The Case of Country Western Existentialism: Popular Music and Philosophy

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Something about country western music seems to render it extra-unfit for philosophical discussion. The top radio format in the U.S. today, with a devoted fan base in the U.K., the music reeks of populism and therefore anti-intellectualism. Despite its aptitude for tackling the raw side of life — divorce, drinking, driving, etc. — country western music also seems guilty of trafficking in cheap emotions, maudlin gimmicks, and macho posturing. Above all it betrays the best side of its populist potential by speaking an ethos of right-wing white sexist nativism.
However, country music is also a genre that permits philosophical reflection. Certain complex themes play out repeatedly in country songs, not just in their lyrics but even in the structure and arrangement of their music. I will focus on one song, Townes Van Zandt’s Ballad of Pancho and Lefty, a particularly dramatic example of what the genre is capable of. Using that song I will consider two intimately related existential configurations in country music: 1) a complicated, perhaps fatal relation to the past, which is anything but the nostalgia-relation; and 2) the motif of the double, in this case, the mysterious, possibly oneiric connection between the two characters featured in the song. By the end of the song its narrator—like a Nietzschean genealogist of morals—finds himself theorizing both a heroic past and the impossibility of theories about it.

Stream: Arts Theory and Criticism

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Brian Seitz lives in New York City and teaches at Babson College, outside of Boston. He specializes in social and political philosophy, continental philosophy, and philosophy of culture. He is the author of The Subject of Political Representation (SUNY Press), and the forthcoming Politology: The Athenians and the Iroquois. As co-editor of the Hot Topics: Philosophy and Culture Series (SUNY Press), he has also published Eating Culture; Etiquette; Fashion Statements (in production), and is working on two more volumes in the series, Without Class and Bad Habits. He is currently writing a book with Nickolas Pappas (City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center) on country western existentialism.