Traditional artists like George Jones say, 'We're gonna hold on'

Carol Forsloff - “They’ve stolen our identity,” George Jones said,
referencing Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift who headline Country Music Awards this year, but his complaint is echoed about arts in general,  as some stand firm and sing, "We're gonna hold on."




George Jones , known affectionately as “the Possum” for
his streak of gray-white hair and his down-home songs of life and love, has had
the country music genre as his domain for decades.  He and Tammy Wynette were the king and queen
of country music, during their steamy, raucous marriage, and continued as top
performers both separately and together after their marital split.   Jones
believes modern country music stars, like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood,
don’t sing authentic country music in country music ways and have therefore
stolen the identity of the music.

Jones is the quintessential country sound with the good
old boy diction, background thumping drums, twanging guitars and country music
themes of he or she done wrong.  This is
unlike Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood whose crossover country doesn’t sound
country in presentation to die-hard country performers and fans, as the old
hands fade from view.

Like country music, complaints have raged about whether
or not modern artists have knowledge of the basics in style and arrangement and
simply call anything art.  Whether the
art product is a series of dots on canvas translated into no image at all, or
wires and tangles glued in haphazard ways, new art is said to be something the
viewer must discover in some random way.  When asked about it, the message comes back
the public will decide what is art.

Anyone who wants to write can now publish books, market them
in many ways and even write the news, all without training in writing and
sometimes without talent as well.  News
writers can be citizen journalists of any age who produce material often with
little or no editing, with no background in form, style or content and little
understanding of ethics as well.

Traditional musicians, artists and writers echo the same
concerns as Jones has done about country music.
Country music may fade into an amalgam of sounds that reflects what
might be contemporary stories and sounds, identified with an era.  Art becomes whatever the artist feels and
creates.  Writing becomes ideas to sift,
with the decision of veracity left to the reader.  Artists like Jones wonder if music with a
different sound than country music has had historically should be called
country music or something else altogether.

Jones’ answer for his own performances is to find a
corner in the traditional world of country, just as those from the traditional
worlds of art and writing do as well.
The question comes from folks like Jones, whose message about the
identity of their art forms, seems to be what happens to traditional ways and

methods when the old-timers like them are gone and they can no longer hold on.