Wednesday, February 11, 2015

My criticism of "Ain't Goin' Down on Brokeback Mountain"

When the song appeared as the penultimate track on Nelson's 2009 compilation Lost Higway, it was followed by a previously unreleased version of Willie singing Ben Hayslip's Ain't Goin' Down On Brokeback Mountain, which includes the lyric, "... that shit ain't right."




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboys_Are_Frequently,_Secretly_Fond_of_Each_Other








Ben Hayslip's song "Ain't Goin' Down on Brokeback Mountain" does remind me of the bigotry that is often displayed by some people in the American West, by people living in rural areas, country music singers and country music fans. There have always been gay cowboys. Many of the earliest cowboys were black.  Where are all of the African-American country singers and cowboys at? I think Hayslip doesn't realize that same-sex relationships aren't just about men having sex with each other, perhaps that is the only aspect that he wants to focus on.   What really "ain't right" if you ask me is not the idea that some cowboys are romantically and sexually involved with each other, but that Ben Hayslip who  is uncomfortable about homosexuality wants reduce same-sex relationships to being just about sex. Perhaps he is a closeted gay man who knows?





What if a country music singer wanted to sing about interracial relationships, racial equality, feminist issues, people struggling to deal with mental or physical disabilities or even atheism?  I think minorities should be mentioned in all music genres, including the country genre. I think that it is interesting how Americans hold such anti-sex attitudes. Americans love to have sex, they just don't know how to talk about sexual issues like mature adults, is it any wonder why so many teenage girls end up getting pregnant and why so many people in minority communities are suffering from sexual diseases?



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