(Columbia/Loma Vista)Country
music outsiders the (no-longer Dixie) Chicks and Margo Price expand the genre’s boundaries while staying true to its spirit on two rich albums
Country music – a genre steeped in stories of poverty, perseverance and righteous female ire – has long had a progressive wing. But few artists have pushed the genre as far along as the Chicks, three musicians who recently removed the “Dixie” from their name to formally distance themselves from the values of the Confederacy in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Back in 2003, on stage in
London,
Singer Natalie Maines introduced a song about a US serviceman lost in Vietnam and expressed dismay about the imminent US invasion of
Iraq and shame that then president George W Bush was from Texas. All hell broke loose: the
Texas band were blacklisted and received death threats.