; Nadine Hubbs looks at how class and gender identity play out in one of Americarsquo;s most culturally and politically charged forms of popular music. Skillfully weaving historical inquiry with an examination of classed cultural repertoires and close listening to country songs; Hubbs confronts the shifting and deeply entangled workings of taste; sexuality; and class politics.In Hubbsrsquo;s view; the popular phrase "Irsquo;ll listen to anything but country" allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive "omnivore" musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country; a music linked to low-status whites. Throughout Rednecks; Queers; and Country Music; Hubbs dissects this gesture; examining how provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry; particularly homophobia; with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer; Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class.With a powerful combination of music criticism; cultural critique; and sociological analysis of contemporary class formation; Nadine Hubbs zeroes in on flawed assumptions about how country music models and mirrors white working-class identities. She particularly shows how dismissive; politically loaded middle-class discourses devalue countryrsquo;s manifestations of working-class culture; politics; and values; and render working-class acceptance of queerness invisible.Lucid; important; and thought-provoking; this book is essential reading for students and scholars of American music; gender and sexuality; class; and pop culture.