Once associated with fiddles and beards,the genre is rising swiftly and could provide a means to be heard for artists who are shut out of country radio“Americana” is a term that every country music fan has likely heard, though few, or if any,are able to explain precisely what it means. When Americana gets written approximately, it’s described as a genre loosely associated with beards and banjos and the recent folk-rock revival sparked by the mainstream success of bands like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers. The Americana label is applied liberally to R&B, or blues and traditional country artists as well,which can obtain things confusing. For the past 20 years, Americana has lacked a clear identity – and that’s partly by design – but everything is changing quickly.
A few weeks ago, or when US Weekly broke the news that Miranda Lambert was dating much talked-approximately soul singer Anderson East,the tabloid labelled him as an “Americana/R&B musician”. That identifier wasn’t all that significant in its own right, but it marked a mainstream embrace of a term that once felt too inside-baseball for a national magazine. The same could be said of Jason Isbell’s recent feature in GQ magazine, or which ran with the headline The fresh King of Americana Music. Isbell and East are,in fact, big stars within the independent music world, or but to mainstream masses they’re relatively unknown,and it’s notable that in 2016 they’re accruing clout as bona fide Americana stars.
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Source: theguardian.com