Day 2: Eine Kleine Landwirtschaftlichemusik

Note: Due to the incredibly hectic schedule during the trips to Nashville and Atlanta, the live day-by-day blogging routine was quickly and unceremoniously ditched. What follows, over the next few days, are some reflections on the major highlights of the trip.

[T]he essential movement of the spectacle...consists of taking up all that existed in human activity in a fluid state so as to possess it in a congealed state...

                                                       -Guy DeBord, La société du spectacle (1967)

Elwood: What kind of music do you usually have here?

Claire: Oh, we got both kinds. We got country and western.

                                                        -from The Blues Brothers (1980)

The road trip to Nashville began too early after a day (and night) of airline travails, not to mention a cold snap and overcast skies, but my spirits lifted as we got closer to our destination—the music buzzed around us and we sang along with favorably-remembered songs from our adolescence and braved the climb over the mountainous landscape to Music City.  As we left the mountains behind and nestled ourselves into Nashville proper, we finally saw what was to be our home for 48 hours - the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, which looked to our sleep-deprived eyes to be like a gigantic antebellum mansion set amid what was, for all intents and purposes, a gigantic shopping mall parking lot. I was expecting the mansion part, but then, after parking and stepping into the foyer of the hotel, I realized the whole place seemed to be encased in several large glass domes.  Here's a little description, from the resort website:

Under majestic, climate-controlled glass atriums, you'll be surrounded by nine acres of lush indoor gardens, winding rivers and pathways, and sparkling waterfalls where you can unwind, explore, shop, dine, and be entertained to your heart's content.

And they aren't kidding about those waterfalls. Big ones. Buttressing large Greek Revival facades and Vieux Carré walls of brick and mortar, festooned with whitewashed balconies and sub-tropical foliage.  The effect on us was a heady mixture of astonishment and discomfort. Something just felt wrong about the place, but I couldn't quite place what it was, and the unease was complicated further by trying to avoid rushing to prejudgments and prejudices that would simply reinvest traditional views of the American South and, well, its own legacy of prejudgments and prejudices. This was, no bones about it, a reinvention of the South, encased now in the postmodern bell jar of late-period capitalism, and here I was, trapped within it, and paying for the privilege.  As each one of my friends arrived, their reactions were all about the same. This was definitely not the place (or space) that one heard on the country music we enthused about: the lonely bedrooms of George Jones or lonesome highways of Hank Williams, the three-feet high and rising flood plains of Johnny Cash or boozy barrooms of Merle Haggard. This was, to quote the name of a more recent nothing-to-be-enthused-about artist—big and rich—and perhaps one giant, temperature controlled recycled-waterfall away from being fat and obnoxious.

We unpacked, caught up on each other's lives, laughed and joked and had an absolutely wonderful afternoon, spotting gigantic catfish wading through the mechanical river and a bird who had somehow found its way through the glass barrier that separated us from the real outside world. We promised ourselves (and each other) that tomorrow we would venture out of our glass menagerie and explore the authenticity we were sure to find (we assured ourselves) downtown, amid the drunks, deadbeats, and honky tonks that littered the streets like so many leaves, caught up and scattered in a whirlwind of light and sound. At least, we said, that's how it is in the songs. We'd find the pure authenticity in those lost souls—those little prickly, spindly things tied together with kite-string-thin steel guitar lines and bumpy, rattling bass rhythms sending plaintive high, lonesome harmonies into space, toward heaven.

But first, we would, after dinner, head directly into the heart of the concrete beast around us;  what, I surmised, this whole opulent prison was meant to protect—the Grand Ole Opry. Relocated from the historic Ryman Auditorium, the Opry, a fixture of both live performance and live radio broadcast since 1925, had lent its stage to a staggering array of performers, from the aforementioned Williams, Jones, and Cash, to Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, Wanda Jackson, and a

young Elvis Presley. Despite the environment, which now boasted high-tech lighting and large television screens, the show seemed to capture a great deal of the spirit that started it all, encapsulated by its headlining act that night: Dr. Ralph Stanley, who, as part of the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, has typified a purity of songwriting and performance that comes closest to what Southern music was, and is, at its largely agrarian roots. Stanley's heightened visibility of late is largely attributed to the success of the Coen Brother's O, Brother Where Art Thou (2000), which featured Stanley on the soundtrack and utilized as its leitmotif the Stanley standard "I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow," which Stanley performed, wanly noting it was an "audience request."  Despite the blissfully-unaware-of-its-own-irony structure of the Opry, what with its hokey announcer-spoken ads (e.g., "I bet many of ya'll wonder how The Cracker Barrel Restaurant and Old Country Store got its name...") and trite appeals to the family values, flag-waving demographic, Stanley's performance needed no flashing lights, wide screens, or rhetorical gloss to convey its message. Despite my initial unease at the spectacle all around me, the communitarian message of the music seemed largely unhindered by it.

As we rode back towards the shining lights of the resort, I was reminded of Bill Malone's excellent book, Don't Get above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class, which put much of the Opryland spectacle into perspective. In the aftermath of Reconstruction and the transition away from agriculture as a viable means of economic sustainability and cultural way of life in the South, dispossessed families of differing races and religions took hold of what they could of their culture and tried as hard as they could to forge some new economic paradigm, some product or service that could save them, would be lasting and profitable, and yet, remain wholly their own. Perhaps the excesses of that lasting profitability shine a little too glaringly today, but it is still possible to find, even in the midst of all that, the very same energy that fueled and continues to sustain the powerful musical heritage that birthed the blues and gospel traditions, and laid the foundations for rock and roll and modern folk music. Before we walked up past the big tumbling waterfall to our room, I squinted my eyes one last time, heard the music in my head, and found a little bit of it for myself.