While still a young child, I was kidnapped.  Knowing that he had a captive audience on a lengthy car ride, my uncle (the frustrated cowboy) turned the radio dial to a country music station.  And there he left it for the entire, excruciating round trip.  Like the Italian opera played in my own house, this strange, maddening new music made of me an aural Peeping Tom, an unwilling witness to the blatantly personal dreams and heartbreaks of strangers.   It was, in fact, worse than opera, for I understood every word of the lyrics formed in the mouths of Americans sounding to my tender, New York ears like foreigners.  Bright and alive with banjoes and fiddles, this music of the early 1960s was old time country, an art form for which I never nurtured a full appreciation.

Despite my uncle’s repeated attempts to the contrary, I grew up a die-hard devotee of the music first crafted by African slaves breaking their backs in Mississippi cotton fields; music that spoke and will forever speak directly to my soul.   For me, all roads lead back to the blues.   In September of 2007, those roads led me to Birmingham, Alabama, an unsung Mecca of rich music, much of it independently produced and largely respectful of the blues, soul, jazz, and old Southern rock.   On a quiet little street in Magic City, I crossed the threshold of Laser’s Edge, one of the small, wondrous, autonomously owned music emporiums sadly disappearing from our nation’s landscape (which this little store itself did, a mere three months after my visit).  With the purchase of nine CD’s spanning Muddy Waters, Michael Penn, The Clash, Bob Dylan, a replacement for my old vinyl copy of Boz Scaggs’ “Silk Degrees” and more, Fred, the shop’s owner, recognized a fellow music nut when he saw one.  As we bemoaned the current state of the music industry, including the dwindling presence of big platters, liner notes, and cover art, a quietly enraged Fred advised me that bluegrass — a specific form of country music — was almost dead.

Shortly thereafter and much to my chagrin, my husband, a shameless aficionado of pop, was himself kidnapped by something he termed “country music.”   Driven pop hooks, rotated heavily on commercial radio with only 15 to 20 songs per play list, and perpetrated by slick music videos populated by hard bodies of both sexes, these tunes bear little resemblance to my uncle’s music for which, oddly and at this late stage, I am beginning to see the value.

This past weekend, I was abducted once again, spirited away by my husband on a sixteen-hour round trip highlighted by the breathtaking Shenandoah Valley.  Propelled by the front row tickets burning a hole in his pocket, this was the first time my husband would see Sugarland — his most favorite country act — perform live.  Billy Currington was billed as opening for the headliners.  Currington is a young, well-muscled, up-and-coming singer with a pleasant voice, which if this gig was any indication, is enhanced by studio technology.

No mention was made anywhere of Holly Williams, granddaughter and daughter, respectively, of country music legends Hank Williams Sr. and Hank Jr.  For this reason, and the fact that Williams, in effect, opened for Currington, I missed the better part of her set.  As the most soulful of the three acts, her original music was a helluva lot closer to my uncle’s genre than anything I’ve heard made by her contemporaries — and with my husband’s current obsession, I’ve heard a lot.  Despite her illustrious heritage and genuine talent, she is struggling for airplay on contemporary country radio.    In a recent interview, Ms. Williams — who derives another source of income as a retailer of designer fashions in Nashville, Tennessee — admitted that it was difficult to “get past Nashville’s gatekeepers.”

Akin to the Urdu language, the Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty style of country music seems to have a foot and a half in the grave, shoveled over by the youth and glitz.  I do not speak Urdu and have no plans to study this vanishing language.  As a lover of music, however, I mourn the passing of any genre made in the human heart and soul as opposed to corporate boardrooms.  For solace, I turn to the chorus of Bruce Springsteen’s haunting song, “Atlantic City”:

“Everything dies;
Baby, that’s a fact.
But maybe everything that dies,
One day comes back”.

I turn it to my own interpretation and pray that The Boss wasn’t just placating us musical purists.