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Education is more than the accumulation of knowledge. It’s the growth we experience when digging deep into the topics, systems, and ways of thinking that give flavor to life. Enlighten Me is dedicated to bringing listeners into the world of the unknown and providing meaningful insights into issues that affect us all. In each episode, we bring in researchers and experts from a wide range of fields to discuss a topic and how it relates to their industry.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
Eddie Sanchez (00:08):
This is Eddie Sanchez.
Rodney Crouther (00:09):
This is Rodney Crouther.
Eddie Sanchez (00:10):
And you are now listening to Enlighten Me. So Rodney, because we talk so much about music here in the office,
Rodney Crouther (00:16):
Oh yes, we do.
Eddie Sanchez (00:17):
We're always sharing music and everybody's always sharing different genres and their favorite artist. I thought that it would be fun as we move into the summer — since, you know, windows down, music blasting — thought it would be great to talk about music research that's taking place here on Texas State University.
Rodney Crouther (00:34):
Oh, that'll be a fun one.
Eddie Sanchez (00:35):
Yeah, definitely. So I had an opportunity to talk to a couple of different faculty members about how music affects really, how music affects society, how it affects culture, how it affects people at different ages, as well as the historical elements of music and Texas music history. So it was a really broad conversation, but it was great having these conversations.
Rodney Crouther (00:55):
Yeah, everybody just says, yeah, everybody loves music. I love music. You love music. But yeah, we don't often delve into what that means to different people. So who'd you talk to first?
Joe Kotarba (01:05):
OK. My name is Joe Kotarba and I'm professor of sociology at Texas State University.
Rodney Crouther (01:11):
Oh, what kind of classes does a sociology professor teach about music?
Joe Kotarba (01:15):
I teach several different kinds of courses. My main course is Popular Music and Society.
Eddie Sanchez (01:24):
The reason we brought you in Dr. Kotarba is, as I had mentioned to you earlier, was to talk music specifically because I had seen on your faculty profile that you taught this Popular Music and Society. And so I just wanted to bring you in and really get my head wrapped around what that even means, the types of research that you're doing, how you even got invested in that. So I guess that would be my first question for you. What drew you into sociology and how did you tie music into that area?
Joe Kotarba (01:53):
I think it's an interesting story. This goes back to my early days as a professor back at the University of Houston, and the idea always in the back of my mind was when I had the chance I would teach a course in popular music. Of course, back then the course would've been called Sociology of Rock and Roll, but you can't force that kind of course because that's not a top priority for administrators. At least back then it wasn't. And so when I got tenured in, I put that in for my course and my chair said, great. And they start to like the idea because there was no problem recruiting students for that course. And so that worked out very well. I really enjoyed teaching that course live, face to face because I was able to do things like bring guest speakers in very easily. And so being in Houston, there was no shortage of artists that were willing to come talk about rock and roll.
(02:48):
But then I moved along and took a job here at Texas State University in 2010. So the course had been going very well, but I started teaching it online years ago, really when I first came here. And so when we had that massive transfer of instruction to the internet because of COVID, it was no big deal for me. I was doing this already. So I was kind of amazed by my colleagues who are freaking out over how do I get online. And the title of the course of changed to Popular Music because that was the name of the course on the books here. I cover all styles of music though, but I left the title Popular Music last all these years mostly because I think all styles of music nowadays pretty much follow the marketing and business and aesthetic rules of popular music.
Eddie Sanchez (03:43):
I'm curious what drew you into that intersectionality of music in society. I grew up in a house of musicians or was there a specific reason why you went that way?
Joe Kotarba (03:54):
That's a great question because that leads to an explanation of what's relevant about music to sociology. What's relevant is everything. In my teaching, I see popular music, I see music in general as a major feature of culture. And nowadays I would claim quite confidently that music becomes the most important source of meaning for everyday life, for young people especially, and the oldest people, especially both ends of the life course. And I did a number of studies back in Houston, for example, with young people, teenagers and pre-teenagers being involved in all kinds of problems, at least the way the media was covering them. For example, the growth of the rave movement back in the 1980s, early ’90s, a big deal in the newspapers down in Houston because it was fear by parents that they couldn't figure out where their 14-year-old daughters were at three o'clock in the morning.
(04:56):
So I get a phone call from a representative from the state of Texas government, and he said, well, we hear that you do research on music. And I said, yes. Do you know anything about rave? I says a little bit, but in my business we study things before we talk too much about them. And so he said, well, could you do a little study on rave? We're trying to figure out what is the problem with it, if any. So I did the smart thing that sociologists do, get a small group of grad students together and tell 'em we're going to go study rave. No shortage of volunteers for that project tell you right now. So of course they were very valuable to me because rave parties back then, especially were middle of the evening, middle of the night kind of thing, started at two o'clock in the morning in deserted Kroger stores and stuff like that. And so just way past my bedtime, so my grad students did most of that field work for me, if you will.
Rodney Crouther (05:56):
Oh, that's a good question because what's popular changes over time. So how does he define popular music?
