What's with the twang?

Have you ever heard country singers sing with a Southern lilt/twang, yet when they're speaking they don't at all sound Southern? What's up with that?

And why the hell do country music vocalists even bother to sound Southern-ish at all?

I'm mean, really. There're vast parts of the US that are country (rural) as can be and that aren't in any way Southern. Hell, starting on the West Coast in Oregon/Washington heading east, almost everywhere on goes east of Sierras/Cascades coastal mountains, save for an occasional city here and there, is country/rural until one gets to Chicago.

When a population is relatively isolated (early America, not much cross country vacations), it develops an accent then a dialect and eventually a language.

The Tower of Babel was agricultural knowledge. The agricultural revolution occurred ~14k years ago (when we learned planting seeds would produce plants, but we thought it was a different organism rising and thus kinda like God). It allowed populations to explode, expand, become sedentary and thereby isolate and develop separate languages.

The Tower of Babel is the story of the effect of the agricultural revolution on languages.

Same type thing happened in the South. Agricultural windfall (slave labor) and then isolation.

ecofarm said:

When a population is relatively isolated (early America, not much cross country vacations), it develops an accent then a dialect and eventually a language.

The Tower of Babel was agricultural knowledge. The agricultural revolution occurred ~14k years ago (when we learned planting seeds would produce plants, but we thought it was a different organism rising and thus kinda like God). It allowed populations to explode, expand, become sedentary and thereby isolate and develop separate languages.

The Tower of Babel is the story of the effect of the agricultural revolution on languages.

Same type thing happened in the South. Agricultural windfall (slave labor) and then isolation.

Click to expand...

I agree, to a point, with the dialectical development progression you've described, but that has nothing to do with why country music singers affect a twang when singing yet don't have one when not singing. Neither does it explain why country music, in general, is sung with a drawly/lilting/twangy voice.

Xelor said:

I agree, to a point, with the dialectical development progression you've described, but that has nothing to do with why country music singers affect a twang when singing yet don't have one when not singing. Neither does it explain why country music, in general, is sung with a drawly/lilting/twangy voice.

Click to expand...

The South hasn't been isolated for a long time.

ecofarm said:

When a population is relatively isolated (early America, not much cross country vacations), it develops an accent then a dialect and eventually a language.

The Tower of Babel was agricultural knowledge. The agricultural revolution occurred ~14k years ago (when we learned planting seeds would produce plants, but we thought it was a different organism rising and thus kinda like God). It allowed populations to explode, expand, become sedentary and thereby isolate and develop separate languages.

The Tower of Babel is the story of the effect of the agricultural revolution on languages.

Same type thing happened in the South. Agricultural windfall (slave labor) and then isolation.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure he is aware of how accents came to be, I believe his question is regarding to people who fake the accent.

As far as why they do it, it is likely to appeal to the consumer base. I would imagine the majority of country music fans are likely in the South.

Why don't stutterers stutter when they sing or most Brits and Australians sing without an accent that would deem them English or Australian?

Nap said:

I'm pretty sure he is aware of how accents came to be, I believe his question is regarding to people who fake the accent.

As far as why they do it, it is likely to appeal to the consumer base. I would imagine the majority of country music fans are likely in the South.

Click to expand...

Well, expand my post to what happens after a population is no longer isolated. The accent disappears eventually. First to go is everyday talking, just because no one else is speaking like that (or fewer, even at home). Last to leave will be traditional things, art and such. In those it is common to express heritage. When a tribe has an ancient traditional dance, and has music and such that they don't employ in everyday life, is that wrong? Is that faking it? No. It's tradition, customs and even values expressed in art.

Parrish said:

Why don't stutterers stutter when they sing or most Brits and Australians sing without an accent that would deem them English or Australian?

Click to expand...

He is talking about the reverse, he is talking about if you were to take someone from New York that has no southern accent until he begins to sing.

ecofarm said:

Well, expand my post to what happens after a population is no longer isolated. The accent disappears eventually. First to go is everyday talking, just because no one else is speaking like that (or fewer, even at home). Last to leave will be traditional things, art and such. In those it is common to express heritage. When a tribe has an ancient traditional dance, and has music and such that they don't employ in everyday life, is that wrong? Is that faking it? No. It's tradition, customs and even values expressed in art.

