http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2003/jul03/jul21/2_tues/news4tuesday.html Americana, radio's most elusive genre
Great music, but just how do you define it?
By Lynne Margolis
Remember ??O Brother, Where Art Thou?? ?? the movie soundtrack that sold about a zillion copies and won all kinds of Grammys last year?
You don??t? What a surprise. It??s not as if radio programmers are trying very hard to remind you. But it is odd that more of them aren??t flipping to Americana, a format that??s all about what people also call roots music or alt.county.
That??s short for alternative, as in alternative to Shania Twain. Or Keith Urban or Toby Keith. It??s music that may have country tendencies, but also has honesty, as opposed to slicked-up videos and fancy marketing ploys.
That??s a big reason why Americana record labels are raking in profits while the rest of the recording industry is about ready to implode.
??What they offer is wisdom, and it??s the kind of wisdom that appeals to people who are in their 30s or 65, says Sirius Satellite Radio programmer Meg Griffin.
But Americana also has a problem: most people in the music business can??t quite figure out what it is, much less how to measure its popularity.
Americana is the Stones singing ??Dead Flowers? or Bruce Springsteen channeling Woody Guthrie on his album ??The Ghost of Tom Joad.? Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young and Ryan Adams are all Americana icons. Bob Dylan ?? acoustic or electric ?? is Americana. So are Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, two steadfast, system-defying country outlaws.
B.B. King is on the cover of the book ??American Roots Music;? Bonnie Raitt wrote the foreward. That book goes with a 2001 PBS series that basically surveyed the history of American music.
Because that??s what roots music is: blues, country, gospel, bluegrass, Western swing, zydeco, Tex-Mex, honky-tonk ?? and a lot of heart and soul. Even pop and punk rock can be grafted to roots music. It??s folk music, whether you think of folk as Pete Seeger or as a melting pot of passed down and traded traditions.
Though a fair number of stations label themselves as roots or Americana, the format??s multiple personality issues are even more complicated because it??s not much different from another format, Album Adult Alternative, or AAA.
Billboard magazine charts director Geoff Mayfield says of Americana, ??It??s a clever term to promote music with.? He hasn??t created listings for Americana or AAA, and Arbitron doesn??t measure Americana listenership. But Jessie Scott, who programs XM Satellite Radio??s Americana-leaning stations, says, ??I think Americana is one of the only growth formats out there.?
In its push to give the format mainstream legitimacy, the four-year-old Americana Music Association started feeding weekly Americana charts to Radio & Record magazine in March.
Unlike most airplay charts, it tallies album spins per week instead of singles and combines data from 70 commercial, public, satellite and internet stations, plus daily and weekly local and syndicated shows. Arbitron won??t even merge commercial and public figures.
So it??s still unclear how many radio listeners want what AMA executive director J.D. May calls a mix of twang and roots rock.
May says AMA is compiling listener data from Americana stations. It already has a profile of the typical listener/consumer, and it??s an advertiser- and retail-friendly demographic: 78 percent male; 65 percent between ages 25 and 44 and earning more than $40,000 annually; and 70 percent with at least bachelor??s degrees.
More than half bought at least 10 CDs and saw five performances in the six months before the survey; 39 percent attended six to 25 shows during that time. They also tend to be CD buyers, not burners.
That survey was done before the ??O Brother? film and soundtrack astonished an industry that could barely remember the concept of left-field smash hits, much less one involving bluegrass.
??Americana appeals to us who always dug our FM radio, who bought Stones records and Beatles records when we were kids,? Griffin says. ??We might not want hard rock, but we don??t want lobotomy rock, either.?
Still, Mayfield??s not going there. Billboard already has an independent albums chart that includes plenty of Americana artists. They also show up on its folk, blues and bluegrass charts, which is exactly what keeps him from giving the genre its own space. He doesn??t like duplication.
??That doesn??t mean we would never do it,? he says.
But he wants to see better-defined boundaries and other evidence that it??s ready to stand on its own. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences turned down the AMA??s first application for a separate Grammy category, and Mayfield says he hasn??t noticed retailers rushing to create Americana sections.
It might not be long, however. Borders Books and Music recently formed a cross-promotion deal with syndicated radio show ??This Week in Americana,? and roots-oriented labels, including Rounder, Bloodshot, Sugar Hill, Yep Roc, New West and Lost Highway, are doing fine with critical darlings such as John Hiatt, the Jayhawks and Allison Krauss. New West??s sales grew 100 percent last year; at 33, Rounder had its best year ever, with a 50 percent increase from 2001.
But Bloodshot co-owner Rob Miller predicts slow growth. ??There is just too much of a stigma attached to the C word,? he says. ??People have really got to open their minds and realize that this stuff is not scary. That it??s not Dolly Parton singing ??9 to 5.???
