| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 102.1

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 102.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Country Music Goes to War

Edited by Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson

(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Pp. viii, 250. Illustrations, references, discographies, notes, $35.00.)

This volume explores how country music songs, performers, and entrepreneurs have responded to the opportunities and challenges of war. In the wake of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the resulting spate of songs such as the mournful "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," the belligerent "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and the defiant "John Walker's Blues," this collection also serves as a timely reminder of country music's capacity to render momentous events more intelligible for millions of Americans.

This is not to imply that this wide-ranging, albeit somewhat unfocused, anthology restricts its attention to the United States. Rae Wear offers a useful introduction to Australian troubadour Brian Letton and the ideological ambidexterity that fuels his populist critique of globalization. Less successful is David A. Wilson's analysis of paramilitary Ulster loyalists' recasting of popular American songs as anthems of Loyalist identity and anti-Catholic bigotry. Because country music held no particular appeal or meaning to paramilitary tunesmiths, who ransacked multiple musical genres, Wilson's essay seems a poor fit for the collection.

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