Joe Kotarba (06:00):
Good question. Using the term popular music has its problems to begin with because anytime in the social sciences, when you take an expression out of popular language, popular discourse, you have all these problems because people have their own way of thinking about what's popular music. Well, some people say that's whatever is on the charts, what sells the most records or CDs or links. But what I use that term for is to refer to music that is used in everyday life and different kinds of people use different kinds of music, but especially for different kinds of reasons. And so popular music is what people actually listen to, and it's the music that becomes part of their foundation in their everyday life. And that could be anything from Beethoven to The Beatles to rave to anything else.
Eddie Sanchez (06:58):
I know that you had mentioned that you've studied music at different stages of lives. What does studying music across the different stages of life mean and what did you learn in your research?
Joe Kotarba (07:06):
Let me talk a bit about my current project, and I just had a book published back last year, 2023, Music Across the Course of Life. And what I did in that book was to integrate, bring together many years of different studies I've done on music, different ways to kind of organize it in terms of the existing models and theories of life course. And life course and sociology simply refers to the fact that people live in different stages of life and they live different ways, they face different problems, different possibilities, and so their cultural activities of course, are going to change. What I've done is to tie my research over the years into different stages of life in terms of what are people's needs as they get older. In the book, I begin talking about babies and some of the very first interaction that babies have with their mothers especially is music lullabies.
(08:13):
And I in fact have a picture in my book of my daughter-in-law Tia. They live out in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There's a picture of her with the baby and a baby melody, and it's kind of a shadowy picture, unfortunately, but it makes the point that here it is nighttime, nap time and she's singing a lullaby to her baby. And to study lullabys by itself is an interesting kind of endeavor because different cultures, you have different kinds of lullabies for different reasons. And so you can look at babies. At the end of my book, I look at more up-to-date research, if you will, on the elderly, including some discussion of how important music was during the COVID pandemic.
Eddie Sanchez (09:01):
Yes, sir. I saw a bit of that.
Joe Kotarba (09:02):
Real important. Music became a link for a lot of elderly people, if you will, seniors who cut off from social life and from others because of the COVID. And so music became their way of remaining part of society. And so if you're a Michael Bublé fan, as a senior woman to listen to your Michael Bublé CDs at home gives you a way of being in touch with something that reminds you of what it was like when you could enjoy music more freely, more openly with other people.
Eddie Sanchez (09:37):
So do you see music shaping identity and social connections?
Joe Kotarba (09:40):
Really does. Example, it's going to be three years now coming up that I attended the ACL Festival. I love going to that festival. I love festivals. I've been writing about them for years because festivals is kind of like where it's at. That's where people who, for whom music is a key feature of their life are going to show up in the heat, in the rain, whatever. Billie Eilish was on stage and going back three years was kind of when she was peaking in her popularity with her initial audience, and that was pre-teen girls. And she would sing songs about bad boys. She would sing songs about what it's like to live with parents, songs very relevant to everyday life for girls 10, 11, 12 years old. And so I pushed my way up through the crowd during Billie Eilish's time on stage. And of course when I go to concerts and festivals, the fans always bullet apart like the Red Sea for me because who's this old guy come on to see Billie Eilish?
(10:46):
I of course take advantage of that, go right to the front stage and I'm watching Billie and Billie, she was back in her traditional outfit, baggy pants, and her colors were yellow and green and her fingernails were half green, half yellow, her shirt was half green, half yellow. Her face had green and yellow everything. But I was most interested in that line of little girls who were right at the front of the stage looking up at Billie Eilish in awe. They couldn't believe they were actually there with her and Billie's singing to them directly. And the little girl who looked up at Billie, and I have a picture of this in the book of one little girl who's looking up at Billie Eilish and looking her up and down, what her appearance is, and then the little girl takes a look at her own fingers and you see a smile on her face. And afterwards of talking with her a little bit, you find out she was thrilled because her fingernails were colored exactly the way Billie Eilish's were. That's where you get your identity from. You are attracted to music that speaks to you.
Rodney Crouther (11:54):
So in all of his research about trends, what surprised him the most recently?
Joe Kotarba (11:58):
A bit of a surprise took place, and this was in an assisted living facility out in San Antonio, and everybody was glued to the television set because they were watching the concert from Italy where Andrea Bocelli was singing all by himself in Milano, I believe, in the Cathedral. And he just had an organist accompany him with that magnificent big pipe organ they have in churches like that. And he was singing all kinds of songs, church songs, singing "Ave Maria," singing kumbaya kinds of songs, folk songs, different kind of things, being a smart musician and understanding that a lot of his audience is back in the States. And so I'm here in this crowd of senior, mostly women, some men, but I bet it was 80% women in their 80s, 90s. And so when this was over, of course I've got to talk to the fans, what's going on?
