‘Redneck religion and shitkickin' saviours?’: Gram Parsons, theology and country music

Grimshaw, Mike

doi:10.1017/s0261143002002052

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…4 They were relatively free to express solidarity, and one result was the frequent construction of a shared country identity in opposition to other social categories. Two personae dominated this process: “hick” (Niedzielski & Preston 2003:103; Evans 2010; Greene 2010) and “redneck” (Grimshaw 2002; Jarosz & Lawson 2002; Hartigan 2003; Niedzielski & Preston 2003:145; Vanderbeck & Dunkley 2003; Evans 2010). 5 While negative attitudes about country rarely occurred in the interviews, negative attitudes toward hick and redneck were abundant.…”

Section: Results and Analysis: Texomamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Country Talk

Hall‐Lew

Stephens

2011

Journal of English Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Speakers of U.S. English varieties often invoke the term country to describe their own speech or the speech style of others. However, surprisingly little attention in linguistics has been given to “Country Talk.” This article analyzes the metalinguistic comments elicited in language attitudes interviews with residents of a community on the border of Texas and Oklahoma who self-identify as speakers of Country Talk. The analysis shows how Country Talk is constructed through local discourses that are in dialogue with broader American language ideologies. The article argues that Country Talk has become enregistered through the circulation of indexical relations between imaginings of particular rural personae, on one hand, and particular linguistic features of Southern and nonstandard varieties of U.S. English, on the other. The analysis of Country Talk highlights the ideological nature of linguistic variation and calls for increased analytic attention to the social meaning of variation and the processes by which those meanings are produced and consumed.

show abstract

Section: Results and Analysis: Texomamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Country identity has been studied extensively in analyses of country music culture (Ching 2001; Ellison 1995; Fox 2004, 2005; Grimshaw 2002; Jensen 1998; Willman 2005). Country music and Country Talk share many relevant social meanings, such as “historical ties [to] rural values and ways of living” (Fox 2004:29).…”

Section: Country and Sociolinguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Country Talk

Hall‐Lew

Stephens

2011

Journal of English Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If country served as a musical antidote to communism from the 1950s, then it is unsurprising that it remained an instrument of conservative politics in the late years of the Cold War, when “God Bless the U.S.A.” figured in the campaigns of Presidents Reagan (1984) and George H. W. Bush (1988). It is also in keeping with the civil‐religious defense of American sacral religion, as country music has maintained strong historical ties to the sacral‐religious, to the same “‘stiff‐necked Protestantism’” that infused old‐timey gospel songs (Grimshaw 2002:100).…”

Section: Singing the American Songbookmentioning

confidence: 97%

A Singing Citizenry: Popular Music and Civil Religion in America

Meizel¹

2006

Scientific Study of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

American popular music, politics, and religion have all, in some combination, inspired thorough research. However, there has been little investigative effort regarding the important co‐relationships among the three areas. One convenient site for such study is located in the idea of civil religion, where faith and patriotism converge—as Robert Bellah wrote in 1967—in a cultural network of “beliefs, symbols, and rituals.” This essay offers a contextual examination of two popular patriotic songs in relation to the dynamic state of civil religion from World War II to the Iraq War, from Tin Pan Alley to American Idol. Behind the endurance of songs like “God Bless America” and “God Bless the U.S.A.” lies a relentless need to define Americanness in civil‐religious terms. And as the nation, and the nation‐state, are reshaped in the currents of globalization, appreciation of these songs contributes to the crucial understanding of why America sings.

show abstract

“…In my own studies of Muslim rap and Bhangra music, I have been interested in ideological linkages between nation, religion, economy, and practices of self‐identification through commodified goods (Clark 2007). This intersection of nation, religion, and ideology has also been explored specifically in Maira's (2002) study of the support for Hindi nationalism among South Asian immigrants in North America, Grimshaw's (2002) exploration of country music's appeals to patriotism among conservative Christian southerners, and Gordon's (2003) study of the conflict that emerged when an Egyptian Shaabi singer and spokesperson for McDonald's came under fire for an anti‐Israel song he popularized.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to a Forum on Religion, Popular Music, and Globalization

Clark

2006

Scientific Study of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This issue of the JSSR brings together scholars from mass communication, ethnomusicology, religious studies, and the sociology of religion to explore how practices and understandings of religion might be changing in the context of a global, mediated capitalist marketplace. Each of these essays foregrounds music as a particular cultural form with a unique role to play in the maintenance and change of religion's character and practices in the global marketplace. This forum therefore resonates with the forum on religion and place that appeared in this journal last year (September 2005, vol. 44, no. 3), as this set of essays, like that one, seeks to locate the study of religion "outside of scriptures or texts, and to therefore study history, context, and practice," as Elizabeth McAlister wrote in the previous forum (2005:254). Religion, as scholars in the sociology of religion and in religious material cultural studies have pointed out, is about much more than what happens during services or prayer times, and is much more than a set of beliefs or ideological commitments (see, e.g., Ammerman 2006; Hall 1997; Morgan 2005; Promey and Morgan 2001). Religion is lived and embodied. It is not static and it is not only written down, but rather is mobile and anchoring, personal and collective, dynamic and staid. It is also, in many cases, commercialized and global.Music is only one cultural form that is a part of our commercialized and globalized experiences of religion, however. So why focus on music in a journal widely read by social scientists interested in religion?Music is a fascinating topic for scholars of religion for many reasons. Music "springs out of the very speech and soul of a person or a community," as Trotter (1987) has written, and has always played an important role in relation to religion and its practices. The Gregorian chant, the Protestant hymn, the Muslim Madih nabawi, the Hindu kirtan: all offer expressive forms of individual or corporate worship and devotion. Music is evocative and affective, something deeply personal and emotionally connective.Whereas music is probably the most available and accessible of all art forms, the music of religious rituals and observances is deeply connected to the particular cultural locations in which it originates. Of course, music and cultural products have always traveled from places of origin to new locations. In the current context of globalization, however, transportation technologies and economies of scale have made migration more common, and have also sped up the processes of migration. People now have transnational experiences and identities, never completely leaving their places of origin and taking more of those places with them into their new locations. In this context, listening and performing music from one's place of origin can therefore become a source of comfort, and a source of identification with "home" for expatriates, in a way that other religious practices may not afford. At the same time, global capitalism has transported cultural products to new c...

show abstract

‘Redneck religion and shitkickin' saviours?’: Gram Parsons, theology and country music

Cited by 4 publications

References 13 publications

Country Talk

Country Talk

A Singing Citizenry: Popular Music and Civil Religion in America

Introduction to a Forum on Religion, Popular Music, and Globalization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About