UCLA

This work reframes the country music genre as the product of Black and Brown artists and listeners, and reveals how the Nashville-based country music industry disregarded the music’s multiracial and multiethnic roots and embraced a politics of white conservatism. I analyze the tension between how the music business marketed the genre of country with how musicians and fans engaged with the music in more diverse displays. I argue that while Black and Brown artists resisted the industry’s exclusionary marketing practices and suggested country music had the potential to become a symbol of multiracialism, the music business instead continued to define its audience as white and predominantly conservative. During the rise of the New Right, I reveal how the music industry branded country as the sound of wholesome, family- friendly white conservatism.