Click to expand...

I believe this is likely the answer Xelor was looking for as it seems to be the most logical in my opinion.

Nap said:

He is talking about the reverse, he is talking about if you were to take someone from New York that has no southern accent until he begins to sing.

Click to expand...

I know.

Nap said:

I believe this is likely the answer Xelor was looking for as it seems to be the most logical in my opinion.

Click to expand...

Tell them fools take note, I will drop anthropology on a mother****er.

ecofarm said:

Tell them fools take note, I will drop anthropology on a mother****er.

Click to expand...

8/10

If you had included a GIF of the Obama mic drop then this post would have easily been 10/10.

Parrish said:

Why don't stutterers stutter when they sing or most Brits and Australians sing without an accent that would deem them English or Australian?

Click to expand...

That phenomenon, though completely the opposite of what I've asked about, has an explanation.


Your mention of the trait you described reminded me that I'd read about the the phenomenon about which I asked and had forgotten that I had. Reviewing those documents, I found the answer to my question.
-- Foreign Accents in Song and Speech
So thank you for the memory jog.


Other:
Y'all can discuss whatever you want. I no longer have need of this thread.

Its not hard to understand. It is a 'sound' that people affect. Its more country/western/ than suth'n feel. In fact if you were looking for a traditional 'southern' feel you would have to listen to the likes of Elvin Bishop, Skynard, Marshall Tucker, The ARB, 38 Special, CDB, Black Oak Arkansas, the Allman Brothers...etc.

Country western is a style...therefore singers singing country western often seek a stylized sound to their music. For many its a throwback to the roots of C&W music. Some have it naturally...some affect it, some dont feel the need. You might as well ask why do people from New York to Tokyo flock to Country Western bars. Toby Keith is as C& W as they come, but he doesnt affect a twang. Garth, Brad Paisley, lots of others. But some like that old George Jones, George Straight sound and they seek it with their spin on it. And people must find it appealing because it sells, in all regions.

Imagery can be aural or visual. This reminds me of the Ray Stevens song that to be a famous country singer you'd have to have a big hat. Then parodies the statement with some really big hats. Funny, but along the same line. Visual imagery with the hat and aural imagery with the drawl/twang.
/

DaveFagan said:

Imagery can be aural or visual. This reminds me of the Ray Stevens song that to be a famous country singer you'd have to have a big hat. Then parodies the statement with some really big hats. Funny, but along the same line. Visual imagery with the hat and aural imagery with the drawl/twang.
/

Click to expand...

Ray Stevens (Ragsdale) and I went to the same high school. He was years older. I went to school with his younger brother. Oddly I also went to school with Brenda Boozer. Brenda was a mezzo-soprano with the Metropoitan Opera in New York.

I can't (pronounced cain't ) remember if the Ragsdale had a twain but then I did so what the hell do I know? I do know that Brenda damn sure didn't have a twang in her accent.

VanceMack said:

Its not hard to understand. It is a 'sound' that people affect. Its more country/western/ than suth'n feel. In fact if you were looking for a traditional 'southern' feel you would have to listen to the likes of Elvin Bishop, Skynard, Marshall Tucker, The ARB, 38 Special, CDB, Black Oak Arkansas, the Allman Brothers...etc.

Country western is a style...therefore singers singing country western often seek a stylized sound to their music. For many its a throwback to the roots of C&W music. Some have it naturally...some affect it, some dont feel the need.

Click to expand...

Bingo! Stylized is it or musical interpretation, if you will. Country & Western is supposed to sound like C&W. Though these days I'm beginning to wonder.

But some do it well. Jerry Jeff Walker, one of my all time favorites, comes to mind. I think his real name is Bob Crosby. He's from somewhere in New York state. Jerry Jeff is a fine country singer. He's either lived in Texas long enough or has just naturally picked up a southern accent but his speech sounds more southern than anything else.

