American Nations continues to benefit from its second freak virality incident on the Internet, which first manifested itself a week and a half ago
at the Washington Post and last week via
Business Insider's
much circulated articles.
Earlier this week I was interviewed by Voice of America for their "All Things America" blog; t
hat article posted late yesterday. Here's a teaser:
As people move around, one might assume the country would become more
homogenous, but Woodard says the opposite occurs, with Americans
becoming more polarized as they move to regions they identify with
“That means, in essence, that we are self-sorting,” he said. “That
when somebody has an opportunity to move…people tend to be moving to
places where they feel more at home, where they are surrounded by
like-minded individuals. That ends up with a self-sorting effect that
ends up reinforcing the differences between these regional cultures.”
Woodard expects the characteristics of these cultures to remain
fundamentally constant over the next century, a key reason he aspires to
make more Americans aware of their forgotten past.
Meanwhile,
Minnesota Public Radio picked up on the
Business Insider piece, emphasizing the great gulf between the two "superpowers", Yankeedom and the Deep South. Meanwhile the
Bakersfield Californian named
American Nations as one of the
ten things their readers needed to know, and
the New Orleans Times-Picayune flagged it in regards to what it says about New France, and provoking lots of comments. (For the record, New Orleans itself is shared between New France and the Deep South (and probably the Spanish Caribbean as well, if I ever got into that.))
Somewhere in the fray,
Texas Monthly's John Nova Lomax posted
this fun article which uses
American Nations and Spotify data to explain why various Texas musical genres succeed in being popular in certain areas outside of the Lone Star State. I greatly enjoyed it. An excerpt:
In
a way, the Spotify lists lend credence to reporter and author Colin
Woodard’s eleven nations of North America map, in which four distinct
cultures converge within Texas. Spotify did not provide data for
Woodard’s “Midlands” strip of Texas – the northernmost counties of the
Panhandle – but his “El Norte,” which he calls “the oldest, and most
linguistically different, nation in the Americas” is exemplified by
Spotify’s Spanglish El Paso chart, one of the most unusual in the United
States.
And he kind of shares my own long-held observation that the Deep
South doesn’t really end until you get to Brookshire on I-10, which is
where real Texas finally begins. Music tastes bear this out. For
example, even if Houston rappers aren’t specifically well-received in
Louisiana or the Deep South in terms of style, the lists of both Humble
and Houston in East Texas have a bit more in common with Baton Rouge and
Memphis than they do with, say, San Antonio or even Dallas. Both of the
East Texas population centers show far more of a taste for various
African-American music styles (mostly hip-hop, but also blues and
zydeco) than places west of the Brazos and north of College Station,
where country takes over. Houston’s western suburb of Katy is more akin
to Lubbock than it is to Humble.
- See more at:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/mapping-the-popularity-of-texas-artists-outside-of-texas/#sthash.M25X54nA.dpuf
In a way, the Spotify lists lend
credence to reporter and author Colin Woodard’s eleven nations of North
America map....He kind of shares my own long-held
observation that the Deep South doesn’t really end until you get to
Brookshire on I-10, which is where real Texas finally begins. Music tastes bear
this out. For example, even if Houston rappers aren’t specifically
well-received in Louisiana or the Deep South in terms of style, the lists
of both Humble and Houston in East Texas have a bit more in common with Baton
Rouge and Memphis than they do with, say, San Antonio or even Dallas. Both of
the East Texas population centers show far more of a taste for various
African-American music styles (mostly hip-hop, but also blues and zydeco) than
places west of the Brazos and north of College Station, where country takes
over. Houston’s western suburb of Katy is more akin to Lubbock than it is
to Humble.
I also did Fox News Radio's John Gibson Show, but I don't think the segment's online, so you should have been listening!
Thanks to all the new readers who've reached out this past week. Enjoy the book and look out for the sequel.
In
a way, the Spotify lists lend credence to reporter and author Colin
Woodard’s eleven nations of North America map, in which four distinct
cultures converge within Texas. Spotify did not provide data for
Woodard’s “Midlands” strip of Texas – the northernmost counties of the
Panhandle – but his “El Norte,” which he calls “the oldest, and most
linguistically different, nation in the Americas” is exemplified by
Spotify’s Spanglish El Paso chart, one of the most unusual in the United
States.
And he kind of shares my own long-held observation that the Deep
South doesn’t really end until you get to Brookshire on I-10, which is
where real Texas finally begins. Music tastes bear this out. For
example, even if Houston rappers aren’t specifically well-received in
Louisiana or the Deep South in terms of style, the lists of both Humble
and Houston in East Texas have a bit more in common with Baton Rouge and
Memphis than they do with, say, San Antonio or even Dallas. Both of the
East Texas population centers show far more of a taste for various
African-American music styles (mostly hip-hop, but also blues and
zydeco) than places west of the Brazos and north of College Station,
where country takes over. Houston’s western suburb of Katy is more akin
to Lubbock than it is to Humble.
- See more at:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/mapping-the-popularity-of-texas-artists-outside-of-texas/#sthash.M25X54nA.dpuf
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