A new two-week intensive course, \u201cClass, Country Music and Social Change,\u201d will be held for the first time this summer, joining a growing pool of offerings in the Department of Labour Studies that help students better understand the world of work from dynamic and sometimes unexpected angles.<\/p>\n
\u201cCountry artists and the country music establishment have always claimed to speak for the working-class experience,\u201d says course instructor Tim Fowler. \u201cThe music has expressed social change through the lens of class with songs about the Tennessee Valley Authority, the \u2018great migration\u2019 of workers in the southern United States, and oil-patch workers, truckers, farmers and retail workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fowler says the relationship between country music and social change has a long history, even if there are periods or sub-genres in which it isn\u2019t always immediately evident.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, one of the core questions the course investigates is what eras and styles of country have had a more salient message about class and social change,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
LABR 2Q94 will also look at musicians as workers, as well as topics related to race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality \u2014 issues that have been the subject of many recent interviews and think pieces in venues like Pitchfork<\/em>, Apple Music Country and the CBC.<\/p>\n \u201cCountry today is frequently characterized as very white and very male, and I find this worth investigating,\u201d says Fowler.\u00a0\u201cMusically, the genre originated in part from Black music in the southern United States, and the Carter Family, one of the first groups identified as country, was two-thirds women \u2014 so, how did we get from there to here?\u201d<\/p>\n Fowler points to O.B. McClinton\u2019s song The Other One<\/em>, recorded in the 1970s after the artist was frequently mistaken for another Black country music singer, Charley Pride, or to the acceptance speech given by Maren Morris at the 2020 Country Music Awards, in which she thanked Black women in country music, as a few of the examples of race and gender inequality that students might encounter in the course.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve always been intrigued with the different styles of country and what they have to say \u2014 or sometimes don’t say \u2014 about working-class life,\u201d says Fowler, who hopes the course might help people expand their understanding of country music, as well as the issues it reflects.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of people have one particular sound in their mind when they think of country music, so I really do hope the course helps shift some perceptions of the genre,\u201d says Fowler. \u201cThere are many different sounds and many different messages in country music, and speaking for myself, I find what those sounds and messages have to say about working people and social change to be really, really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Kendra Coulter, Chair of the Department of Labour Studies, says the Department offers popular courses that appeal to students with all kinds of interests and goals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe offer valuable, skill-building courses in areas like labour law and collective bargaining, as well as innovative and creative courses that invite students to engage intellectually and emotionally with many facets of work,\u201d says Coulter. \u201cThis spring, students can also choose from in-demand courses like Animals at Work, Sex Work and Sex Workers or the Labour of Sport, in addition to delving into the cultural politics of country music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new two-week intensive course, \u201cClass, Country Music and Social Change,\u201d will be held for the first time this summer, joining a growing pool of offerings in the Department of Labour Studies that help students better understand the world of work from dynamic and sometimes unexpected angles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":71047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,4,38],"tags":[110,522,3126,10073],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71048,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71046\/revisions\/71048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}