What to Listen For in Country Music
In country music, like most song-based genres, the key elements are words and music. Audiences want words and melodies they can sing-along with and relate to emotionally and culturally. Country audiences often enjoy music with a message or a story that educates, informs, and encourages contemplation, as well as music that honky-tonks. Dancing and entertainment are important functions of country music, but country songs, like the next listening example, often deal with proper or improper life values and behaviors. Country can also sing of mythic or historical events like the "Battle of New Orleans," by Johnny Horton or "El Paso" by Marty Robbins. In the songs and in the performers and performances, country music often provides personal and social identities, or encourages cultural unification, as in "Grandpa, Tell Me 'Bout the Good 'Ol Days" by The Judds (listen below, and also see Discover Video).
The Formal Elements
In 1982, "Grandpa" was a #1 hit song and selected for The Smithsonian History of Country Music Collection. This song will help us listen for musical design elements and how cultures and their values may be represented in both words and music. For example, the musical design element of melody is often compared to a horizontal line in a drawing or the plot in a movie. If you are singing the lyrics of this song using the same notes as Wynonna Judd you are singing the melody, the tune, the lead voice. If you are singing right along with Wynonna at the same time as she is then you are also singing in rhythm. Rhythm provides the element of time that connects all the various musicians and sounds in the same groove, like the ticking clocks that keep our multifaceted lives moving together. "Grandpa" is a ballad with a rock rhythm, but rhythms can also swing, waltz, shuffle, two-step, and more as they follow the form and structure of the song.
Like "Grandpa," most country music has a verse and a chorus form that repeats three to four times in a song. The verse changes lyrics to advance the story while the chorus often repeats lyrics to dramatize the story and encourage audiences to sing along. If you sing along with Wynnona´s mother, Naomi Judd, when she comes in at the chorus, then you are singing in harmony with the melody. She´s singing lower-pitched notes that blend with the melody to add interest and variety to the sound. Harmony is often described as musical depth, the musical design element that stacks sounds vertically, as when the guitarist strums chords in the introduction to this song. And how do you know it´s an acoustic guitar strumming the chords? Because of its timbre, the unique sound of an instrument or voice. Timbre, often defined as musical color, is revealed in the crooning heard in the singing of "Grandpa." Multiple timbres may be heard in this song as the acoustic guitar, the voices, the drums, the electric guitar, and the bass all blend their "voices" together to create a thicker musical texture.
Texture is the fabric of the ensemble, how the many instruments and voices in the music weave themselves into a unified group, often modeling how cultures organize themselves. "Grandpa" features a texture with a lead soloist and accompaniment (the supporting cast of the harmony voice and the various instrumental parts). Commonly heard in Nashville-produced country songs, this type of texture models a "star"-oriented culture. It´s different from a texture that values ensembles of singers blending their voices together, as heard in groups like the Statler Brothers, Alabama, or the Carter Family. It´s also very different from Bill Monroe´s ensemble of bluegrass musicians weaving together a variety of melodies.
All of the formal elements of music described above add together to create emotional and cultural connections. Audiences want music that makes them laugh, move, party, cry, dance, and love, or reminds them of family, friends, events, places, and relationships, as another country music scholar, Cecilia Tichi, writes, "our (American) values, our longings, our ideals and conflicts." Our listening example here, "Grandpa," provides many emotions and ideals and reminds us that country music, with its rural nature, often looks to the past, "the good old days," for guidance and values.
