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Credit Programs for Part-time Students

Music

MUSC 144: Country Music

This course explores the history of the genre, its significant performers, songwriters, songs, and cultural identity from 1922 to the present. Following a loose chronology, the course traces the evolution of specific musical styles and investigate issues related to culture, performance practice, transmission, and reception. Extensive listening assignments will introduce the distinct musical styles, voices, and performers that comprise the genre. Reading assignments cover the relationship of country music to American popular culture, historical representation, and authenticity. This course will critically evaluate country music's musical content and contemporary cultural role; the primary texts for investigation are the songs themselves.

This course adopts a broad and inclusive understanding of the term “country.” Students will explore musical styles that relate to the central tradition of commercial country, even when those styles exist outside the mainstream.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

  • listen to any song within the country genre and have some understanding of when it was recorded, in which musical style or scene it was recorded, and how it related to the culture in which it was made.
  • explain the tensions within country music that both tie it to tradition and foster new and innovative developments.
  • describe the specifically musical elements of the genre.
  • understand how the genre maintains its identity and contributes to the broader fabric of American popular culture.

Required Texts

  • Bill C. Malone, Country Music, USA, 2nd revised edition (2002)
  • Bruce Feiler, Dreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville (1999)
  • McCusker and Pecknold, eds., A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music (2004)

You may purchase the textbook at the Higher Grounds bookstore in person, online, or by mailing or faxing in the book order form. Refer to the online ordering site for current book prices. Please see Textbooks for textbook purchase dates.

Course Requirements

High-speed Internet connection
This course requires a high-speed Internet connection. Students will be required to download software and configure their computers to interface with the University's password-protected music library. Complete instructions will be available on the course Web pages.

Live concert
This course requires that you attend a live country music performance during a designated time period during the semester. The “live country music performance” can be in your local region and can range from a local bluegrass band playing at a community gathering to a stadium concert by a headline artist.

Course Details

  • Instructor: Jocelyn Neal, PhD
  • Department: Music
  • Credit hours: 3
  • UNC-Chapel Hill perspectives/requirements fulfilled: The Office of Undergraduate Curricula has links to information about which perspectives this course fulfills under the “Pre-2006 Curriculum” and which requirements it fulfills under the new curriculum (see “2006 Curriculum”).
  • View sample course syllabus.

link How to Enroll

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