Mississippi: The band Train has a hauntingly stunning tune titled Mississippi that would be perfect as an affirmation of the State and region, but I decided to go with Whiskey Myers’s Mud as the perfect defiance song for the State and it’s muddy waters and riverbanks.
The Carolinas: There are so many tunes celebrate the
Carolinas, and Carolina born Charlie Daniels has one of the best, but
the two below are representative of two other Carolina born artists, the
Marshall Tucker Band and Josh Turner. Marshall Tucker rode the Southern
music renaissance wave in the 1970s and Blue Ridge Mountain Skies has a
perfect lyric, “Carolina is where I’m at, and I’ll always hang my hat,
under those blue ridge mountain skies.” John Turner’s bass vocals are
perfect in his homage to South Carolina and the double meaning of “low
country.”
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Southern culture easily developed in this environment. A worldview in which “heaven” could be perceived on earth allowed the Southerner to find contentment. Peopl, place, and community–a defense of hearth and home–became quintessential Southern traits and an important part of the richness of Southern art. Southern literature is popular because Southern culture is unique and tangible, a thing to be savored not endured. When the break with the Union occurred in 1861, the Southerner easily rallied around his State because the “state” was representative of his people. He fought not for the glory of a “national” entity, but for the protection of his way of life, a way of life threatened by a foreign “other.” They were both “American,” but to the Southerner, their “America” was nothing like the “America” of the North, and no Southerner wished to be “Americanized” by a people with an alien culture and traditions.
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