written by Nathan
Being from New Orleans, I always want the world bathed in Jazz. Jazz for me, is the sound of musical ambassadorship. It is the intellectual and cultural rigor of my country’s history. It is her gift to the world.
As a music-appreciating traveler, there are many tunes that make my toes start tapping, those both foreign and familiar: Chinese Pop, Bollywood soundtracks, Eastern African ancient hymns… most of all, what brings me home time and again though is Country. Country music goes great with beer and boots and dust and long drives with the windows rolled down. And, it turns out, country music goes great with a trip around the world.
From Japanese Cowboys clicking their boots up from the subway station toward Shibuya crossing, to the Chinese peasant listening to the crackle from an old tape player in Changsha, and from the wails of old Westerns in the ‘New Market’ of Kolkata, to the modern Country ballads belting from the streets of Muslim Mumbai, and even from the dank hollow of the “Cave Hotel” off Piazza in downtown Addis Ababa, country music sings its lil’ ole’ heart out. Neighborhood twangs play off the sheet metal rooftops spreading out around us in Asylum neighborhood of Accra, Ghana; country music brings us home. After a long day of bus rides to a small town, Debre Marcos, in the Ethiopian highlands not frequented by many ‘ferengues’, we found Dixie Chicks and Dolly Parton at a juice shop. We lingered after buying chocolate bars and water so that Brittany could sing along to “Wide Open Spaces.”
Country, Jazz, Rock and Reggae are four forms of musical cross-cultural harmony which we find everywhere in the world in various forms. Often, there’s a story behind why the person you meet loves each: a favorite movie, an old friend, a teacher, some long forgotten musical encounter. We used to joke a lot that ‘Red, Red Wine’ by UB40 was the most popular song in the world (that or “Buffalo Soldier!”).
“Country road, take me home, to the place, that I belong.” these words, sung by Toots and the Maytals, John Denver, or the Carpenters, could be a theme for all the travel we have done these past five months - while we find ourselves in cities, it is on the broken, dirt, cobbled, and riddled ‘country’ roads where we find home.
I felt so lucky to have found Country with my betrothed on the tiny pine tree lanes of Pearl River County, on our road trips through southern and western Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, or Northern California… I understand better now how Country music is another form of ambassadorship abroad. Its workingman’s tales and soft true blues, its kindness, its harshness, its poetry without vanity. Thank you Country! Thanks Merle, and Doc, and Willie, and Hank! We miss you all, we will treat you with the greatest veneration you are due when we come home!
Although we hear it everywhere, our personal country music collection is sadly small…please send some songs our way! If country just isn’t your bag, send us another one of your favorites:
bittystarr@gmail.com.
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