From Honky-Tonk to Western Swing, country music’s rise to the American forefront speaks only to the simultaneity of the capitalist highlife and its rural blue-collar roots. Many songs narrate the rise from [insert town, state here] and the many pitfalls of domestic life: drinking, infidelity, heartbreak, and religion. The roping cowboy to the fallen gunfighter illustrates the falseness of country music—the songwriter and the artist over perform an imagined and fantastical truth of the otherwise impoverished and destitute South. By introducing country music into a post-GDR landscape in the sister city of Yuma, Arizona—Frankfurt an der Oder—the genre can be revealed for its simultaneous Americana and melancholia. Willkommen and howdy to the country music motel.
