Tuesday evening, the first week of the long summer vacation. A dozen teenagers sit in the music room of the silent Berkeley Springs High School, fiddling with tubas, horns, and kettledrums. The march music also rehearses during the non-teaching period, because the songs have to be perfect before the big applesauce parade in October. The Indians, the school’s only moderately successful football team, will also be given musical assistance again from autumn. Ian Helmick, conductor in sneakers, distributes the sheet music. A little Disney, a little Brahms – and now Country Roads too. “It’s wonderful that our politicians have now officially made the song their anthem,” says Helmick. Now it will be firmly included in the repertoire.
Berkeley Springs is actually closer to Interstate 70 than to really quiet country roads. Nevertheless, the small spa town is idyllic. Here the population gets fresh spring water from the central fountain, the program in the Star Cinema is still hand-painted on signs. A total of three traffic lights regulate the traffic in the village. Time in West Virginia stood still a little, as it was told before the trip.
Everyone in West Virginia knows the text
Country Roads is no longer brand new either, it is more than 40 years old. It is probably the most sung song in the state, can be heard at village festivals and in pubs, at weddings and sporting events, since 1972 after every home game of the West Virginia Mountaineers, the university football team in Morgantown. “The song breaks out of us spontaneously whenever we feel good,” explains Ken Sullivan, who published a thick encyclopedia on West Virginia last year. The entry for “Country Roads” therein notes that the song is “proudly sung throughout the state.” Really everyone here knows the lyrics, says Sullivan, and they can join in and become part of the song – even the boys. “I love this song, I have it on my phone,” says 16-year-old Logan, a trumpeter in the Berkeley Springs School Orchestra. And flautist Melissa agrees: “I know every line by heart. Country Roads is one of us.”
Now officially too. In March, West Virginia’s Parliament declared Country Roads a “State Song”. This gives the sage an official character and can be played at the beginning of council meetings or at receptions. Now the government is also obliged to keep a correct version of the text and notes for posterity. But nothing changes for the population: They can sing as they want.
The mountain state has four songs
All 50 states in the USA have a state song – that is part of the political inventory. In addition to a capital (in West Virginia: Charleston), a flag (farmers and miners on a white background), a motto (“mountain people are always free”) and a state bird (red cardinal), there should also be a song with which the country is can be sung about. West Virginia treats itself to more than most: Country Roads is already the fourth official song of the mountain state, although the first three songs are not nearly as well known.
Four songs, that’s unusual. “It will undoubtedly be the beauty of our state that increasingly encourages composing,” comments Betty Cutlip from the state tourism office dryly. At least here, West Virginia enjoys a bit of abundance, otherwise there is more of a scarcity: too little income, too few jobs, too few vitamins. The state leads the national negative statistics in almost all disciplines, is one of the poorest and thickest in the country, has the highest rate of toothless and one of the highest smoking rates. In addition, there are the problems with the toxic chemical plants and the coal-fired power plants, which affect people and nature, but are important employers. The state’s image is precarious; West Virginia stands for white poverty, desolate life, eternal hillbillys all over America. Last year the youth broadcaster MTV showed its own reality show (“Buckwild”) about the supposedly primitive backwoods kids from here. “It hurts sometimes what people say,” says conductor Ian Helmick, biting his lip.
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