Songs that Cross Borders

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Coming off our adventures with Square Dancing, and Jad's dive into the world of Dolly Parton, we look back at one our favorites. About a decade ago, we found out that American country music is surprising popular in places like Zimbabwe, Thailand, and South Africa. Aaron Fox, an anthropologist of music at Columbia University, tells us that quite simply, country music tells a story that a lot of us get. Then, intrepid international reporter Gregory Warner takes us along on one of his very first forays into another country, where he discovers an unexpected taste of home. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. Aaron Foxes book: Real Country: Music And Language In Working-Class Culture Gregory Warner's podcast Rough Translation

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N. Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:14.9	Yeah.
0:18.8	Hey, I'm Jedd. I'm Robert Krellelovich. Radio Lab. And we have been spending a lot of time dancing and singing lately. We just put out a thing about square dancing. Yeah. You have the dolly thing going on in another, another operation over there. Yes, sir. And both of those things have kind of a question at the heart of them, which is, is it mine or yours?
0:38.8	Is it mine? Is it yours? Could be everybody's, you know, and there's some music that does
0:42.8	sort of break through. Exactly. And the crazy thing is like 11 years ago, we did a show called
0:48.1	pop music, which I think it was initially like about like why are certain things catchy, like why do certain earworms get stuck in your head? Right. But I think it was initially like about like why are certain things catchy, like why do certain
0:56.2	earworms get stuck in your head?
0:57.5	Right.
0:57.9	But I think it also ended up being more interestingly about why do certain songs seem to sort
1:03.6	of just slip across borders.
1:05.1	From weird places from Tennessee to Zimbabwe, say, or then from to Afghanistan.
1:10.3	So you get a song, and it moves strangely
1:13.2	around the world. It's popular for some, not for others. And when we were stumbling about this
	...

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