Tyler Childers Long Violent History (2020)
Trump has called the Black Lives Matter movement a “symbol of hate.” According to an article in The Guardian published two months before the 2020 US presidential election, Trump’s rhetoric appeared to be drawing inspiration from the 1960s "southern strategy," a political playbook employed by Republicans. This strategy involved leveraging racial tensions and stoking fears among white voters in the southern states to secure political support. In Kentucky, for example, this worked well: Trump won the state—and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to call it a landslide: 66% of whites, who make up around 90% of the population in the Bluegrass State, voted for him. But there remains a third of white people who did not vote for Trump. One of them is Tyler Childers. Childers, who's emerged in recent years as the foremost roots-music representative of the white working and underclass of the mid-South, released "Long Violent History" in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election—shocked and saddened as he was by the violent death of Breonna Taylor. The song kicks off with banjo, violin and vocals, setting a musical comfort zone for a white, rural audience. It uses The Battle of Blair Mountain as a case in point, a historical event viewed with pride among working-class Southerners, to encourage understanding of others' struggles against injustice—specifically that of African Americans. The song and the album of the same name were released without any promotional fanfare. The only announcement was a video message in which Childers clarified his motivations and addressed any potential misunderstandings.
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