Welcome to Americana
Today, I've been contemplating the concept of "Americana". Yes, we know that it's a genre of music (and literature). Often, it is identified by the instruments used (banjos, harmonicas, gravelly voices, guitars, and maybe a subtle fiddle). More often, however, it is quantified by the subject-matter that it describes and is sung about in a rather folky/country-esque way.
Topics are not the usual country fodder of a broken-down relationship, the glorification of one's truck, or death of a dog. Rather, they tell complex and real-to-life stories (true or not) that we are all familiar with in spirit, if not in fact.
I started on this last week, on Robbie Burns Night, the least Americana-filled day that one can imagine. And yet there were several reasons why it forced me into the contemplation of my native cultural milieu.
First, the Guardian Newspaper had a story that made me cry. In fact, they had two. I cannot say that I'm surprised that Marie Smith Jones died, but it still made me very sad, yet a bit thrilled that the world actually took notice. Her death was both a triumph of Americana and a devastating blow to it.
Americana demands homogenisation - of language, culture, accent, priorities and lifestyle. The idea of the American dream is to leave behind what you were - to break all ties with your home country, your family, your past - and to become something greater, something more beautiful, more powerful, more loved, more desired. This inevitably leaves us rootless and somewhat hollow, yet the attractiveness of such a dream is impossible to over-state.
I was speaking with some Siberians and a Scot on Saturday at a Burns Night and the Scot proposed that most Americans do not know their origins past maybe three generations. I tried to defend against him, and yet I knew he was right: my ancestors fled their pasts and buried it so well that we cannot dredge it up, even in this information age. Even something as simple as whether my great-grandfather was Scottish or Irish is completely impossible to discover now - and my sense of identity has been thrown into serious disarray. You think I'm exaggerating? I've always been told my name is pronounced the Irish-American way - Bay-tee - but if we are of Scottish descent, then the irritating way the Scots pronounce my name - Bee-tee - is actually correct, and who I am will have changed, just ever so slightly.
Ironically enough, Americana is its own worst enemy. As we all identify with each other, people long to portray some sense of independence, of individuality, and our society, homogenous as it is, becomes fractious and fractured. Sub-cultures and tribes develop. As we "progress" socially, we digress. This is yet another reason that I cannot accept an evolutionary model of existence and sociology: we never really move forward. Entropy is just as present in society as it is in thermo-dynamics.
And this homogenisation is at the expense of individuality and culture, as we see by the destruction of our native peoples and our identifying our ethnicity by what culinary style we are most capable at producing. We glory in our country, and yet turn a blind eye to the things that created it and to the diabolical things we have done.
Americana, as a genre of music or literature, does not deny this past, this present, this tenuous existence. This difficult balancing act that America finds itself forever in. Perhaps this is why people abroad are willing, able, and eager to imbibe in these genres and sub-genres: Americana is happening in their own countries and regions and it allows them both to understand the process and mourn for what was and what will be.
I am not saying that globalisation and Americanisation is ontologically evil, nor am I claiming that I understand everything that is happening.
I'm not sure what I really feel I have uncovered, but I felt as if I should join in the mourning for Marie Smith Jones and I know that she would approve of this honest assessment of our culture and hopes. Not necessarily the content, but certainly its spirit.
Please leave any comments below that disagree with me, flame me, or are sparked in your mind thanks to this. Most of all, I think americana must be a dialogue. (Crap! Does this mean that I'm giving into post-modernism for a moment?)