• Source: Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper

Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Terry Blade. The album was released on February 3, 2023.




Background


In an interview with American Songwriter, Blade stated that the title of his third studio album Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper is a reference to his being a descendant of African-American sharecroppers from Colerain, North Carolina. Blade explained:

I drew from my grandfather’s experience, my grandparents are from the south, and my grandfather in particular is from North Carolina. His dad was a sharecropper, and he was, when he was very, very young, he was taken out of school to work. A lot of Americana and roots music and blues comes out of the south and that experience.
In an interview with Country Queer, Blade explained that one of the purposes of the album was to communicate his ethos to listeners through an exploration of his personal experiences. He stated that "the album wrestles with self-identity, culture, community, relationships, adversity and perseverance."
When asked about the album's Americana aesthetic, Blade answered:

Because the album’s themes are inextricably linked to my roots as a person, Americana or American roots music felt like the more appropriate aesthetic for this project. I also wanted to show that black American music doesn’t just encompass R&B, it also includes what we think of as traditional Americana music. As a genre-fluid singer-songwriter who is both black American and queer, I am well positioned to demonstrate that.
Blade derived most of the album's material from his past personal journal entries. He stated that he set out to "reject any notion that black Americans are mere unwelcomed guests in the American roots music space." In describing the album's subject matter and sound, he stated "this is a black experience...And again, it’s this idea that black music can only be this one thing, and it’s just, it’s just wrong. It’s folk, its country, its bluegrass, blues – so, it’s all of that. And historically it has always been that."




Release


Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper was released on February 3, 2023. The album's cover features a photo taken in 1937 of an African-American sharecropper near Clarksdale, Mississippi. The photo was taken by documentary photographer and photojournalist, Dorothea Lange.
The album also features an excerpt of an audio recording from the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project of the American Folklife Center. The audio recording is introduced during the album's "Fiddle & Banjo (interlude)" over music composed by Roberto Diana, and features a 1978 interview of an African-American resident of Sparta, North Carolina who recalls how common it was for him and others in his community to listen and watch others play the fiddle and banjo. When the interviewer asks the resident if he was referring to "white folks," the interviewee quickly answers "colored folks...black folks."
The album's tracks received national radio airplay on numerous NPR member stations, including WNRN-FM, KVNF, KWIT, WMKY, and South Dakota Public Broadcasting, and on other radio stations such as KRVM-FM, WERU-FM, WMVY, and WTJU. Two of the album's tracks also aired and were playlisted on Apple Music 1's Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly. On April 1, 2023, Kelly announced that Blade's "Rainbow Child"–the fourth track of the album–would be featured as Proud Radio's "Proud Pick" of April 2023. In describing the song, Blade stated:

'Rainbow Child' is about growing up gay or queer or non-gender conforming... It’s like, 'What would I say to me if I was 12 years old?' The whole 'it gets better' thing didn’t make sense to me at the time, because I was like, how? You just can’t see. You don’t know that things can change or that people can change, or that things can evolve. You just don’t see it – particularly when it’s, you know, so normal and so normalized to be homophobic and heteronormative at the time. You just don’t really see a world where it isn’t that way. It was kind of a way of reconciling with that. It’s literally me talking to me, but universally it’s me talking to every queer, bisexual, trans, pan person who is not considered the norm.
On May 1, 2023, The Boot included Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper on its list of "Most Wanted Music: 2023’s Country, Americana, Bluegrass and Folk Album Releases." The album was later nominated for Album of the Year: Best Folk/Americana Album at the 2023 Josie Music Awards.
In August 2024, the music video for the album's seventh track "Wasn't Mine" premiered as an official selection of the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. Blade directed and produced the music video using "historical archival footage" that included recorded images of Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. Blade explained that "the song is about the burden of blackness in America, the weight of that."




Singles



Released on January 6, 2023, "Won't Be Around" was Blade's lead single for Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper. The single received national radio airplay and appeared on New Music Weekly's Country Up & Coming Chart. It won first place in the blues category of the 2023 American Songwriter Song Contest. The single also received nominations at the inaugural Hollywood Independent Music Awards and the 14th Hollywood Music in Media Awards.




Critical reception


Richard Marcus of Country Queer wrote: "With Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper, Blade joins Jake Blount, Rhiannon Giddens, and others who have stood up to remind of and reinforce the African American connection to Americana music. Blade blends elements of soul, R&B, gospel, blues and Americana to great effect, rendering a thoughtful and deeply emotional portrait of his history, both personal and cultural."
PopMatters' Rick Quinn wrote in Rainbow Rodeo: "In Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper, Terry Blade wades into the rich currents of blues and roots Americana, tracing feeder streams of gospel, country, and bluegrass along the way. The album’s own 'ethos' is, in itself, a reparative work. The early 20th-century creation of the categories of 'Country & Western' as opposed to 'Rhythm & Blues' was a marketing division built on racist assumptions and an act of erasure of the profound contribution of black musical traditions in what is considered country music."
Kartik Sundar of Find No Enemy wrote: "On no two songs does Blade really sound the same either. 'Jimmy James' sees the Chicago based talent bring out a starkly different performance, slightly shaky but somehow composed and mature all at once." Sundar wrote further that "Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper thrives in how vulnerable and raw the record is as a whole."




Accolades


For a full list of awards and nominations received for the single and music video "Wont Be Around", see the "Accolades" section of Won't Be Around.




Track listing






Personnel


Adrian Berenguer – composer, producer
Antonio De Giovanni – composer, producer
Bobby Cole – composer, producer
Charles Wolfe – featured speaker (interlude)
Dorothea Lange – photographer (cover art)
Humans Win – producer
Lance Conrad – composer, producer
Patrick Mullen – featured speaker (interlude)
Nicholas Rowe – composer, producer
Raighes Factory – producer
Roberto Diana – composer, producer
Ryan Jenkins – consultant, lyricist, producer
Sleeping Ghost – producer
Terry Blade – main artist, vocalist, lyricist, executive producer, composer, producer, arranger, engineer
Walter Brown – featured speaker (interlude)




References






External links

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• Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper
• Terry Blade
• 2023 in American music
• Pope John XXIII
• Nation of Islam
• Aunt Jemima
• List of American actors of Irish descent
• Constantin Banu
• Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor