Book contents
- Whose Country Music?
- Whose Country Music?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- “She went to Nashville to sing country music”
- Part I Industry
- Part II Codes of Conduct
- 5 Why Country Music Needs Latina Feminism
- 6 Pistol Annies
- 7 From Bros to Gentlemen
- 8 Cowboys on a Beach
- Part III Authenticity
- Part IV Boundary Work
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Cowboys on a Beach
Summer Country and the Loss of Working-Class Identity
from Part II - Codes of Conduct
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2023
- Whose Country Music?
- Whose Country Music?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- “She went to Nashville to sing country music”
- Part I Industry
- Part II Codes of Conduct
- 5 Why Country Music Needs Latina Feminism
- 6 Pistol Annies
- 7 From Bros to Gentlemen
- 8 Cowboys on a Beach
- Part III Authenticity
- Part IV Boundary Work
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For the past two decades, the cowboy who inhabits country music narratives has appeared with increasing frequency in a seaside setting or beach environment that appears to contradict the well-established conventions of place and space in the genre. Where rural farms and ranches, for instance, evoked codes of white, male working-class sustenance, physical labor, and pride in forging a symbiotic relationship with the land, the new beach imagery offered a different catalog of associative meaning: leisure, escape, travel away from one’s home and roots, and a sense of unbounded freedom. This chapter traces the rise of beach imagery as a setting and reference point in country music, both in song narratives and music videos, since the 1990s. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that, in spite of their ubiquity, these beach settings are only comprehensible to their audience because the underlying cultural meaning of country music has fundamentally changed.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Whose Country Music?Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-First-Century Country Music Culture, pp. 116 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022