Americana/Roots music is a vehicle for people across the world to express themselves in a shared musical language of common people.
For many cultures of the world, the most prominent musical genres are either highly parochial or highly corporatized (the latter also being the case in the USA).
Americana/Roots music still sits in place apart from those other genres, and while this probably limits the possible financial success of its practitioners, it preserves its authenticity and therefore it's broad appeal.
That raises the question, why doesn't every other form of authentic folk music around the world have the same broad appeal? Why aren't musicians all over the world taken up, say, Indian or Chinese folk music in total (vs borrowing themes or instruments)?
Because even Americana/Roots music has been a major source of the waves of US cultural and economic imperialism that have flowed over the world, from at least the early days of jazz and and definitely in the days of blues, rock, r&b, and rap.
darkerside · 11m ago
I'd say all the popular genres are descended from the same musical tree, from baroque to classical to romantic to modern. Americana is probably barely a century old, and is just another branch on that trunk.
Eastern folk music is a different plant.
African drum music as well, but is a hybrid that has integrated itself into the modern music structure.
Also, there's a park in Tokyo, where people dress in "rockabilly" outfits, not unlike the ones in the video.
brudgers · 4h ago
To my taste, a lot of great Americana music comes from Canadian musicians.
Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
gspencley · 1h ago
> Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
There are geographical similarities but I think it is more cultural.
Culturally, Canada and the USA are extremely similar. What a lot of people who don't live in Canada often fail to realize is that the vast, overwhelming majority of our population is concentrated in southern Canada... and that these areas are often even SOUTH OF PARTS OF THE USA in terms of latitude.
For example, Seattle WA lies on roughly the same latitude as Ottawa, ON which is quite north of Toronto. Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit.
When broadcast television and radio were in their prime, we all watched American TV and listened to American radio (and the northern USA got Canadian channels etc).
In border towns like Vancouver and Windsor, it's not uncommon for people to have family on both sides of the border or to even live in one country and hold a day job in another.
A lot of Canadians have winter homes in southern states. Florida is a popular destination for east-coast Canadians and, while I don't know if it has changed, a typical visitor visa for Canadians let us stay for up to 6 months before we have to go back. And a lot of people even hold dual-citizenship.
kashunstva · 1h ago
> I think it is more cultural
Dual citizen here living on the Canadian side. It will be interesting to see how the political unraveling in the U.S. will force Canadians to regard and reinforce aspects of our culture that are distinct.
It is also interesting that you mention Canadian snowbirds. That too, at least anecdotally seems to be changing. In the last few weeks I ran into two individuals who are both working on unloading their homes in Florida on account all of this xenophobic sentiment.
foobarian · 25m ago
I always thought it was because of long dark days in winter due to high latitudes, when there is nothing better to do than make music :-D Also explains the Seattle grunge, and all the good musicians from Alaska.
brudgers · 51m ago
To me geography is inseparable from culture. It is the water in which cultures swim.
E.g. proximity to the US is why US broadcast TV was a normal experience for many Canadians.
UI_at_80x24 · 1h ago
>Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit.
Born and raised in SOUTH Detroit!
Howdy from the East Side of Windsor.
r14c · 3h ago
Canada and the US are both part of North America. Maybe Americana transcends borders and political divisions.
RajT88 · 2h ago
Canada is not terribly different.
Near the border, the people on either side talk the same. You go north/south the accents vary on a spectrum.
Oh yahh, dem yoopers are almost canucks!
sandworm101 · 2h ago
The accents actually change more east-west. That's why all the movies filmed in Vancouver using local actors sound just like those filmed in LA. The "neutral" accents of the US midwest are similar to those of the Canadian prairies. Only in the east does the north-south thing become so prominent.
ZeWaka · 1h ago
> Only in the east does the north-south thing become so prominent.
Sounds just like the situation here in the US!
kevin_thibedeau · 3h ago
It doesn't have Nashville funneling artists into a narrowly defined genre and excluding anyone outside the system from airplay.
brudgers · 3h ago
Despite its Grand Ol' Opery fame, on the ground Nashville has a diversity of musicians because of musical infrastructure, cost of living, and a social normality of musicianship.
Of course Nashville is not a hothouse of radical music, but we are talking about Americana right?
kevin_thibedeau · 3h ago
I speak of the corporate "Nashville" music publishing scene that controls what gets promoted as the latest flavor of "Country", not what happens locally in the city. A lot of what gets classed as Americana would have been played on country radio into the 70s.
brudgers · 1h ago
Pedal steel is perhaps the most Americana of instruments; there were few pedal steel players better than Jerry Garcia, and few bands with larger repertoires of Americana than the Grateful Dead.
In the 1970’s, the Grateful Dead weren’t played on country radio. Indeed they were barely on radio at all anywhere until Touch of Gray in the mid 1980’s.