You might as well ask why do people from New York to Tokyo flock to Country Western bars. Toby Keith is as C& W as they come, but he doesnt affect a twang. Garth, Brad Paisley, lots of others. But some like that old George Jones, George Straight sound and they seek it with their spin on it. And people must find it appealing because it sells, in all regions.

Click to expand...

George Jones, George Straight, Randy Travis, John Anderson, Kevin Fowler and more have (had) a twang in their voices. I like it.

ecofarm said:

Tell them fools take note, I will drop anthropology on a mother****er.

Click to expand...

Language is the primary bond that holds a culture together. Yes, shared experiences, stories, customs, behaviors, beliefs and more and more contribute significantly but language is critical.

Twang probably came, along with the folk music stlye, to the American South primarily from Scots, Scots-Irish, Irish and to a lesser degree the English. It became cultural. The southern regional patois grew over time as not all the early Scots, Scots-Irish or Irish spoke English as a native language. The regional patois, I believe, developed twang.

My family dates back to the early 1700s in South Carolina. They all lived very long lives. My grandmother died when she was 105. I learned how to talk, as most of us do, listening to immediate family. They were/are twangy.

My wife swears that whenever I go back home my accent becomes thicker and twangier.

Reverting to regional and/or local dialect happens with many of us when we return home from far away. It's in our DNA. Language identifies us and it is how we identify others. It says, "I belong to this culture. I am part of you. We have common if not shared experiences because of where we were raised."

I'm happy that twang lives on in Country and Western music. Too much just ain't enough.

Risky Thicket said:

Language is the primary bond that holds a culture together. Yes, shared experiences, stories, customs, behaviors, beliefs and more and more contribute significantly but language is critical.

Twang probably came, along with the folk music stlye, to the American South primarily from Scots, Scots-Irish, Irish and to a lesser degree the English. It became cultural. The southern regional patois grew over time as not all the early Scots, Scots-Irish or Irish spoke English as a native language. The regional patois, I believe, developed twang.

My family dates back to the early 1700s in South Carolina. They all lived very long lives. My grandmother died when she was 105. I learned how to talk, as most of us do, listening to immediate family. They were/are twangy.

My wife swears that whenever I go back home my accent becomes thicker and twangier.

Reverting to regional and/or local dialect happens with many of us when we return home from far away. It's in our DNA. Language identifies us and it is how we identify others. It says, "I belong to this culture. I am part of you. We have common if not shared experiences because of where we were raised."

I'm happy that twang lives on in Country and Western music. Too much just ain't enough.

Click to expand...

I adopt accents unconsciously as a means of communication. Everyone does. Exposure to the language or immersion deepens it. After a few months in Sweden, people would say, "well, you can't speak Swedish but you can speak English with a Swedish accent."

It doesn't, like, happen at parties. But several months of immersion and I bet everyone does it to a degree. If it's something one has had before, it probably comes back scary fast.

Risky Thicket said:

Bingo! Stylized is it or musical interpretation, if you will. Country & Western is supposed to sound like C&W. Though these days I'm beginning to wonder.

But some do it well. Jerry Jeff Walker, one of my all time favorites, comes to mind. I think his real name is Bob Crosby. He's from somewhere in New York state. Jerry Jeff is a fine country singer. He's either lived in Texas long enough or has just naturally picked up a southern accent but his speech sounds more southern than anything else.



George Jones, George Straight, Randy Travis, John Anderson, Kevin Fowler and more have (had) a twang in their voices. I like it.

Click to expand...

Well, you see, when I'm down South, everybody speaks with a tang or lilt of some stripe. (The video at the end of this post provides the technical name for it.) When I'm out west, say in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico (though I've only been to one part of that state), Montana and any of the three West Coast states, nobody, other than "transplanted" Southerners speaks with a twang/lilt. That's what I was getting at when I noted that there's lots of country, as in country places, rural places in the US were people don't sound like Southern country folk. Hell, there're even some Southern places (but perhaps it's just people and not so much places?) where folks sound Southern, but not "country-fied" Southern.


