Backroads Buzzardy and Rap an Essay by Esteban Erik Stipnieks
Call me an anachronism but this Backroads Buzzard just does not get it. When I worked a warehouse hearing what has become Hip Hop and RnB was depressing. Thanks to the like of Bill Kenuper the New Braunfels I was exposed to was more about action and reputation. The greater truths about a person were said by others or screamed with action. The code was simple if you said you were going to do something you did it. You gave your boss an honest day's work for the pay. Living in Kerrville for four years the code was strengthened. Mooney built the best four place single engine airplanes passing the factory along highway 27 it is hard to notice it. Dougosh while legendary appeared to be a discreet hangar complex on one side of the field. The Johns Hopkins of Mooney repair was impossible to notice unless you knew about it.
The singer songwriter in the 1970s was the bard. Ultimately each song Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald , American Pie , was far less about the songwriter and more about a truth. Townes Van Zandt's Pancho and Lefty was an exercise in irony and betrayal. American Pie of anything was a reactionary song at its core was a grief over the loss of innocence. The early 1990s were in many ways like the early 1970s. There things different.... Right Here, Right Now - Jesus Jones captured the tone of awe as the world that we had gotten and accepted from 1988 to October of 1991 changed radically. The Soviet Union and Eastern Block which had been as accepted in our life as a concrete slab in a slab built house was gone. The Gin Blossom's New Miserable Experience referenced a fallen state and grief of the drop from previous glory. Buzzard Faire which has a heavy dose of Robert Earl Keen Don Williams in his song In his performance of a Dave Loggins song celebrates fidelity and a committed relationship with a woman (it is down at the bottom of the page).
I hear Fergie and her attitude she followed JLO. Akon , Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West ultimately come across as braggarts and women hating boys who use a body of a woman to masturbate in. Women in response use their sexuality to obtain monetary gain from men. When I hear the bulk of hip hop on mainstream radio is a recipe for a woman to feel broken hearted abused heart broken. Also for males the relationship is less then fulfilling. Using a female's body to literally masturbate in lacks an emotional and intellectual connection to the woman.
The Backroads Buzzard's cafe is a scream against philosophic naturalism in the end only materialism can result. Carl Sagan in his series the Cosmos spouts the intellectual soil that Fergie and her attitude takes hold of and grows in. If there is no God you have no groundwork or construct for morality.
So once again you have a values clash. The hedonism of modern secular hip hop and RnB stands contrary to restraint. The Backroads Buzzard's cafe is about slowing down and through revealed truth (the bible) looking at what a God who is sovereign of the universe is doing and to a degree maintaining a connection that while man is the final and highest creation of the universe is not God. Waiting for marriage to have sex is not easy nor natural but to both man and wife keeping that in the marriage realm while not being easy has a reward far more valuable then letting the impulse lead to destruction.
I can not help but grieve when I hear the latest hip hop song on 98.5 the Beat. I get a laugh out of what is real! It is pose striking. The Christian ethic as displayed in many respects still in the hillcountry value system means admitting error and the artist can show his or her flaws without sugar coating applied. The fact that not just the African American community, but Hispanic and Anglo communities are embracing the Cool Pose Culture is a creation of grief. The embrace of lie which I regard as a pile of manure is the rejection of a truth whose value words can not describe.