The Super Bowl or the Streets of Bakersfield?

Hey, you don’t know me, but you don’t like me,
Say you care less how I feel.
But how many of you that sit and judged me
Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

The Streets of Bakersfield

Homer Joy

Sung by Buck Owens

Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl last night, spewing rap lyrics I couldn’t understand. Kendrick’s performance was backed by a platoon of well-choreographed dancers–as disciplined as a Russian military unit.

What did Lamar’s Super Bowl presentation mean, if anything?

But what will always be remembered from this performance is not the musical choices Lamar made, or the aesthetics of his choreography, or the silhouettes of his outfit. What will remain is his grin when he finally begins rapping that song. It was wide, persistent, almost cartoonish in shape. 

The grin of a man having the time of his life at the expense of an enemy.

Caramonica clued me into the meaning of some of Lamar’s lyrics; he was cryptically taunting another rapper! Gee, I’m glad I wasted a few minutes of my life watching that drivel.

Was Kendrick Lamar’s performance a cultural event? Were there elements of his lyrics and the backup dancers’ gyrations that were expressions of American culture? I don’t think so.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Who cares what some old Mississippi wheezer thinks about rap music? How could a retrograde fossil who lives on a gravel road in the goddamn middle of nowhere understand the profound meaning of Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics?

If that’s what you’re thinking, it’s a fair point. People living in Flyover Country have been left behind as mainstream American culture grows more youth-oriented, cynical, urbane, and dismissive of anything that happened last week.

Nevertheless, there are neglected currents of American culture that will endure long after Kendrick Lamar’s music and his feud with another rapper are forgotten.

For example, most Americans are unaware of the Okie refugees who fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and settled in California. These people brought a music tradition that blossomed in the Bakersfield region. 

Merle Haggard was the son of Okies; his parents were from Checota, Oklahoma. He became the greatest singer and composer of country music to ever live–greater than Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams.

Buck Owens was born in Sherman, Texas, during the Great Depression and eventually moved to Bakersfield, where he and Haggard created what became known as the Bakersfield Sound.

Other Dust Bowl refugees contributed to the Bakersfield Sound: Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, and the great Wanda Jackson–the Queen of Rockabilly.

Americans enthralled by rap music have probably never heard of the Bakersfield Sound and may despise the people who listen to it as just a bunch of hicks from Flyover Country.

Nevertheless, 50 or 100 years from now, Americans will be listening to the Bakersfield Sound when Kendrick Lamar is just a footnote in the obscure history of rap.

“You don’t know me, but you don’t like me.” Image credit: WPA