Thursday, January 27, 2011

Discussion Question: Chapter 10

Group members: Apeksha Patel, Alyssa DuPont, Nhi Le, and Marissa Herrera

How has drug abuse affected the lives of coal miners and hence, the music in Kentucky?

1 comment:

  1. In ISM, Amanda Petrusich describes the Appalachia to be "thick, unsolvable, and almost grotesquely overgrown..." (158). She also jokes that swallowing prescription painkillers such as OxyContin was "less boring and less scary than staring at the mountains all day." Even children living in or near this area were taking in such things. Coal miners swallowed the painkillers to obviously relieve pain from hunching down and curling into small spaces. Unfortunately, "this practice often led to abuse and addiction among individuals who have been disinclined to abuse traditional illicit drugs."

    Music in Kentucky was affected by the people, such as coal miners, who abused drugs. Now Kentucky citizens may be stereotyped as people endlessly sharing hillbilly jokes, smoking off of corncob pipes, having extra toes, deviant sexuality and "mental reenactments of key scenes from Deliverance." Others perceive them to be old white men "with three teeth and a fiddle, crouched on a porch, square dancing around a giant jug emblazoned with a skull and crossbones." In other words, there was a new kind of music forming in the area besides rock and country---hillbilly music. And just like other types of music, this came with its stereotypes, such as the ones previously described.

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