The Intrinsic Ambivalence of Rodeo Songs

The Rodeo inhabits a strange liminal space in Americana.  Much like Pizza, Hamburgers, and other "quintessential" pieces of America, the Rodeo is totally an import from another country; really, the Rodeo is about as American as tacos, burritos, and quesadillas--that is, it is still somehow totally and completely North American now, even as it is simultaneously totally and completely a product of Latin America.

But we didn't exactly make it ours, no--we made some of ours. It is within a very specific subset of white Americans (not even all white Americans) that Rodeo is to be found, a highly rural group that is at once treated as representative and emblematic, but also largely flies under the radar, marginalized, on the peripheries of the majority American experience.  Like all things U.S., it is by its very nature a paradox.

Popular music expresses this odd relationship with rodeo--even among those who most self-identify with its target demographic.  Country music best-seller Garth Brooks, for example, had an early hit called, simply, "Rodeo."

The song is simultaneously a celebration of the event, yet also a lamentation of the irreperable devastation it can wreck upon a man's heart and home (It'll drive a cowboy crazy, it'll drive the man insane/And he'll sell off everything he owns, just to pay to play the game/And a broken home and some broken bones, is all he'll have to show/For all the years that he spent chasin' this dream they call rodeo).  

For the practitioners, rodeo is apparently a jealous god, one that demands all sacrifices whilst offering nothing in return but the glory of being broken by it and consumed whole.

But rodeo lovers are not the only folks with a conflicted relationship towards the same; Rage Against the Machine produced a rodeo song of their own, "Down Rodeo," that lays out their problems with the demographic with the characteristically blunt opener "These people ain't seen a brown skin man/Since their grandparents bought one."  

Frontman Zach de la Rocha is of Mexican-American ancestry, and the complete appropriation (without proper citation, so to speak) of his culture (rodeo, along with mariachi and tequila, are considered the three pillars of Mexico's national identity), clearly doesn't sit well with him--particularly since the cattle rangers and farmers who most sponsor and enjoy rodeo are also those who most exploit and oppress Mexican migrant workers (Locked wit out a wage ya standin' in tha drop zone/The clockers born starin' at an empty plate/Momma's torn hands cover her sunken face/We hungry but them belly full).  

Rodeo for Rage Against the Machine becomes a locus for crystallizing a number of grievances of Mexican-Americans who have been robbed of land, culture, and rights--yet what is strange to also note, but the guitar riff itself for "Down Rodeo" is among the most upbeat and triumphant sounding of all of Evil Empire.  Even when they're raging against rodeo, they can't help but seem to rejoice in it; they have a mighty complex relationship with the spectacle as well.

That complexity is perhaps best explored in "Sad Sweet Heart of the Rodeo", the lead single off Harvey Danger's second album King James Version.

 This song (along with the accompanying video) is written explicitly from the perspective of a band, culture, and entire set of cultural biases and perspectives that is otherwise most hostile and dismissive of the entire rodeo ethos: coastal, liberal, educated, and unapologetically intellectual.  Harvey Danger, which borderline perfected the Gen X smart-alecky sneer of the late-'90s, takes the surprisingly bold move of painting a rather sympathetic portrait of rodeo lovers.

Granted, this particular rodeo lover is a young city-living lady whose connection to not only rodeo but the countryside in general is limited strictly to TV and daydream fantasies.  Her boyfriend openly mocks her infatuations: "The Marlboro Man died of cancer/And he wasn't a rocket scientist when he was alive."  The song's protagonist has the same compulsion as the one in Garth Brook's song, but without any of the access or possibility of participation.  Despite the upbeat melody, the song is ultimately a tragedy.

The song in general quite possibly expresses most of the United States' relationship with the sport: something we both mock and desire, ignore and crave, central and peripheral, part of our identity and no part of our identity.  It is the irresolvable paradox of America personified; to quote Derrida, it is the center that is not the center.  I should expect all rodeo songs to express this same central ambivalence--and I've become interested in this rodeo theme because so few parts of American culture do allow for such intrinsically ambivalent expression.  "I contradict myself" said Whitman--as does American--as it should--as does rodeo.