(12:58):
What are you doing here? What's up? And they were just enthralled that they were able to participate in this kind of concert for several reasons. Catholic women or women raised Catholic were saying things to me like, "Oh yeah. When Mr. Bocelli started singing that Ave Maria, I had to start crying because that was my mother's favorite song, and that was a song we played at my wedding." Then there was one woman raised Protestant in the group in particular who said to me, "Well, yeah, I'm not Catholic and this whole thing is pretty Catholic, but that's OK. It's all good because it's Sunday and they're singing songs for Sunday." And that was a great surprise to hear that someone like Andrea Bocelli can bring people across boundaries, otherwise boundaries in religion.
Eddie Sanchez (13:46):
Again, I know that you had done quite a bit of research on older individuals during the COVID era. Would you mind kind of touching on that a little bit more, what the research was that you did and what you learned through that research?
Joe Kotarba (13:58):
Tough study, can't get into senior facilities during the time, but that doesn't keep you from understanding and getting contact with people about their music. And so again, with research assistance and assistantships, I would go to home visits to visit people who were getting services from the organization during COVID. And of course everybody's real careful wearing masks and everything and keeping good distances, but when you go into people's homes, that's when you get a real firsthand appreciation for their music. And so there's one lady in particular in her 70s living alone at home. This was again in San Antonio. She's got the television on while we're coming in and a man's helping her with food things and stuff like that. And I'm talking to her and saying, what are you watching on TV over here? What is it? She says, oh, I got all that good TV stuff on.
(14:55):
And then she gave me the list of the different programs she'll watch that have music on them during the day. And it's not MTV much anymore like it was in our generation, but then still there's lots of music on TV and it becomes company for people who live by themselves, especially senior people. And so they developed these relationships with people who are performers, and in a project we're working on right now, and we're going to be delivering a paper on this at a aging community, a conference up in Austin in August, older people have crushes. And a common object for a senior woman to have a crush on are people like Andrea Bocelli and people like Frank Sinatra, people like Pat Boone. You can go back in time who we'll see these men that they love then and they love now, but that type of love brings great feelings of security to them because they can recall themselves as being lovable. And for people who are seniors living alone, that's something they really fear losing.
Rodney Crouther (16:05):
Yeah, musical crushes are a real thing. I expect in my 80s, I'll be at a nursing home somewhere listening to Sade still. So
Eddie Sanchez (16:12):
Yeah, I think I'll probably be listening to some Monica. Yeah, I think I had a crush on her when I was pretty young.
Rodney Crouther (16:16):
Well, that makes me curious. I bet he's found some interesting ways that that kind of insight could be beneficial to people and I don't know, therapeutic or just a community building sense.
Joe Kotarba (16:26):
Lemme give you an example from a fairly large project I conducted back at Houston, and this was with a group of graduate students in sociology. And we did a study, an area study, which means we studied all features of a particular music throughout the Houston community. And our focus in this study was on Latino/Latina music. And what we learned there was, we wrote this up quite a bit, just how complex the world of Latinx music is back then, still is. And one byproduct of that study was finding out that you can't oversimplify people's interests and experiences with music according to simple things like ethnicity. And so what we were becoming aware of were caretakers, for example, would have someone who was Latinx and they would assume, oh, OK, we can just bring some Tejano CDs in. Well, uh-uh, maybe not because it depends, for example, if they're a recent arrival to the United States, they probably came from different areas of Mexico, Central America, South America, where they grew up with and still like very different styles of Latinx music. So you have to find out the details of people's taste in music if you really want to kind of tune into where they're at.
Eddie Sanchez (17:56):
If you could recommend only one song to the audience, what would that song be?
Joe Kotarba (18:00):
"Ave Maria." Being raised Catholic, "Ave Maria" was always there. And if you're Catholic, you never forget it. You can give up everything else about being a Catholic, but not "Ave Maria."
Rodney Crouther (18:20):
That actually hit on something I've been joking about for years that our generations' grandparents were listening to big band, swing, Frank Sinatra, et cetera, as grandparents in my generation when we're grandparents we'll probably be sitting around listening to some good stuff, but also probably some NWA, Tupac, Biggie stuff you don't normally associate with geriatric people.
Eddie Sanchez (18:44):
Yeah, when I'm in the nursing home, I'm definitely going to be listening to some hip-hop, that's for sure. So having had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Kotarba about music and society, I wanted to get a better understanding of music and cultural identity and how it affects even Texans. How does art music characterizes to a certain degree?
Rodney Crouther (19:04):
That's a really interesting point. I just recently saw someone, a young person in Texas almost getting mobbed because he confessed that he didn't know who Selena was.
Eddie Sanchez (19:14):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it plays a big role in how we identify ourselves in the things that we believe of ourselves as Texans and also on a broader scale, right, as Americans.
Rodney Crouther (19:24):
Yeah, people take it very, very personally.
Eddie Sanchez (19:26):
Yeah, I mean music is a big part of who we are. And so to that point, I reached out to Dr. Kevin Mooney who was a musicologist, and he was able to break down some of these topics a little bit more.
Kevin Mooney (19:36):
I'm Kevin Edward Mooney and I teach in the School of Music. I'm a musicologist and a guitarist.
Rodney Crouther (19:43):
I know the Prince album "Musicology," but what is a musicologist and how did he become one?