And then only because of MTV…which in the early days refused to air videos by black musicians.
Nashville was no different from the rest of US pop culture industry then. And is no different today. Americana still fares much better there than EDM, Punk, and Rap.
greenavocado · 3h ago
Corporate Nashville is rich elites picking winners that suit and promote their society's agendas
sandworm101 · 4h ago
Art is a comment on culture. It is often easier for an outsider to comment than it is for someone steeped in that culture. There are no doubt many aspects of American culture that go unnoticed by Americans but are obvious to Canadians.
RajT88 · 2h ago
I grew up near Chicago. Detecting someone who grew up in Toronto is kind of like one or more scenes from Inglourious Basterds. "Soory", "aboot".
pyrale · 2h ago
> There are no doubt many aspects of American culture that go unnoticed by Americans but are obvious to Canadians.
Also maybe some aspects of geography, like knowing in which continent Canada is.
bentley · 14m ago
The average American knows that Canada is in North America, as does the average Canadian, the average Englishman, and the average Australian.
The average non‐American is from outside the Anglosphere, and so may be from a culture that considers North America and South America to be a single continent. But continents don’t have an objective definition, only a cultural one, and in the language and culture of the Anglosphere the Americas are distinct continents, America is a country, and Americans are that country’s people.
I’ve never met a Canadian who clamored to be called an American. (Except naturalized citizens!)
bee_rider · 2h ago
Although I don’t have much faith in the geographical talents of my countrymen, I think most of us know where Canada is.
I usually try to use US-ian instead of American, but it looks really stupid and so I get why it is pretty widespread to call us Americans.
thimkerbell · 1h ago
and mr. young.
SllX · 4h ago
That’s a check
mikrl · 3h ago
One of the cultural touchstones of being a Canadian is the smug yet bleak realization that your tiny (in population) nation has produced so many titans of various creative fields, but everyone thinks they’re American because they had to bugger off down there to get their careers going.
Steppenwolf being the quintessential example.
spamizbad · 3h ago
Not sure if Canadians are aware of this, but Canada does two things really well:
1) Developing its own domestic artists/musicians, to a much greater degree than the US (eg https://www.factor.ca/)
2) Greatly restricting smaller foreign acts (especially from the US) from performing in Canada for commercial purposes
Yes, point #2 also applies to the US, but it's not enforced. But if you cross into Canada with musical instruments, they'll put the fear of God into you.
This is largely why the phenomena you describe exists: artists can develop within their domestic cocoon, without being crowded-out by Americans, and then tour their larger, wealthier neighbor to greatly expand their profile virtually risk-free.
jchw · 3h ago
Even as a U.S. citizen this hits me frequently. A lot of amazing comedians I didn't realize were Canadian for a long time, as a U.S. citizen. Norm Macdonald comes to mind, but he's far from alone.
brudgers · 1h ago
Canada has government programs requiring broadcasters to broadcast Canadian content. So there are strong economic incentives to find, fund, develop, and promote Canadian artists working in various media.
mikrl · 53m ago
In my undergrad days I learned about the MAPL classification to be considered Canadian content: Music, Artist, Performance, Lyrics
IIRC you need to hit 3/4 to be considered Canadian content.
At that time J Biebs was big, but since his music and lyrics were written by Americans and he performed/recorded in the States, his music was not CanCon despite him being Canadian. So, at the radio station I volunteered at, his music would count towards the 30% quota of not-CanCon music.
bee_rider · 2h ago
Interesting. He seems extremely Canadian to me. A lot of his jokes play off this sort of fish-out-of-water vibe…
jchw · 2h ago
For Norm, just the crude nature of a lot of his jokes felt like something that was very "American", at least certainly in the 90s and 2000s. His delivery, on the other hand, always felt fairly unique to me. It's also possible I just mistook characteristics of Canadian comics as being those of American comics by simply not realizing how many popular comedians are Canadian.
firesteelrain · 3h ago
TIAMS (mentioned in article) stopped broadcasting I thought. RNEI and Radio Carptha took over. You can hear it on WRMI out of Florida every week.
Bob Catface (https://bsky.app/profile/bobcatface.bsky.social) has a Discord (Mostly Shortwave Discord: discord.gg/fr4Uuw4z5h) where you can receive notices when these come on the air. If you are a ham radio operator or SWL, you can decode MSFK usually with these shows.
cowsandmilk · 4h ago
See also Japan being a stronghold of Ivy League fashion.
The Articles of Interest podcast (affiliated with 99% Invisible, I think) has a good series on Ivy fashion, and covers Take Ivy and the Japanese interest in it extensively.
Fussell's Class and (especially) Birnbach et al's The Official Preppy Handbook also treat extensively of the style.
devin · 3h ago
Here to vouch for this. This is a fantastic review of Ivy or "prep" style. Even if you aren't into fashion I think you'll find it fascinating.
mopsi · 3h ago
And some of the most influential Westerns were shot by Italians in the deserts of Spain, often without any of them ever having set foot in the US, and with a grasp of English barely a notch above miming. The stereotypical Western (as it is known today) is largely Italian-made, especially when it comes to the music (Ennio Morricone): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western
int_19h · 29m ago
This sort of thing has a long-standing tradition in Europe, by the way. Karl May of the Winnetou fame wrote what is probably one of the popular Western book series in the world without ever having been to US.
Calling it "Spaghetti", in turn, says something about American stereotypes of Italians.
anthk · 54m ago
We Spaniards call them Spaguetti Westerns too.
Aloisius · 24m ago
Indeed, Wikipedia says the term was coined by a Spaniard:
> According to veteran spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase spaghetti Western was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti.
anthk · 22m ago
Maybe because:
- Italian directors
- Shooting scenes looking chaotic, like an Spaghetti dish
corimaith · 3h ago
It's a great twist of irony perhaps that it is media that takes cultural appropriation (albeit from a point of admiration) often ends up reaching further than the original.
It's not just for americana, many staples for european-inspired or gothic fantasy are made by the japanese, even if most of these creators don't speak english. Well in a sense perhaps it's the unique feature of the Western legacy that it's virtually transcended for everyone to use, rather than just a single group.
anthk · 2h ago
The Western movies and books are widely known for every Grandpa in Spain except for the actual Far West history.
In the 70's, tons of people bought a-dime novels full of cheap Western like 'pulp' stories written from Spanish authors with English nicknames at the cover.
Later, with the widely spread television, spies and officers/detectives took that role seamlessly, with Charles Bronson et all. Because in the end it's the same story everywhere. Lonely wolf vs the baddies. That stuff sold well everywhere, because every society has its badass hero.
I'm pretty sure tons of French directors set lots of drama/action movies in the US too.
Oh, and not just white officers. The Asian Martial Arts exploitation with Bruce Lee and clones was widely seen from their sons too in late 70's/early 80's.
And these would be surely cloned in the US too.
Ninjas, samurais and exotic Japanese and Chinese fighters were pretty much everywhere too. And, OFC, Dragon Ball in Europe was a huge success in late 80's, even if at the beginning it just was a comedy manga/anime.
Dragon Ball does the same in the end with the Chinese culture being remade from the Japanese as a parody...
The French had Blueberry, Lucky Luke...
kergonath · 1h ago
> The French had Blueberry, Lucky Luke...
Franco-Belgian… Goscinny and Giraud were French, but Morris and Charlier were Belgian. I am not writing this to pick nits, but the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées were very much a synergy, worth more than the separate parts.
anthk · 55m ago
Yes, I know. Astérix, Gaston...
867-5309 · 41m ago
came to comments seeking an Offspring album reference, disappointedly wrote this one, then left
For many cultures of the world, the most prominent musical genres are either highly parochial or highly corporatized (the latter also being the case in the USA).
Americana/Roots music still sits in place apart from those other genres, and while this probably limits the possible financial success of its practitioners, it preserves its authenticity and therefore it's broad appeal.
That raises the question, why doesn't every other form of authentic folk music around the world have the same broad appeal? Why aren't musicians all over the world taken up, say, Indian or Chinese folk music in total (vs borrowing themes or instruments)?
Because even Americana/Roots music has been a major source of the waves of US cultural and economic imperialism that have flowed over the world, from at least the early days of jazz and and definitely in the days of blues, rock, r&b, and rap.
Eastern folk music is a different plant.
African drum music as well, but is a hybrid that has integrated itself into the modern music structure.
Also, there's a park in Tokyo, where people dress in "rockabilly" outfits, not unlike the ones in the video.
Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
There are geographical similarities but I think it is more cultural.
Culturally, Canada and the USA are extremely similar. What a lot of people who don't live in Canada often fail to realize is that the vast, overwhelming majority of our population is concentrated in southern Canada... and that these areas are often even SOUTH OF PARTS OF THE USA in terms of latitude.
For example, Seattle WA lies on roughly the same latitude as Ottawa, ON which is quite north of Toronto. Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit.
When broadcast television and radio were in their prime, we all watched American TV and listened to American radio (and the northern USA got Canadian channels etc).
In border towns like Vancouver and Windsor, it's not uncommon for people to have family on both sides of the border or to even live in one country and hold a day job in another.
A lot of Canadians have winter homes in southern states. Florida is a popular destination for east-coast Canadians and, while I don't know if it has changed, a typical visitor visa for Canadians let us stay for up to 6 months before we have to go back. And a lot of people even hold dual-citizenship.
Dual citizen here living on the Canadian side. It will be interesting to see how the political unraveling in the U.S. will force Canadians to regard and reinforce aspects of our culture that are distinct.
It is also interesting that you mention Canadian snowbirds. That too, at least anecdotally seems to be changing. In the last few weeks I ran into two individuals who are both working on unloading their homes in Florida on account all of this xenophobic sentiment.
E.g. proximity to the US is why US broadcast TV was a normal experience for many Canadians.
Born and raised in SOUTH Detroit!
Howdy from the East Side of Windsor.
Near the border, the people on either side talk the same. You go north/south the accents vary on a spectrum.
Oh yahh, dem yoopers are almost canucks!
Sounds just like the situation here in the US!
Of course Nashville is not a hothouse of radical music, but we are talking about Americana right?
In the 1970’s, the Grateful Dead weren’t played on country radio. Indeed they were barely on radio at all anywhere until Touch of Gray in the mid 1980’s.
And then only because of MTV…which in the early days refused to air videos by black musicians.
Nashville was no different from the rest of US pop culture industry then. And is no different today. Americana still fares much better there than EDM, Punk, and Rap.
Also maybe some aspects of geography, like knowing in which continent Canada is.
The average non‐American is from outside the Anglosphere, and so may be from a culture that considers North America and South America to be a single continent. But continents don’t have an objective definition, only a cultural one, and in the language and culture of the Anglosphere the Americas are distinct continents, America is a country, and Americans are that country’s people.
I’ve never met a Canadian who clamored to be called an American. (Except naturalized citizens!)
I usually try to use US-ian instead of American, but it looks really stupid and so I get why it is pretty widespread to call us Americans.
Steppenwolf being the quintessential example.
1) Developing its own domestic artists/musicians, to a much greater degree than the US (eg https://www.factor.ca/)
2) Greatly restricting smaller foreign acts (especially from the US) from performing in Canada for commercial purposes
Yes, point #2 also applies to the US, but it's not enforced. But if you cross into Canada with musical instruments, they'll put the fear of God into you.
This is largely why the phenomena you describe exists: artists can develop within their domestic cocoon, without being crowded-out by Americans, and then tour their larger, wealthier neighbor to greatly expand their profile virtually risk-free.
IIRC you need to hit 3/4 to be considered Canadian content.
At that time J Biebs was big, but since his music and lyrics were written by Americans and he performed/recorded in the States, his music was not CanCon despite him being Canadian. So, at the radio station I volunteered at, his music would count towards the 30% quota of not-CanCon music.
https://swling.com/blog/2023/08/radio-carpathia-and-rnei-to-...
Bob Catface (https://bsky.app/profile/bobcatface.bsky.social) has a Discord (Mostly Shortwave Discord: discord.gg/fr4Uuw4z5h) where you can receive notices when these come on the air. If you are a ham radio operator or SWL, you can decode MSFK usually with these shows.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Ivy
First of seven episodes of theirs about Ivy:
https://www.articlesofinterest.co/podcast/episode/338532f2/a...
Fussell's Class and (especially) Birnbach et al's The Official Preppy Handbook also treat extensively of the style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnetou
> According to veteran spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase spaghetti Western was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti.
- Italian directors
- Shooting scenes looking chaotic, like an Spaghetti dish
It's not just for americana, many staples for european-inspired or gothic fantasy are made by the japanese, even if most of these creators don't speak english. Well in a sense perhaps it's the unique feature of the Western legacy that it's virtually transcended for everyone to use, rather than just a single group.
In the 70's, tons of people bought a-dime novels full of cheap Western like 'pulp' stories written from Spanish authors with English nicknames at the cover.
Later, with the widely spread television, spies and officers/detectives took that role seamlessly, with Charles Bronson et all. Because in the end it's the same story everywhere. Lonely wolf vs the baddies. That stuff sold well everywhere, because every society has its badass hero.
I'm pretty sure tons of French directors set lots of drama/action movies in the US too.
Oh, and not just white officers. The Asian Martial Arts exploitation with Bruce Lee and clones was widely seen from their sons too in late 70's/early 80's.
And these would be surely cloned in the US too.
Ninjas, samurais and exotic Japanese and Chinese fighters were pretty much everywhere too. And, OFC, Dragon Ball in Europe was a huge success in late 80's, even if at the beginning it just was a comedy manga/anime.
Dragon Ball does the same in the end with the Chinese culture being remade from the Japanese as a parody...
The French had Blueberry, Lucky Luke...
Franco-Belgian… Goscinny and Giraud were French, but Morris and Charlier were Belgian. I am not writing this to pick nits, but the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées were very much a synergy, worth more than the separate parts.