The thing that inspired the thread -- aside from the fact of my having forgotten I'd previously read the (social scientist's) answer to my OP's questions -- was that I was watching The Voice and two country singers who were set to battle/duel appeared. In the "get to know the contestants" segment, I noticed that one contestant had a strong Southern twang and the other had none. Then they sang and the one who spoke with no Southern sound sang with a Southern twang.

Hearing that, I wondered why the heck he even bothered to affect a Southern accent when he doesn't actually have one. Then I realized I'd heard several contestants on that show do the same thing. That got me wondering what was the fascination with the Southern country sound when the genre is "country and western." To wit, what's wrong with sounding Western, or Western country, instead of Southern/Southern country? Why not just sound like one sounds "normally" and sing a country song, that is a song that has a country theme and country melody and harmony?

I just figure if one sounds twangy or lilting, well, one just does. If one doesn't, then one doesn't. If one's singing, the thing that concerns me is how well one can carry a tune, not whether one carries it with a twang/lilt....But, hey, that's just me, I guess.

Not all country singers talk with a twang, but many of them do. The ones who don't include it in their singing dialect because it sounds more country. And the way people talk often varies from situation to situation as well. It usually isn't even a conscious thing.

ecofarm said:

I adopt accents unconsciously as a means of communication. Everyone does. Exposure to the language or immersion deepens it. After a few months in Sweden, people would say, "well, you can't speak Swedish but you can speak English with a Swedish accent."

It doesn't, like, happen at parties. But several months of immersion and I bet everyone does it to a degree. If it's something one has had before, it probably comes back scary fast.

Click to expand...

Red:
Back in the early to middle period of my career, I worked for long stretches in various locales in the US, Singapore, India and in London. When I returned home, my wife would tell me I'd picked a hint of the accent of the place from which I returned. I picked up a bit of the "ooh ooh" sing-songy thing Indians do. In Singapore, I found myself dropping helping verbs, which wasn't all that odd as I have always done that among friends or when inflecting for effect. The odd thing was my doing that as I conversed in a professional setting. The phenomenon was most pronounced when I came back from London. I guess that was to be expected for in my school days, the English students whom I befriended said I almost sounded English but didn't sound English. I wouldn't ever have thought so, but, whatever, I had to take their word for it....

In any case, though I came home with a slightly altered accent, it didn't last long, 24-48 hours at the most. That's as I'd have it anyway, for I like sounding American. It's who I am

In the PRC, I learned to speak Mandarin, but my American accent didn't change but my pace did. Similarly, when I worked in other non-English speaking countries, my accent remained intact.

Far more difficult to give up was my appreciation for the Far East and Southern Asian use of chopsticks...but that's a tale for a different time.

Xelor said:

Well, you see, when I'm down South, everybody speaks with a tang or lilt of some stripe. (The video at the end of this post provides the technical name for it.) When I'm out west, say in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico (though I've only been to one part of that state), Montana and any of the three West Coast states, nobody, other than "transplanted" Southerners speaks with a twang/lilt. That's what I was getting at when I noted that there's lots of country, as in country places, rural places in the US were people don't sound like Southern country folk. Hell, there're even some Southern places (but perhaps it's just people and not so much places?) where folks sound Southern, but not "country-fied" Southern.


The thing that inspired the thread -- aside from the fact of my having forgotten I'd previously read the (social scientist's) answer to my OP's questions -- was that I was watching The Voice and two country singers who were set to battle/duel appeared. In the "get to know the contestants" segment, I noticed that one contestant had a strong Southern twang and the other had none. Then they sang and the one who spoke with no Southern sound sang with a Southern twang.

Hearing that, I wondered why the heck he even bothered to affect a Southern accent when he doesn't actually have one. Then I realized I'd heard several contestants on that show do the same thing. That got me wondering what was the fascination with the Southern country sound when the genre is "country and western." To wit, what's wrong with sounding Western, or Western country, instead of Southern/Southern country? Why not just sound like one sounds "normally" and sing a country song, that is a song that has a country theme and country melody and harmony?