Kevin Mooney (19:49):
OK, those are two big questions. First, what is a musicologist? A musicologist is a historian who studies music and so it's history-based, research-based, but it's very broad. And so the topics of musicology can range for a variety of musics. I teach in popular music vein, Western European art music, I mentioned American music. And so it's very broad and the perspectives are broad. So are you talking just about music? Are you talking about music and culture? Are you talking about reception of the music? It encompasses all of those things. So it's a very broad term, really meaning music historian.
Eddie Sanchez (20:40):
Was there a particular incident in your life? Was there something that, you know, my parents were big musicians and they kind of just — you flowed with it. I'm curious how you got involved in this field.
Kevin Mooney (20:50):
Well, I started out as a guitarist and you mentioned my parents. My dad was in business, but he liked piano and he loved ragtime piano. And my older sisters got piano lessons, but I didn't. So I gravitated to the guitar and ended up being a professional guitar player. I started out that way with my bachelor's degree in guitar performance and then a master's degree in music education. Then I just kept pursuing and came to Texas and went to UT Austin and pursued a Ph.D. degree in music history. All of these things kind of went together, and I've noticed over the years that I've been drawing on all of these different backgrounds. So when I talk about women in Texas music in my honors class that I'm teaching now, I can draw on my performance background. I can draw on my educational skills and research skills as well. And so I tried to bring all of that into there, but I was really surprised. I really didn't know what music — you asked about musicology — I didn't really know what it was when I was getting into it, and I just wanted to keep going to school and I was interested in music and I enjoyed, I wanted to do anything that had to do with music. This research continued to intensify the further I along I got into my career.
(22:14):
I've really been fascinated looking back, and I've been doing this for, I started teaching in higher education in 1985, and so I've been doing this a long time and seeing the research develop has been really exciting because as I may have mentioned, I started with interest in Texas Centennial Music, Texas 1936, and then I've discovered a woman by the name of Lota Spell and she wrote the first history of the book on music in Texas in 1936. And she's a very significant figure. And so when I teach the course Women in Texas Music in the Honors College, we start there and then we talk about Mary Austin Holley, who is Stephen F. Austin's cousin, and she wrote music and I discovered through my research that she had a lot more musical experience than was written about in the textbooks and in the music that was available. And so it's been very exciting. And then I discovered, well, actually I was approached to do this project on Louise Tobin and had the very good fortune to know her, to meet her. And she just died last year and she was 104 years old. So I'm glad I finished the book in times for her to see it.
Eddie Sanchez (23:29):
Oh, that's great. So I know, I think on your bio there's a mention of you having this connection research, this connection between music and identity. Could you discuss the type of research that you do and just what that might entail?
Kevin Mooney (23:45):
I think that ties into, as I mentioned it in my Women in Texas Music course, we look at the contributions that Texas women have made to music in America and in Texas, but we also look at what distinguishes them. And so it's important to identify those distinguishing features while at the same time recognizing that the distinguishing features aren't the only things that identify them. I dunno if that makes sense, but I see that in, I mean, you again look at that in a lot of different ways, and I've focused it in my work on the women in Texas music.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
I'm curious, Dr. Mooney, how does Texas music fit into our identity as Americans?
Kevin Mooney (24:29):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Gary Hartman, who is professor here, is now retired. He started the Center for Texas Music History here. And I remember back in 1999 or 2000, we were talking and talking about as — and the hot topic then was globalization and in this increasingly global world, and of course the internet is so different now than it was 20 years, 25 years ago, but we were wondering, I mean, what's going to happen to regionalism? What's going to happen to identity that relates to specific places? Is it going to be just one sort of global culture? What would be like homogeneous? Exactly. And so it seemed like with this increasing globalization, it was really important to embrace identity and embrace nationalism in a positive way and a sense of Texan-is, that what makes Texas music unique, what makes Texans unique? And this actually tied really well into my initial work with my Centennial music project because one of the things I identified was when Texas was celebrating a hundred years of independence, and I looked at the musical aspect of this celebration, there was this conflict.
(25:50):
On the one hand, they wanted to show that the rest of the nation and the rest of the world, oh, we're very unique and independent, and we have our cowboys and our longhorns and our cotton, and this is what makes us unique. But on the other hand, they felt a little bit insecure about that, and they wanted to be sophisticated. And so what did they have at the Dallas Exposition but opera, they wanted to have an opera. And then they didn't want to have an opera on a Texas theme or wanted to have an opera that was culture. Exactly. And so this conflict, I think is one that it is very important to embrace those identity features in this world. And we're at, that's the positive view of, I believe, of identity politics.
Rodney Crouther (26:38):
OK. So when I was a kid, there weren't that many avenues or channels where you could get a lot of new music. Everybody kind of listened to the same stuff. So is the internet changing that for music lovers today? Are they getting a wider selection easier?
Eddie Sanchez (26:50):
Yeah, I actually had the same question for Dr. Mooney, and he had some pretty good insight about how the internet has made our access to music more interesting.
