Mark Naison: Taking the Long Way With The Dixie Chicks: Country Radio' Punishes It's Core Audience

[Dr. Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression, White Boy: A Memoir, co-editor of The Tenant Movement in New York City, and over 100 articles on African American politics, social movements and American culture and sports. Dr. Naison is the Principal Investigator of the Bronx African American History Project. ]

For the last three days, I have been living with the Dixie Chick's new album"Taking the Long Way," which has been the subject of an informal boycott by country music radio. For the last three days, I have been living with the Dixie Chick's new album"Taking the Long Way," which has been the subject of an informal boycott by country music radio.

I can't say this kind of mean spiritedness is surprising. After all, the people behind this boycott are the same people who thought the most important issue in the last presidential election was preventing gay people from getting married, and who think that deporting illegal immigrants and building a Berlin Wall along the Mexican border will make us a stronger and safer nation.

But banning the Dixie Chicks from country radio is not just mean spirited, it's stupid and self destructive

Why? Because the Dixie Chicks embody everything that has made country music popular and inspiring since the days of the Carter family and Jimmy Rogers-they are brilliant harmonic singers ( probably the best in all of American popular music) , they are great songwriters who can write about the little tragedies of life in ways that can touch people of all ages and all backgrounds, and they have musicians working with them who are virtuosos with fiddles, banjos and pedal steel guitars, the core instruments of country music. If you think I am overplaying their vocal and musical talents, go out and buy their two CD live album recorded during their"Top of the World' tour two years ago. No one, and I mean no one, in country music can touch them in live performance..

What does it say about the atmosphere in the US today, that country radio is willing to turn the most talented artists of their generation into non persons. This is no little thing .Banning the Dixie Chicks from country music radio is like banning Tupac Shakur or JZ from Hip Hop stations. It's taking the most talented and creative artists in an entire music genre and excommunicating them because they have deviated from some presumed ideal of"authenticity" , which in country music seems to be uncritical"patriotism." and reverence for the nation's leaders.

Nobody wins when censorship rules the day, but the people who will be hurt the most by it will be member of country radio's core audience, many of whom are working class and middle class people trying to figure out how to live in a rapidly changing nation and increasingly dangerous world." Taking the Long Way" has share of self-justifying and defiant songs ( all of which are musically brilliant, even though their politics will leave some cold) but the album also contains some breathtakingly beautiful love songs of the kind which country audiences have always prized. One song in particular"My Favorite Year", ( co written by Natalie Maines and Sheryl Crow) would, if it were sung by the Dixie Chicks three years ago, would have been a number one country hit in a heartbeat. I could see this song touching hearts in hotel bars in North Carolina or Western Pennsylvania, and bringing tears to the eyes of women vacuuming carpets or cleaning tables in Florida, Maine, or Arizona, if they ever got to hear it. Banning it from radio, and country music television may hurt the Dixie Chicks financially, but the thing it does most is deprive hard working people of beauty, inspiration and the feeling that someone out there understands what they are going through.

The Dixie Chicks will ultimately land on their feet,. With artists like Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, and John Mayer joining them on their latest album, and with Rick Rubin ( co founder of Def Jam records ) handling the production, the Dixie Chicks will find new audiences who will admire them for their anti-war stance and their courage in taking on the Bible Belt's cultural commissars.

But when all is said and done, the people who need their music the most, whose lives were uplifted by their brilliance and compassion, may no longer get to hear them.

And that is a genuine tragedy