New York Times' narrow notion of Nashville

In the Sunday (January 3, 2010) Arts section, the NY Times featured an article by Jon Caramanica headlined "Nashville Inches, Ever So Grudgingly, Into the Future." In that reductive piece Caramanica makes several controversial claims, including this one: "[C]ountry has been the most commercially significant genre with the smallest amount of stylistic innovation. In addition it's been particularly slow on the uptake with digital and social media, making it less accessible to younger audiences, and more deaf to their desires."

Caramanica dismisses Taylor Swift's massive crossover success as being "marked with an asterisk" & he never even bothers to mention such breakout young artists as Miranda Lambert & Lady Antebellum. Instead, he focuses on tired old stories, like the travails of the Dixie Chicks, who were "all but excommunicated" from country radio after their public attack on Pres. Bush in 2002. "It felt like a warning shot to upstarts of any kind: Thank you for coming, Nashville will neutralize you now," he concludes.

Describing Music Row as "lumbering, stubborn" & "the last vestige of the record industry as it used to be," Caramanica completely ignores the vibrant Americana scene in Nashville. What do those whom he refers to as "the city's oligarchy" make of that Yankee journalist's comments? I'll follow the Music City press & let you know--should the industry's mouthpieces or local music journalists here bother to react at all. But I reckon that those folks have grown impervious to attacks by the Yankee intelligentsia.