Moderator: Alan Parkes, University of Delaware
Aidan Levy, “Way Out West: Stetsons, Mohawks, and Frontiers of Sound and Style”
The cowboy hat and the mohawk are deeply entrenched symbols in the iconography of American popular music, synonymous with punk nonconformity and country swagger. However, there is a counternarrative of artists of color who have signified on the fashion and style of cowboys and Native Americans to critique America’s founding myths, exposing the country’s settler colonial past while simultaneously honoring indigenous culture and claiming a shared cultural heritage—an emancipatory vision through sound and style. This presentation begins with Sonny Rollins and traces this history of sartorial and coiffed resistance to the present. In the 1957 album Way Out West, Rollins paid tribute to one of his idols, Herb Jeffries, the “Bronze Buckaroo.” Rollins and photographer William Claxton shot the iconic cover photo in the Mojave Desert, with the rogue saxophonist wearing a Stetson and holster, brandishing his tenor like a six-shooter with a rented steer’s skull in the background. The album crossed a new sonic frontier while subverting racial stereotypes as a forerunner to Blazing Saddles. In 1963, Rollins started wearing a mohawk haircut, not as a metonym for nonconformity, but to pay homage to indigenous music and culture. In performances, he would frequently wear a cowboy hat only to remove it mid-performance and ironically reveal a mohawk underneath, claiming not only the tradition of the western as his own cultural inheritance, but also the buried history of dispossession that represents the dark side of the American dream. To what extent has this tradition been an act of cultural appropriation? To what extent has it been used for cultural critique? I will consider this lineage of resistance through the iconography of the cowboy hat and the mohawk, including Joe Strummer, Lil Nas X, Taboo from Black Eyed Peas, Shaboozey, and Cowboy Carter.
Hannah Moltz, “Y2K Cowgirl or US Imperial-Core? Examining the Enduring Legacy of the Cowboy and Reconfiguring the Contours and Limitations of the Cowgirl Aesthetic as Subversive Resistance”
What does the rising popularity of Y2K styles, particularly the Y2K cowgirl, reflect within the contemporary context of challenges to US imperialism, counter-offenses to these challenges from coalitions of formerly colonized nations, some of the largest protests in US history, and widespread disenchantment with the United States’ imperial agenda at home? Pop feminism continues to supply a steady stream of subversive starlets like Chappell Roan, Kacey Musgraves, and Sabrina Carpenter - whose looks and sounds can be linked to the many cowgirls before them in Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Madonna, and many more. The cowgirl motif enjoys a far reach, found in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, Rina Sawayama’s “This Hell,” and arguably the highest impact homage to the cowgirl in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. This paper will examine the roots of the cowgirl aesthetic, the signals deployed by the aesthetic, and compare the critical gaze applied to different bodies who utilize it to send messages to their audiences about who they are. It will ask if this look constitutes an aesthetic of resistance and liberation, and what the limits and accomplishments of that aesthetic might be, or another nostalgic trend to drive over-consumption and diminish attention given to aesthetics that signal counter-cultures and drive organization and direct action. It seems worth wondering whether or not this is an aesthetic of resistance or a continuation of a decades long infatuation with subverting the cowboy to create the cowgirl - one with equal opportunity to dominate and exploit rather than liberate from a culture of imperial violence. To consider these questions I will engage the work of Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, Nell Irvin Painter’s History of White People, Tansy E Hoskins Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, as well as journal publications from Nicole Doer, Lisa Jacobson, Lydia Goehr, and Meredith Levande.
Lisa Sorrell, “From the Saddle to the Stage: Country Music and the Evolution of Cowboy Boots”
Cowboy boots have long been the standard footwear of country music, both for the performers and their fans. Exploring the history of the cowboy boot, examining how they evolved from plain black boots the cowboys of trail drives wore, to the brightly colored, high-heeled, pointed-toe footwear we recognize today, this project proposes how this evolution happened alongside, and for the benefit of, entertainment. Given that there is little academic research on cowboy boots, and that the craft of cowboy boot making is traditionally passed along orally from master to student, primary sources are limited to historical photos, vintage boot catalogs, and the memories of aging boot makers. With over thirty years of experience as a cowboy boot maker, I have access to the craft and its embedded knowledge, giving me unique access into its history and traditions. This project will highlight how cowboy boots, the most universal staple of country music fashion, contributed visually and aesthetically to country music from its beginnings to today.
Jacob Kopcienski, “‘White Trash Revelry’: Rural Queer Style, Narrative, and Strategy in Adeem the Artist’s Country Music and Media”
In their 2023 Opry Debut, the non-binary, queer, Knoxville-based musician Adeem the Artist performed their single “Middle of a Heart” wearing bright red lipstick, wide-brim hat, and a floral jean jacket. Their flamboyant working-class apparel and twangy country vocal affectations underscored the song’s lyrics, which trace tensions between pride, restrictive expectations, and violence in small-town American life. Critics lauded Adeem’s performances and Americana Emerging Artist of the Year nomination as a progressive shift in rural politics and country music industries. Yet, performers like Jason Aldean and conservative legislators in Tennessee claimed rural landscapes, iconography, and styles for conservative values through performances and queer/transphobic legislation. This paper examines the sonic, narrative, and aesthetic strategies Adeem the Artist uses to navigate contested symbols and experiences in rural life and Country Music.
Using quare (E. Patrick Johnson, 2001) as an intersectional framework, I argue that Adeem “sincerely” uses country aesthetics (Goldin-Perschbacher, 2022), narratives (Thomas-Reid, 2020) and sound (Royster 2012; Stoever 2016; Murchison 2018) to represent queer negotiations with rural power structures. Cast Iron Pansexual (2021) queers Appalachian aesthetics and gender conventions to construct non-linear narratives through shame, identity, and place (Halberstam, 2005; Gray, 2009). White Trash Revelry (2022) reworks sonic and narrative tropes structuring white, working-class masculinity in 1990s Country Music to express disappointment in rural economies and national politics, while imagining intersectional coalitions (Marcus, 2024).
Adapting “acoustic citizenship” (Sonevytsky, 2019), I argue that Adeem uses these stylistic moves in ways that model aesthetic strategies for navigating country music industry and re-envisioning rural municipal politics. Adeem’s grass-roots social media “Redneck Fundraisers” (2022-2024) to produce country albums by circumventing queerphobic industry barriers. Their music videos (e.g. “Run This Town”) use rural queer styles to reflect rural activists' ambivalent attachment to municipal politics, while constructing coalitions that address federal and state-level political failures.