Kevin Mooney (26:59):
I, and I think about how I use, say, YouTube in the classroom. And one of the things I noticed this semester, actually, I was playing some video clips from the performers of the 1950s, and this was like, I hadn't seen that before. Oh my God, this is so cool to see this. And getting that realization to the students of what is — that you didn't used to be able to just access these things. And in a one sense, it makes these performers come alive in a way that you don't just reading about them, but in another sense, it's hard to communicate to them what an amazing opportunity that is to be able to see these performers. Because when I was young and a kid, you would wait for your favorite performer to appear on say, Johnny Carson or something. And one of the, they probably don't even know who Johnny Carson is or one of the talk shows on television.
(28:07):
It's like, oh, they're going to have so-and-so perform. Oh wow, I'm going to sit up and wait and see them because you didn't see them. That was the only opportunity. That was the only opportunity. And so now it's just so wonderful that you can just have access to all of this. And so I think it's a really incredible thing and there's a lot of positive that can come out of it, but as I said with that, there's also lot of a lot crap on there too, and a lot of things that are not true and disturbing and everything else. So that's part of what, again, I think this is the key to where we're at educationally, is we have to help students navigate and distinguish what is right, true this is true. And what is not.
Rodney Crouther (28:54):
Talking about music today and Texas music in particular, how does he see Texas music influencing broader trends in music? You've got artists like Beyoncé, kind of bridging the gap between old styles and new styles and crossing genres between hip-hop and country. Does he see any current artists today still having that kind of impact?
Eddie Sanchez (29:12):
Yeah, I was really happy to have this part of the conversation with Dr. Mooney because he actually brought up hip-hop just like you had mentioned. And so he discusses a little bit about how our current music is bridging the gap between the music from the past and into the current era.
Kevin Mooney (29:26):
Well, what I thought was really fascinating was, and this goes a few years back now, but I used to teach a, I do the Women in Texas Music in the Honors College, but when I was at UT Austin, I taught Musics of Texas, a general Texas, that course is offered in the history department here at Texas State, and they do a great job. And when I was teaching that course, Musics of Texas, I thought, I need to include rap music. There's a whole Texas rap thing that's happening that's very unique. And so I had to educate myself. And so I started listening to all these rap artists, primarily from Houston primarily, and I discovered this whole DJ Screw that's awesome, screwed and chop sound and all of this. That's awesome.
(30:10):
And so I introduced it to the class and I said, OK, the question is to what extent should we be talking about rap music in Texas music class? And it was a wonderful discussion. And of course everybody said yes. And then I got a call, this was coincidentally, I got a call from an education board in Dallas and they said, we understand you teach in Texas music and we're having this debate about rap music in the schools and should it be in there and all this. And I said, well, you called the wrong person because I just had a class on why this should be taught in a Texas music class because it is distinctly Texas music. It sounds distinct to this region unlike anywhere else. And so if there's not a definition of Texas music, I don't know what it is.
Eddie Sanchez (30:56):
I'm glad to hear that because I consider myself a bit of a hip-hop head and that's my mind automatically Texas music. Yeah, you have to, especially Houston rap. I mean definitely it's a subculture really that got created and influenced the broader Texas culture and a lot of other Southern regions from what I can see. And just culturally it's had a big effect. I saw that you played with Dizzy Gillespie, which I was like —
Kevin Mooney (31:21):
Way back.
Eddie Sanchez (31:22):
What was that experience like?
Kevin Mooney (31:23):
It was wild. It was way back in 1987, I was playing a lot of jazz and in Omaha, Nebraska where I'm from, and I was actually playing in a country band and Dizzy Gillespie came to town and everybody knew I was one of the few guitar jazz guitar players in Omaha at the time, about a handful of us that were doing all the gigs. And I got a call, he's going to be here, needs a guitar player needs. And so the little jazz band I was playing in, we were the band for him. And so his piano, guitar, bass, drums, and we went to the rehearsal that afternoon. He wanted to meet us and everything. We never played a note. And he said, what do you know, what you know? You don't know that? And he went over to the piano, he goes ba-da-dum-dum-dum, the bass player goes, does that start on the beat or off the beat? How can this start on the beat? Anyway, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't say a word. So now it's performance time. We're backstage, sold out crowd, and we had no idea what the first tune was going to be. And so Dizzy Gillespie sitting there and I went up to him, excuse me, Mr. Gillespie, what do you want to start with? Maybe "Lady Bird"? Nothing. Silence.
(32:42):
And then he shakes his head. He goes, OK. And we didn't play that tune all night, and I know it's because I mentioned it, but we did standards, we did his music. It was a great experience, but it was a difficult one. It was, here he was, it was the end of his career. He came to Omaha and no band with him. So it was like he had to take what he got and he probably, he had to think, God, is this what it's come to? Here I am with these bozos here. But I wish that was it a time when there weren't cell phones really. And there weren't. There's no real, I have one, there's a newspaper article with his picture in it, but it didn't even mention us.
