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FEBRUARY WRITING PROMPT | A-CULTURATED
The Rhythm of Duality
A Black girl’s life of country and soul
I like country music. Long before Beyoncé and Darius Rucker made it popular — or at least acceptable — for African Americans to listen and dance to country music, I already knew it and felt it in my bones. It reminds me of the winds on the mountains that remind you that you are never alone. My very first album was Charlie Pride, one of my earliest Black heroes. I listened to Ray Charles croon country ballads and felt a rare connection. Sure, there were negative associations with it as well but I don’t focus on those. The location between mountains could receive only the strongest of signals and country music was the strongest, sometimes only, one.
I grew up in the only African American Family in a small, conservative and majority-white town surrounded by mesmerizing mountains. My mother was the town’s mayor, and my father taught music. My parents were pioneers who moved from the segregated south to build a life unknown in this small country town. The community was predominately hardworking, blue collar men and women, with a few poor and middle class. In my recollection, there were no other people of color of any race or ethnicity, except an occasional transient. In many ways, I lived a privileged life: quiet streets…
