Someone Else's “Country”: American Roots Music and Rural Identity in Sardinia, Italy

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines rural North American expressive culture vis‐a‐vis country music and language reclamation within minoritarian language contexts. Drawing on my previous ethnographic fieldwork performing and learning Navajo on the Navajo Nation, I explore how rural identities circulate transnationally in and through spoken and sung performances of country “roots” music in my more recent field site of Sardinia, Italy. In both Sardinia and on the Navajo Nation, this musical genre acts as a medium for heritage language reclamation and consequently allows for reconnection to a rural sense of self.