Amanda Marie Martinez

My dissertation, "'The Industry is Playing the People Cheap': Race and the Country Music Industry in the Age of the New Right, 1969-1998," reframes the country music genre as the product of Black and Brown artists and listeners, and reveals how the music industry disregarded the music’s multiracial and multiethnic roots and embraced a politics of white conservatism. I analyze the tension between how the music industry marketed the genre of country music as a product exclusively by and for whites, with how musicians and fans engaged with the music in more diverse displays. I argue that while Black and Brown artists resisted the industry’s exclusionary marketing practices and suggested country music had the potential to become a symbol of multiracialism, the music business instead found it more financially valuable to cling to the optics of whiteness. During the rise of the New Right, I reveal how the music industry branded country as the sound of wholesome, family-friendly white conservatism.