Hill People
There are beach people and city people and plains people and desert people and bottoms people and hill people. I can be most of those kinds of people for a little while but there is no denying that deep down inside, I am a hill person. The mountains simply speak to me. I like the air and the lakes and the uneven skylines and the strange people who populate towns carved out of the side of rocks.
Being a hill person might explain my penchant for country music. As my readers know, I stan Dolly Parton but that isn’t unique enough to count as street cred. Everyone stans Dolly Parton. If someone doesn’t stan Dolly Parton, they are a serial killer.
My real street cred is that I generally know more about the genre — its roots, its politics, its economics and especially its racial contours — than a Black woman is expected to know. I have published essays on why hip-hop and country music are natural bedfellows (hip-hop is youth culture and “country” geographies are also Black geographies). I have also judged essay competitions for country music collections and spent more than my fair share of time at live music venues where “good ol’ boys” roam free. Rednecks don’t scare me. Theirs is a matriarchal culture, as is mine. Everyone makes way for a robust Black woman when they are raised in a matriarchal culture. I’m safer there than I am Silicon Valley or private country clubs, places where they do not have…