I just figure if one sounds twangy or lilting, well, one just does. If one doesn't, then one doesn't. If one's singing, the thing that concerns me is how well one can carry a tune, not whether one carries it with a twang/lilt....But, hey, that's just me, I guess.

​

Click to expand...

My personal opinion is that there is nothing wrong with having whatever accent is native to the region/country in which you were raised.

People in Arizona generally have midwestern accents. I seem to meet more people from the South living here these days. Still almost every week I'm asked where I am from. It happened twice last week.

I have no idea why but for some reason a southern accent is not easy to fake.

There is a channel on Youtube, I can't remember the name, that has excellent videos having to do with smoking meat. I've seen the channel promoted as being Southern BBQ from complete with a deep southern drawl. Southern, it ain't. At times I have a hard time understanding the guy. Eventually, it came to me that for some reason the guy who makes the videos feels that using a very fake southern accent makes the smoked meat taste better. It took me a bit of digging but I discovered the guy is from Maine.

Being from Maine and having a Maine accent doesn't mean that you can't have exceptional knowledge related to smoking meat.

Xelor said:

Red:
Back in the early to middle period of my career, I worked for long stretches in various locales in the US, Singapore, India and in London. When I returned home, my wife would tell me I'd picked a hint of the accent of the place from which I returned. I picked up a bit of the "ooh ooh" sing-songy thing Indians do. In Singapore, I found myself dropping helping verbs, which wasn't all that odd as I have always done that among friends or when inflecting for effect. The odd thing was my doing that as I conversed in a professional setting. The phenomenon was most pronounced when I came back from London. I guess that was to be expected for in my school days, the English students whom I befriended said I almost sounded English but didn't sound English. I wouldn't ever have thought so, but, whatever, I had to take their word for it....

In any case, though I came home with a slightly altered accent, it didn't last long, 24-48 hours at the most. That's as I'd have it anyway, for I like sounding American. It's who I am

In the PRC, I learned to speak Mandarin, but my American accent didn't change but my pace did. Similarly, when I worked in other non-English speaking countries, my accent remained intact.

Far more difficult to give up was my appreciation for the Far East and Southern Asian use of chopsticks...but that's a tale for a different time.

Click to expand...

In east Africa, I picked up saying "sorry" when someone drops something or stumbles or such in public. Sometimes people look at me weird or someone I'm with asks. I don't know if I could stop it if I tried. It's an empathy thing, not apology.

I've sounded funny on returning to the States after years abroad but just for a bit.

Xelor said:

Have you ever heard country singers sing with a Southern lilt/twang, yet when they're speaking they don't at all sound Southern? What's up with that?

And why the hell do country music vocalists even bother to sound Southern-ish at all?

I'm mean, really. There're vast parts of the US that are country (rural) as can be and that aren't in any way Southern. Hell, starting on the West Coast in Oregon/Washington heading east, almost everywhere on goes east of Sierras/Cascades coastal mountains, save for an occasional city here and there, is country/rural until one gets to Chicago.

Click to expand...

Most country music today is ****. So much so that they actually have a rapper on the country charts. Bunch a BS... and of course, you got the whole, "It's cuz I'm black, right?" campaign going in full swing... to them SOB's I got two words for them -- CHARLIE ****ing PRIDE.

So no, it ain't "cuz you black", it's cuz that country.

Most country singers nowadays ain't necessarily from the South, but the "sound" is expected. It's part of the product.

Eminem wouldn't be a Rap God if he spoke the King's English, right? Except the difference there is Marshall is genuine. Sure he'll exaggerate it for the record, but the man don't grunt in ebonics every time he opens his mouth. He has to exaggerate it at times because it's part of the product.

Aaron Lewis has a song that kinda hits home on what you're talking about in "Northern Redneck". He's from Vermont. Listen to the song and lyrics and then say, "Wait, that's not a New England accent?" Doesn't matter, it's a country song. The voice is just as important to the music as the distortion on the guitar or the tuning to the fiddle. It's the sound.

Also, I've been all over this country, and yes, there are northern rurals who speak like they're from the South...don't ask me why or how, they just do....:lol: