Great threads already. Thank you. It's still a touchy subject isn't it?

I've been thinking recently about how country music was set up by the "Lost Cause" idea that pervaded the south and the country at large during Reconstruction. My idea is that elements of country music became the part of the national brain/heart where the mourning and loss of the South was given a forum to work itself out. Almost like a diary. That some entries would be heated, vitriolic, bigoted, hateful should be expected. Others have mediated the loss and grief and as we get further and further away from the War you see a gradual trailing off of those motifs in the music, BUT the song structures dealing with loss, grief, defeat, 'righteous' indignation etc. still pervade the music that was, in my growing opinion, founded on the stories that were constructed by the South about the South after the war.

Keep'm comin'. I appreciate any contribution to this conversation.