Race has gotten a lot more complicated in their lifetimes (and
ours), both in abstract ideologies and in actual liaisons and general hybridizations, and so has music, above and beyond all those
suburban white boys who wanted to be rappers in the 1990s.
The late-twenties writer and music a>cionado Steven Leckart
wrote me last year about the splendidly hybrid music and tastes
of his generation. “I get the sense that the phrase ‘everything
but country’—which was rather popular when I was a teenager—
is starting to go out of fashion,” he said. “When Jack White of
the White Stripes produced Loretta Lynn’s last record and was
nominated for a Grammy, that may not have been on teenagers’
radars, but it’s certainly re?ected online. So you have a thirteen-year-old who happens to like Beck navigating with a click to the
White Stripes and then to Loretta Lynn, and if he likes what he
hears with Loretta even just a little, he will continue to explore
those roots.” The Farm Aid lineups over the last decade suggest
another kind of crossover: everyone from Billy Joel and
B. B. King to Dave Matthews has played alongside Willie Nelson
and a regular array of country musicians. Maybe the music that
systemically. And then climate change is an issue that could
unite us in new ways as it makes clear how interdependent
everything on this planet is, and the extent to which privilege
and consumption are part of the problem. The solutions will
involve modesty as well as innovation.
The anti-environmentalist right has shot itself in both feet in
the past few years, losing credibility and constituency, and a
smart and fast-moving left could make hay out of this, to mix
a few fairly rural metaphors. It would mean giving up vindication
for victory—that is, giving up on triumphing over the wickedness
of one’s enemies and looking at them as unrecruited allies
instead. It might mean giving up on the environmental movement as a separate sector and thinking more holistically about
what we want to protect and why, including people, places,
traditions, and processes outside the wilderness. It might even
mean getting over the notion that left and right are useful or
even adequate ways to describe who we are and what we long for
(or even over the notion of rural and urban, as food gardens proliferate in the latter and sprawl becomes an issue in the former).
sector and think more holistically about what we want to protect and why.
once divided us could unite us as we wander this unfenced
aural landscape.
Fortunately, I think Dick might be a relic. There are particular organizations as well as general tendencies that make me
hopeful. Among them are the resurgent interest in where food
actually comes from, the growing tendency to condemn less
and build coalitions more, and a stronger capacity for thinking
We must also talk about class again, loudly and clearly, without
backing down or forgetting about race. This is the back road down
which lie stronger coalitions, genuine justice, a healthier environment, and maybe even a music that everyone can dance to. a
Weigh in with your thoughts about the way forward for environmental and social activism at www.orionmagazine.org.
