Francesca Royster's 'Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions' is an incomplete but important and often lyrical study of the growing subgenre.
University of Texas Press: 248 pages, $25, whose fees support independent bookstores.: Listening for Revolutions,” Francesca Royster recalls a country music festival she attended in her hometown of Chicago in July 2014. A Black woman at an overwhelmingly white event, Royster approached the few other Black people she’d spotted. “Why are you here?” she asked them. Was it for the music? Every single one demurred: “Sorry, I don’t know a thing about country music.” “Sorry, I can’t help you.
These dismissive responses, Royster believes, came less from a place of sincerity than an impulse of self-protection. Maybe each of these folks really had dropped 40 hard-earned dollars for the simple pleasure of sitting outside on a warm day with a paper plate of barbecue; maybe they didn’t even notice the white men on stage with their cowboy hats and fiddles.
The last few years have been pivotal for Black country artists and their fans. Black country musicians today are seen, heard and valued as never before in the genre’s long and troublesome history — topping charts, earning prestigious awards and collaborating with country royalty. Their emergence has been the subject of radio shows such as Rissi Palmer’s “Color Me Country” and Willie Jones’ “Cross Roads Radio,” as well as the 2022 documentary “For Love & Country.
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