Country music has historically been defined through a “southern thesis” which suggests that the music emerged from the countryside and mountain hollows of the rural U.S. south. This idea is strongly linked to the first published history of the genre, Bill C. Malone’s Country Music, USA (1968/2018). Recent scholars (Patrick Huber and Paul L. Tyler) have challenged this paradigm, critiquing the southern thesis as a narrative that privileges the contributions from white, male, southern USA born artists. Karl Hagstrom Miller‘s work has shown that the recording industry developed this construct in the 1920s as a way to market records by segregating southern music into distinct musical genres linked to specific racial and class identities. Diane Pecknold argues that this fictive construct, perpetuated by the industry and embedded in the broader country music discourse, serves as a powerful exclusionary tool that has obscured and even erased the contributions of artists born outside of the U.S. south, persons of colour, and women.
In a period in which racism and gender inequality are at the fore of public, political and scholarly discourse, this project raised awareness around issues of gender, race, class, and geography as they are shaped by and relate to country music identity and culture. Unlike the more liberal pop and hip-hop genres, whose artists actively participate in public debate, country musicians have (with a few exceptions) remained largely silent on political topics, especially those regarding gender and racial inequality. While some may be fearful of being blacklisted (or worse) by the industry and fans in the same manner as the Chicks were in 2003, this silence is often interpreted as implicit agreement with Republican political ideologies. As such, it serves to reinforce the southern thesis that keeps women, African Americans, and non-southern artists from participating in country music. The project deconstructed the southern thesis, re-contextualized the discussion surrounding country music’s geo-cultural identity, and explored the ways in which it has dictated industry practices.
Funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this three-year project adopted methods for Big Data research in the humanities in order to undertake data-driven analysis of country music’s geo-cultural identity. Going beyond basic questions about the regions that have produced the most country performers, it interrogated the role that artists outside of the white, southern, male construct have played in shaping country music’s geo-cultural identity and challenged the southern thesis that underpins this nearly century-long narrative construct. Originally scheduled to conclude in 2021, the project was extended through 2022 due to disruptions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Research emerging from this project has really grappled with the ways country music’s longstanding association with whiteness, masculinity, and southern identity continues to shape the genre today. Drawing on data-driven research alongside cultural and historical analysis, the project explored how industry institutions, chart systems, award criteria, media discourse, and commercial gatekeeping practices have contributed to the ongoing marginalization of women, artists of colour, and performers outside of the traditional southern U.S. framework. This work is especially indebted to Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’s Data Feminism (2020) and their engagement with Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of the “matrix of domination” as a lens for understanding how systems of power reinforce and reproduce one another across institutions, cultural practices, and forms of representation. That framework has become central to my approach to studying country music culture and industry structures, particularly in examining the intersections of race, gender, geography, and class. At the same time, the research has highlighted the important and often overlooked contributions these artists have made to country music culture and history.
The project has also contributed to broader public conversations about inequality and representation in the music industry. Research findings informed the Redlining in Country Music report, which documented patterns of underrepresentation in contemporary country music and has since been cited widely in media coverage and industry advocacy work, including the Black Music Action Coalition’s report “Three Chords and the Actual Truth.” Related commentary and public scholarship connected to the project have appeared in venues such as NBC News THINK and the Nashville Scene, helping bring conversations about race and gender, and institutional power in country music to audiences beyond academia.
Together, this work has helped challenge narrow ideas about who belongs in country music and whose stories become part of the genre’s historical narrative. The research has been widely cited in press coverage, and I have been privileged to participate in conversations about equity and representation in country music with scholars, journalists, industry professionals, artists, and the public, including appearances on Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country and an event organized by the Black Music Action Coalition following the release of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. These conversations have helped extend ongoing discussions about race, gender, geography, and institutional power within country music culture to a variety of audiences.
While the SSHRC-funded portion of the project formally concluded in 2022, the questions at the centre of this research have become ones that I remain deeply invested in both personally and intellectually. The work continues to inform ongoing collaborative projects and is currently being developed into a book-length study.
Opinion pieces
Watson, Jada. 2023. “Country Music Almanac 2023: In the Loop.” Nashville Scene (19 December).
Watson, Jada. 2021. “Grammys 2021 performer Mickey Guyton makes history – without country radio’s support.” NBC News Think, 14 March.
Publications
“The Market.” In Sound Judgment: The Science and Practice of Valuing Music Performance, edited by George Waddell and Aaron Williamon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In press; expected Fall 2026.
2022. “A Double-Edged Sword: Industry Data and the Construction of Country Music Narratives.” In Whose Country Music? Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-first Century Country Music, edited by Paula J. Bishop and Jada Watson (55-72). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bishop, Paula J. and Jada Watson. 2022. “‘She Went to Nashville to Sing Country Music’: Gatekeeping and the Country Music Industry.” In Whose Country Music? Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-first Century Country Music, edited by Paula J. Bishop and Jada Watson (1-12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2022. “Reproducing Inheritance: How the Country Music Association’s Award Criteria Reinforce Industry White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.” American Music Perspectives. Special Issue on Women, Gender, and Music in the Contemporary Media Landscape 1, no. 2: 136-50.
Collections
Bishop, Paula J., and Jada Watson, eds. 2022. Whose Country Music? Genre, Identity, and Belonging in 21st Century Country Music Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reports
2021. “Redlining in Country Music: Representation in the Country Music Industry (2000-2020).” SongData Reports; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 12 March.
2023. “Redlining in Country Music 2.0: Representation in the Country Music Industry in 2021 and 2022.” SongData Reports; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, March.
Conference Presentations
“Charting Culture: Industry Data and the Curation of Institutional Memory.” Paper accepted for the 16thannual conference of Feminist Theory & Music; Guelph, ON; July 2021.
“Reproducing Inheritance: Country Music and the Myth of Southern Whiteness.” Paper to be presented at Social Justice in the Life and Music of Johnny Cash at the 2021 Virtual Johnny Cash Heritage Festival; October 15-16, 2021.
“Listening for the Lost Archive.” Paper to be presented at the Radio Preservation and Task Force’s conference ‘Century of Broadcasting: Preservation and Renewal’; Washington, D.C, October 2020. [postponed to October 2023 due to Covid-19]
“Voix d’exception : Les métadonnées discographiques comme outil de recherche pour étudier la culture de la musique country (1944-2016).” Article présenté à la conférence annuelle de Muscan; juin 2021.
“Overlooked Voices: Race and Gender on Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart (1994-2016).” Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Country Music Conference; Nashville, TN, May 2021.
“Discographic Metadata as a Research Resource for Studying Popular Music Cultures.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the Music Library Association; Richmond, Virginia, February 2020.
This research is supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