Eddie Sanchez (33:22):
That's a pretty epic story.
Kevin Mooney (33:23):
It was. I've told that story a lot.
Eddie Sanchez (33:27):
If you had to recommend one album, what would it be and why?
Kevin Mooney (33:31):
Oh, probably the Jimmy Bruno and his album "Burnin'" and Jimmy Bruno is a jazz guitarist out of Philadelphia, and it's really, really, really great playing. And I'm also a big fan of Joe Pass and his guitar styles.
Eddie Sanchez (33:48):
We'll be right back after this.
Rodney Crouther (33:59):
That was fascinating. We definitely kind of take our music history with us. I'm at best a casual jazz fan, but one of my prize possessions is I just happened to work with a photographer years ago who near the end of his performing career took this iconic picture of Dizzy Gillespie, just black and white solo spotlight of him sitting on the stage and a little from behind. So all you can see is the trumpet and those iconic puffed out jowls while he's blowing. And it is a prize possession of mine because music matters to me.
Eddie Sanchez (34:29):
It is important because it's the preservation of these really big musical figures and it captures a moment in time and it's so representative of all these different elements that are taking place at that moment. And so to speak to that, right, I was interested in the history of Texas music, I actually had an opportunity to speak with Jason Mellard.
Rodney Crouther (34:50):
Who is that?
Jason Mellard (34:51):
I'm the director of the Center for Texas Music History, which is in the History Department, liberal arts.
Eddie Sanchez (34:55):
Just a broad question, what is it that drew you to Texas music history?
Jason Mellard (35:02):
I started it as a Texas historian first, and then I realized what a rich tool culture and music would be and learning about that past and the way that these peoples have lived alongside one another for generations and generations.
Eddie Sanchez (35:17):
Can you give us a bit of an overview of the type of research that you conducted?
Jason Mellard (35:22):
Sure. Brought me into Texas music history was the story of the Austin music scene in the 1970s, the progressive country moment of the Armadillo World Headquarters and the mythology of the coming together in the hippies and the rednecks in the 1970s. I kind of fell into that and telling that story, that was what got me to this place. Right now what I'm working on is a series of projects in conjunction with the Texas Music Office and the Governor's office and the Texas Historical Commission mapping historic sites related to music all over the state of Texas. So thinking deeply about the relationship between place and culture.
Rodney Crouther (36:01):
Is there something unique, just the quality of Texas music that sets it apart from music everywhere else?
Jason Mellard (36:06):
This is a great question, I think is at the foundation of the Center for Texas Music History is thinking about the issues that make Texas music a kind of microcosm of American music, but also what might make it distinct or unique. And there are different ways of thinking about it. One of them, one of the easiest things to say is that what makes it so unique is its very expansiveness, which is kind of avoiding the question because anything can be Texas music. More specifically though, there are historians like Neil Foley, I follow him a great deal in thinking about what makes Texas unique is that it's the place on the American map where the U.S. South, Anglo American and African American history has moved and lived alongside the Mexican American borderlands for the longest period of time. In some ways, this is what makes Texas and California similar, the tremendous diversity of those populations and the history they've shared. But Texas is a space where that has gone on for a very long period of time and you see it reflected in the music and the culture.
Eddie Sanchez (37:16):
Rodney, so when you think of Texas music, what do you think of? What genre do you think of?
Rodney Crouther (37:21):
OK, I've been living in Austin for a while now. So the first thing is probably honestly Willie Nelson, outlaw country, but I know there's a lot more to Texas music than that.
Eddie Sanchez (37:29):
And I'd say that I think country too. And I was curious why exactly that genre. And so I ended up asking Jason why people have associated country music with Texas.
Jason Mellard (37:38):
Part of it is a branding issue. When you say Texas music, most people think of country and cowboy hats first. And this was one of the questions that the founding director of the center, Gary Hartman, said that he had to answer the most times that people assume that he was only studying country. In the historical view, so the author Jonah Petoskey talks about the three-legged stool of Texas music that at the core of this long folk of vernacular tradition is not just country music, that Southern string music, but the way that it also sits alongside both the blues and the blues tradition coming out of the U.S. South. And then also musica tejana, the musics that are shared with northern Mexico and the way that each of those — those are the deep, those three are at the core. Then you have the German and Czech polka, which has also been there almost as long and alongside those. But what we do at the center, and especially in recent years, is thinking more broadly about all of the music made in Texas, which is to say that there's history of pop, right? There's a history of rock and roll, there is a history of Houston hip-hop has been at the front of what we do very recently.
Eddie Sanchez (38:53):
The other faculty members that I have spoken with, I'm a big hip-hop person, so they always bring up Houston hip-hop. That is something to consider when we are thinking of Texas music. It's a real thing. It's not this far off genre. It's a piece of Texas history. So that's really interesting.
Jason Mellard (39:07):
And there's so many parallels with Texas country music too. And even a lot of those Houston guys call what they do country rap, right? Like the UGK guys and all those out of Port Arthur that both Texas country and Houston hip-hop are obsessively about place and identity, right? In the song you announce, here's who I am and here's where I am from and here are the things that I'm proud of in the place where I'm from. That country and hip-hop actually share a lot in that regard.
