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‘The reckoning with race has only just begun’
The country-music industry is being pressurised to acknowledge its troubled handling of black artists — and not before time, says LIAM KENNEDY
Mickey Guyton (left) and (right) Charley Pride
[(Left) NPR Tiny Desk and (right) Republic Country Club/Creative Commons]
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WHEN most people think of country music, they envisage plaid-wearing, guitar-strumming artists like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton. They rarely think of black men like Charley Pride.
Pride, who died on December 11 at the age of 86, was one of the very few black superstars in the history of American country music. Acknowledging his contributions to the genre, the Country Music Association Awards presented him with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in November.
In a year when protests about racial injustice swept across the US, it was a symbolic moment for the industry as it celebrated the black presence in country music. It had been pressurised to acknowledge its troubled history of racial difference.
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