Another Response to Carolyn Livingston, "Naming Country Music: An Historian Looks at Meaning Behind the Labels"

In Dialogue 43 country. Today if a country tune makes it to the top of the charts, it might be sung by the school chorus. However, there doesn't seem to be the serious study ofcountry, at least in the same way that educators approachjazz and rock inthepublic schools. Certainly, thishas not yet happenedinthe band portion of the instrumental program where jazz bands proliferate and rock groups are beginning to be recognized, although there are individual places where country can be found. To its credit, string education has "discovered" country fiddling and fiddle groups are springing up all across the United States.4 It may not be too long before bluegrass bands are common at string concerts, and country "pickin'" will be an accepted style in middle school guitar classes. So does it matter what we call it? If we accept Goodman's theory of worldmaking, it matters a great deal. Maybe music education would havebeenhappierwith"Americanclassical music,"but I doubt countrywouldhave developed as it did bearingthat name. If musics live up to their designations and become their names, then it is equally applicable that by understandingthe names, one can come to better understand not only country, but rock, jazz, and even classical music. Is this naming a twentieth-centuryphenomenon? Is it onlya result of technology and mass distribution? And if country now designates or encompasses the music of the nation, what will country call itself as it starts to embrace world sounds? And what will music education do with it then? Terese M. Volk Wayne State University NOTES Anne Shaw Faulkner, What We Hear in Music (Camden, N.J.: RCA Victor Corporation of American , 1928, 1929, 1936, 1943). See recommended listening lists for "America." Robert A. Choate, ed., Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium (Washington, D.C.: Music Educators National Conference, 1968), 104. Ibid., 105. Fiddler's Philharmonic (Alfred Music Publishers) is very popular. 2. 3. 4. Another Response to Carolyn Livingston, "Naming Country Music: An Historian Looks at Meaning Behind the Labels" Symbolismandmeaning-makingarecritical aspects of music education, to be sure. If an objective of music education is cultural understanding, it is vital that musical processes, notjust musical products, be investigated. Carolyn Livingston's discussion is one that provides a foundation for doing so in relation to American countrymusic. She offers a view into the continuities and discontinuities of the genre's historicity and the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of a multifaceted musical culture. In doing so, she also gives readers a sense of the music participant's agency or lack thereof in creating a collective identity. While I believe this paper takes encouraging and productive steps towards a deeper understanding of American countrymusic and relatedgenres, a more interpretive approach to semiotics seems necessary for understanding musical cultures. The following comments stem from the basic notion that all musicalprocesses are grounded in the experiences ofthose creating and participating in them, either directly or indirectly. First, since musical processes are grounded in an individual's experiences with music, these occurrences frame one's perception and interpretation of symbols.1 Although Nelson Goodman's approach to "world making" is desirable in its explanation of how humans create "reality" through symbols,2 it seems to neglect the crucial aspect of the interpreter framing the relationship between sign and signified. In otherwords, thereexistsa distinction betweenthe intentofa symbol andtherecognition and analysis of that symbol by the receiver and interpreter. Furthermore, his approach seems to lack the explanatory power for signs working unintentionally or working contrarily to their intendedpurpose. Thus, denimoverallsmayhave at one time signified hillbilly music to some people as Livingston suggests, but denim overalls may also representthe camaraderie and earthiness ofthe sixties' Grateful Dead culture, the status of being a full-fledged member ofFuture Farmers of America, or a retro fashion sense among hip 44 Philosophy of Music Education Review college students. As Tom Turino explains in his model ofPeircian semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something else to someone in some way."3 This semioticway ofthinking about signs allows for both the dynamic and inert nature of symbols depending upon their context and interpretation . A second suggestion is directedtowards the morepracticalnatureofmusiceducation. Ifmusic educators are to "do well to pay...