country and western in Montana

Via Twitter kreeg ik een overdenking binnen van een dame die Montana voor de computer industrie in Seattle heeft verruild. Leuk verhaal.
Aardig is de analyse over de oorsprong van de Country and Western muziek. Die komt helemaal niet van het platteland, maar uit de stad. Toen de naar de stad verhuisde Amerikanen behoefte hadden aan nostalgie. Zo gaat dat:
My music-induced nostalgia has international company. In a Radiolab segment on music, Columbia University anthropologist of music Aaron Fox explains that, counterintuitively, country and western has roots in American urbanization. The first hit country song popped up in 1927, the year the U.S. population majority transitioned from rural to urban. “Country music is born when the country becomes a nostalgic ideal,” Fox says in the Radiolab segment. The crying steel guitars and vocalizations conjure up feelings of migration and regret, he says. And now, classic country is popular in developing countries, where everyone from Australian Aborigines to Zimbabweans (who fill soccer stadiums to see Don Williams play) understands the language of leaving the land behind afresh.