What country music taught me about Brexit and Donald Trump…

What country music taught me about Brexit and Donald Trump…

Often during discussions around politics, I can find myself at odds with everyone else. Not because I disagree with them, necessarily, but because I approach discussions and debates differently. I am unashamed to say that my ethics and morals are influenced most strongly by my love of pop music, and I guess most importantly for Brexit and Donald Trump, my love of country music. Through listening to country music I engage with certain people, politics and feelings around issues in a way that makes me hesitate to engage in certain debates as they are currently formulated, not that they do not have any merit to them. I would like to use this post to demonstrate a different way of processing both Brexit and the enormous support in America for Donald Trump.

I of course can’t speak for the whole genre of country music in this short blog, also I pretty much exclusively listen to female singers. However I can give some description of my own listening experience. As someone growing up gay in  countryside villages, by the time I was in my late teens I was quite into country music, particularly the female singers who showed a rebellious side. There were many: Shania Twain, Martina McBride, Loretta Lynn, LeAnn Rimes, Miranda Lamber, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jewel to name just a few. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on one band: the Dixie Chicks. They sang about domestic abuse and spoke out against the Iraq war: "Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." Traditional country audiences responded with boycotts, death threats and misogyny: calling them “traitors”, “Dixie Sluts”, “Dixie Bimbos” and one reporter even went as far to say “these women just need smacking around a bit’. The Dixie Chicks on first glance represent the fighting rebellious side I was looking for.

However, what became more and more clear to me through the years I spent listening to them was that this resistance was not just a fuck you to everyone around them, although there was that element there. More fundamentally their music was exploring the question of how to survive and how to live within these spaces, within these communities and with these people; when to back down and when to stand your ground; when to criticise and challenge traditional “country” institutions and values; and when to stand up for them, knowing full well that you are constructed and attached to many of these things as much as they cause you to suffer.

I do acknowledge my privilege in being able to listen to country music in this way, most significantly from being white and therefore I may feel comfortable listening to this genre in ways not available to others. As a genre country music is often associated (and often deservedly so) with being a genre of "whiteness" alongside being misogynist and homophobic, and this is something that others have explored, however I do not have space here to consider too deeply the history and racialization of the genre. Acknowledging this, I will attempt to use country music as a way in to forming a response to both Donald Trump and Brexit that attempts to achieve some sort of reconciliation, but without glossing over or making any apology for racism, misogyny, homophobia or hate crime.

Growing up in those places you understand the struggles the people have, how they feel left behind and that their voices and by extension themselves do not seem to matter. Yet at the time their pride, self-respect and dignity are important. The option to just abandon these people and environments is not always available, and further not always the right thing for the individuals involved - just cutting ties from everything they have ever known. Below is a link to the video to the Dixie Chicks’ version of Patty Griffin’s song “Top Of The World” in which resentment, emotional neglect and suffering get passed down through generations, but also with those is passed compassion and an attempt at collective understanding: ‘everyone’s singing we just want to be heard’.

That is not to say that when push comes to shove, all is forgiven. As after the death threats, misogyny and public abuse the Dixie Chicks received after criticising the President their response in the song “Not Ready To Make Nice” (link below) made it clear: ‘forgive, sounds good; forget, I’m not sure I could”. Some things cannot be forgiven. So in case there is any doubt, Donald Trump is a despicable man and he should be brought to justice for the things he has said and done; the racism, bigotry and hate crime that both fuelled and was exacerbated by Brexit cannot be excused or justified.

Nevertheless there is so much division, there are so many deprived communities in both the UK and the US: with many people who have lost control over their lives - a key part of why Vote Leave’s tag line ‘take back control’ was so effective. Therefore I cannot help but think that the current discourse is missing something. In the scrutiny over Clinton’s and Trump’s polling figures, swing states and the electoral college, I have noticed from some commentators a dismissively complacent attitude that so long as Clinton keeps hold of the ‘key states’ she needs to win, how other states vote does not matter - and by extension these people, these communities, these experiences do not matter.

Similarly with Brexit it seems many are still in debate mode – upholding the divide between remainers and leavers. I am not interested in continuing that fight. My main concern now is to start healing the rifts and divides that Brexit had revealed and exacerbated, and crucially put a stop to the post-Brexit racism, intolerance and hate crime. I know that there is no easy way road to peace, and as with the Dixie Chicks, to expect people to just ‘make nice’ just bulldozes over the experiences and suffering of the people who have had to bear the brunt of Brexit: the 59% increase in racist hate crime and 147% increase in homophobic hate crime. 

We start by holding people to account and taking a firm stand against hate crime, but we must also make sure not to devalue or remove the autonomy of those communities and people who did vote leave on June 23^rd, and similarly those who are unable to trust Hillary Clinton.