Eddie Sanchez (39:35):
Yeah, I honestly hadn't never really thought of it, and they're always very Texas centric. I'm from Houston, I'm from H-Town, it is very much a Texas-driven theme music for sure.
Jason Mellard (39:45):
Street names, neighborhoods, even more specific than country music gets sometimes.
Rodney Crouther (39:51):
So what does the Center for Texas Music History actually do?
Jason Mellard (39:55):
The Center for Texas Music History was founded in 1999 by immigration historian Gary Hartman and labor historian Greg Andrews. And we do a range of different things in exploring the scholarship of Texas music. We offer a series of undergraduate and graduate courses through the Department of History, and that involves, especially at the graduate level, developing original research among Texas State students. We publish an annual Journal of Texas Music History that foregrounds a lot of that richest new research being done in the field. We have some articles right now on luthiers in San Antonio making bajo sextos. And then we have a book series with Texas A&M press that the Director of the Center is the series editor of. We have just had a new book come out on the history of Willie Nelson's 4th of July picnics. We do campus and community events, both welcoming in scholars who study Texas music. We had recently a folklorist who works on Houston hip-hop, Langston Collin Wilkins, and also bringing in artists. We had Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go's. We had Jack Ingram and Randy Rogers not too long ago. Randy Rogers, who's been a long-time friend of the center. We also have a series of scholarships that we helped to award one of those in the name of Kent Finlay, who is an important San Marcos music history figure.
Rodney Crouther (41:15):
Can you explain why the Center for Texas Music History is so vital and important for the everyday Texan?
Jason Mellard (41:21):
I think what's so great about what we do is that we try to be public-facing scholarship, that we bridge this kind of gap between music fandoms, people who like Texas music really like Texas music and then this university scholarship on the other hand. So if you're really into this music and you have these questions about who are these artists, where do they come from, who influenced them, what does this mean in a larger sense? We, as we have this relationship with art, we often ask these next-level questions of what is this and why is it so important in my life? And this is a center that helps to answer those questions and helps support people who are on the path of original research to give us this next chapter of what Texas music means.
Eddie Sanchez (42:08):
Because you mentioned in, I think that's really a basic question, but it's an important question. Why is Texas music history important?
Jason Mellard (42:16):
One of the things we Texans tend to center our own stories, and it doesn't always make sense why, but I would make the case that understanding Texas is one important channel for understanding America and especially when it comes to this music that Texas has had an outsized influence on the course of American music history. And in a moment right now where there is this contentiousness and division and we are asking these very basic questions about who are we and where are we going? Historians will always say that understanding the past is the best way to chart our answers to those questions. And music is one where people already have this sense intuitively, and I especially enjoy this about presenting this in the undergraduate classroom. College students love this music and it is already training them to think historically to ask these big questions. And so the Center for Texas Music History just provides a forum in which we support that. We follow that with rigorous research and these tools and methods.
Eddie Sanchez (43:29):
If there was a handful of facts that you wish people understood about Texas music history, what would those facts be?
Jason Mellard (43:36):
That is a huge question. Some of my favorite ways to look at this, some of those class days that I really love. One of those is thinking about the relationship between Texas and the British invasion, for one. That I would make the case that global music would not look the way that it does if it had not been for a series of artists and thinkers in Texas. Now it's a big claim and you can make a counter argument very easily, but the relationship between the folklorists, John Avery Lomax and Alan Lomax and Lead Belly — Lead Belly is a figure that you might not know his name, it might sound vaguely familiar, but you don't think you know it. But if you dig into Lead Belly's catalog, you find that so much of what we think of as transatlantic Anglo American music, Lead Belly is all over that. Everything from though we think of as a folk song like "Goodnight Irene," all the way through "House of the Rising Sun" that the Animals covered and then all the way up to Nirvana, one of their last recordings that MTV Unplugged, it finishes with Kurt Cobain saying, I'm now going to play a song by my favorite artist, Lead Belly.
(45:00):
Right? And then another one, another angle you might take is someone like Buddy Holly that the Beatles and the Stones and all those guys wouldn't be who they were — and they would even say this, especially The Beatles — without Buddy Holly. The Beatles named themselves the Beatles in tribute to the Crickets who are Buddy Holly's backing band from Lubbock.
Eddie Sanchez (45:28):
Buddy Holly Park and Buddy Holly statues and all of those things.
Jason Mellard (45:31):
He's a huge one. Yeah.
Rodney Crouther (45:33):
So did he mention what sets Texas music apart from other regions of the country? I'm sure Nashville would have some things to say about where country is most identified, but Texas certainly has its own thing. What really sets us apart?
