Similar to NASCAR, no one’s ever accused the country western genre of having a rainbow coalition of fans and consumers. With few exceptions Country music and culture has proudly portrayed itself as being the domain of White, Southern, and Rural artists and listeners.
But after generations of homogeny, Country Western radio and labels are faced with a question that virtually every other industry is struggling to answer: How do we prosper in a space where ethnic consumers of color are starting to outnumber our core base of white consumers?
Traditionally, Country Western’s audiences have been well over 90% white. But in an America that now has over 100 million Black, Hispanic, Asian, and multicultural citizens (and climbing) radio stations and retailers have seen a steady decline in the format and its sales.
“There's a whole market out there waiting to be tapped and can help boost country record sales, which everybody knows are down. I keep telling them, if you want to increase your business among minorities, start signing some!” says Frankie Staton, co-founder of the Black Country Music Association (BCMA). According to a study done in the late 1990s, 25% of African Americans claimed to be country western music fans.
While African-Americans comprise 12.7% of the total U.S. population. A recent marketing survey, Simmons Study of Media and Markets (showed that between 17 and 24% of African-American adults, eighteen and older, in major markets, listened to country radio. Working with the above figures, the country music industry projects that approximately 2% of their total listening audience is black. Though this seems small, most African-Americans country listeners are females 18-44, a hugely desirable marketing demo. This also indicates that record labels have, for the most part, discounted the possibility of gaining a larger share of the African-American listening audience.
Even today, when many think of people of color in country western music and culture, what often comes to mind is Eddie Murphy sacking that Honky-tonk bar in 48HRS, the occasional Ray Charles ditty and the seemingly curious popularity of cowboy hats and boots in many Mexican American communities.
So what’s the solution for the future of a traditionally white form in an increasingly ethnically diverse universe? To more accurately understand this, one must reconsider past misnomers:
One of the most commercially popular singers in music history is one Charlie Pride. A trailblazing Black country western singer, the 68-year-old Pride has sold a stunning 70 million albums worldwide, won countless awards and loyal fans. And while Pride isn’t the norm, the place of black singers is less unusual than one might think.
In the early 1900s Rufe “Tee-Tot” Payne, a black blues/country singer garnered moderate fame in the Alabama for his soulful western tunes about daily rural life. As a street musician in the 1930s Payne mentored an aspiring singer named King Hiram Williams. Hiram later became a sensation under the moniker “Hank Williams.” Hank Williams once said Payne gave him “all the music training I ever had.”
From figures like Payne, DeFord Bailey, Charlie Pride, O.B. McClinton and Big Al Downing, to contemporaries like Cowboy Troy over to Tejano music, which is hybrid of anglo country western and traditional Mexican folk music, the participation of non-whites in country western music has been overlooked. Even Nashville’s Music Row (still home of the biggest country labels) and country western radio formats have remained slow to sign or support black and non-white country artists.
Ironically, the genre’s most popular white western stars have openly experimented with “urban” influences and sensibilities to keep their music fresh. (Think: Shania Twain, Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, etc). This is one of the many reasons so many ethnic listeners see so many commonalities between country western and traditionally urban/ethnic-centric formats like R&B, Blues and Soul (i.e. relationships, money woes, day-in-the-life struggles, etc.) that the barriers of who should listen to what kind of music is becoming a non-issue. In fact it’s been said that the only difference between country and blues is the chords and the color of the singer.
As demographics continue to shift, more and more ethnic listeners and artists will embrace, influence and support country western music. For the genre to survive and thrive going forward, it must reach out to these consumers and audiences as it did to build its previous core audience.
