Cultural production, media, and meaning: hillbilly music and the southern textile mills

This article examines the formation and Popularity of hillbilly music in the US South of the 1930s, drawing from perspectives on social change and within the sociology of culture. Archival accounts, first-hand interviews, geographical data on radio station foundings, and historical literature are used to explore production and reception perspectives on cultural formation-specifically the interplay among musicians, audiences, and station personnel. Technological innovation during the Depression era was crucial in affording performance opportunities and in changing how musicians from textile mill villages played and sang. In the process of finding stable employment as musicians rather than mill workers and through a geographic cluster of radio stations, musicians interacted with one another and with their audiences in a manner that fundamentally shaped the content and character of what they created. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.