Jason Mellard (45:46):
Nothing is ever truly unique, right? There is always those things that are shared and those things that are distinct. And what Texas does have is this, again, the mix of the Southern and the Western and the borderlands. There is also a tradition of storytelling that is not unique to Texas, but is particularly strong in Texas songwriters. What I always say to students too is you sharpen your skills by making these comparisons. So thinking about there's some ways in which you can think about Texas and Oklahoma as a shared cultural field. So much of when we talk about Bob Wills in Western Swing or when we talk about Texas contributions to jazz, it's as much about Oklahoma City and Tulsa as it is about Dallas and Fort Worth. And then also the comparisons to a place, if you're going to say Texas is unique, Texas is unique, Texas is unique.
(46:42):
Two of our neighbors like Louisiana probably has the best claim on being a unique state musical history and one that is also shared with places like Beaumont and Port Arthur in Houston. And then on the other side, New Mexico as well has a very unique cultural history. And again and again, I return to, it's often framed in political sort of jargon is our biggest adversary, it's often demonized in Texas politics, but Texas and California, there aren't two places that are as similar size, scope, diversity, cultural impact, that there's a shared ground there that understanding what makes each distinct and what they share is really important.
Speaker 8 (47:25):
1, 2, 3.
Eddie Sanchez (47:35):
What does Texas music say about Texas history?
Jason Mellard (47:38):
Texas music can be an idealized version of Texas history, right? It doesn't tell you exactly what happened on the ground, but it often tells you what people thought about or imagined or wanted this place to be like, which is true of a lot of popular culture. It's kind of this wish fulfillment. And then there are other moments where there is folk music in Texas that tells you something very distinct. One of these other founding texts in Texas music history, America Perez with his pistol in his hand, is about the corrido tradition along the border in which Mexican American folk artists were basically singing this historical counter narrative throughout the borderland struggles of the early 20th century. In which case when you look at the official records like court documents and newspapers, that stuff in that time was so biased and is often history that we think of as like, oh, that's not true. And sometimes the truth is in the songs. So sometimes it can teach you real things about Texas history.
Eddie Sanchez (48:45):
For somebody that wants to get to know Texas a little better, what songs do you recommend?
Jason Mellard (48:49):
I tend to be a contrarian on this stuff. Now, I would go, my go-to is perhaps Willie Nelson. So to find something in his catalog, listening to an early version of "I Never Cared For You." And Willie I think is someone really important to do this because as he mellows out with his age, I think that younger people often see him as kind of his funny stoner grandpa, which he's earned that, he can do whatever he wants, that's fine. But I think that people often forget what a cutting songwriter, an amazing poet, that's what got him to where he is. And so looking at some of those early songs like "I Never Cared For You." I would also say I like the weird stuff. So there's an artist from, I think he's originally from Louisiana, but he spent a lot of time as a street performer in San Antonio. George Coleman, Bongo Joe is usually what he went by, but to check out his album on our, the song "Science Fiction" is one that I often point up. In terms of that weird hippie, redneck, psychedelic country stuff, The Flatlander's "Bhagavan Decreed" is one. Of course "Cowboy Carter," everyone already knows.
Eddie Sanchez (50:26):
All the interviewees that I spoke with had a couple of recommendations for their favorite Texas-related songs. I'm curious as a —
Rodney Crouther (50:36):
Look, man, I'm always down for new music. You ought to put those together, make a playlist.
Eddie Sanchez (50:40):
Yeah, I think we're going to go ahead and do that. Are there any songs that you want to see on that list?
Rodney Crouther (50:45):
Oh, good Lord put me on the spot, man. Willie's birthday, like a month or two ago, one of the Austin stations did an all day Willie thing and I heard all these Willie duets that I had actually been really meaning to go back. It was like current artists, people half a century younger than him that were jamming with him. It was just kind of awesome.
Eddie Sanchez (51:04):
That's awesome. Well, I'll make sure that we get some Willie on there as well.
Rodney Crouther (51:07):
So what are you going to put on there?
Eddie Sanchez (51:08):
Oh man. As a hip-hop fan, I probably have to go with the "Still Tipping on Four Fours." That's the Houston rap song. I think that definitely captures—
Rodney Crouther (51:16):
OK, yeah, I remember.
Eddie Sanchez (51:18):
Aspects of Texas hip-hop. So that's going on there for sure.
Rodney Crouther (51:21):
Well, Eddie, thanks again for this great episode on Texas music. I learned a lot, I got a lot of songs to go look up now. I really appreciate the exploration here and learning about the center. Everybody should know that place.
Eddie Sanchez (51:32):
And as a native Texas born and raised, it was great just to hear about all of these different genres and all these different artists that are representative of the state. So it was a really fun conversation. And now I'm curious, what are you bringing to the table for next month, Rodney?
Rodney Crouther (51:47):
Well, you covered music pretty thoroughly, so I think the other thing we do in summer, it's summer movie time, but I know Texas State has a film program now and Bobcats are making an impact on the big screen and the small screen. So I think we'll take a look at Texas and film.
Eddie Sanchez (52:03):
That sounds really interesting and I can't wait to hear that.
Rodney Crouther (52:06):
Thank you for listening to Enlighten Me. We'll be back next month.
Eddie Sanchez (52:10):
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