What is Western Music/Cowboy Poetry?

The following is an article written for www.cowboyentertainer.com by Wayne Nelson of American Falls, Idaho.

There are few enough people alive today who remember a world without television, let alone those who remember a time with no radio. All we really have to go by are accounts, diaries and books of the period. Add to that word of mouth through hundreds of family histories and you get a glimpse of what leisure time was like in a world so quiet you could hear the stars in their paths across an endless backdrop of skies newly discovered by "civilized" man. Outside the circle of firelight or the walls of a makeshift cabin, night in frontier America was a dark and dangerous place. In those days people clamored to be together the way we now clamor to be away from others. And when they gathered, how did they entertain themselves? They played games, sang songs, told stories and recited poems learned from both written page and word of mouth.Then, as now, a well delivered poem brought the embers of the campfire to life, spreading itself across the dancing flames with added richness each time it was told.

The sheer joy of listening to a skilled recital must have been equal to watching a good movie with ones' favorite actors in terms of today. Having a good storyteller or poet along on a long cattle drive could do wonders in boosting the moral of a crew, which in turn led to the success of the endeavor. Some cowhands with only marginal proficiency were kept on the payroll for their entertainment value alone by farsighted trailbosses who realized their importance in the overall picture.

Somewhere along the line someone remembered that if a good story is preserved in clever rhymes it is more easily remembered ("In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." How could we forget?) and began to memorialize their heros and heartlands in the telling and re-telling of what are now the classics, many of which had many campfire miles on them before they ever hit paper. Some good books were published in the first few decades of the twentieth century but seemed doomed to the realm of obscure folklore.

Then, in the mid-1980's a few devotees met in Elko, Nevada and started the ball rolling on one of the biggest phenomena of our time. Not only were people reciting the classics...they were digging out grandpa's poems that he never showed anybody, coming out of the poetry closet themselves by the thousands, enriching Western culture with verbal color and detail heretofore thought impossible. Cowboy music (as opposed to "Country" music), art, gear western horsemanship, cooking and even Cowboy Church have enjoyed a simultaneous revival. Gatherings have sprung up almost everywhere cattle are raised and new writers are voicing their love of the cowboy lifestyle with a zeal that hasn't appeared since the Oklahoma land rush.

A virtual rebirth of western culture has resulted from Cowboy Poetry...one that has many sociologists scratching their heads. It's too bad they can't see what we see; It's too good to ever die!!