All music does this, I suppose.
For what is music anyway but pitch, rhythm, and melody set to emotion and real-life experience?
The problem is that life itself was so brutal to so many for so long.
Half of children didn’t make it to 10 years old.
Heck, hot showers were uncommon before the 1930s.
We so easily forget that the natural state of things is barbarism and atrophy.
Kraterocracy rule, if you will.
Performed by families and often about family, traditional country music spares nothing and no one in its gaze. In the deeply morbid early country songs about topics like dead babies, for example, lie the hard truths about mountain life. The best in this tragic genre—according to my dad, anyway—is an old tune called “The Engineer’s Dying Child.” The engineer’s baby is sick, but he has to go to work and drive ol’ No. 9, or whatever number it is, and so bids his wife: Just hang a light when I pass tonight—Hang it so it can be seen. If the baby’s dead, then show the red; If it’s better, then show the green. Happily the engineer sees green, but most infants did not fare so well in early Appalachian songs, which provided a way to take account of the losses and gather comfort.
– Rosanne Cash, Composed (Amazon)
