What are the cultures of OKC and Tulsa?

[Old Man Willow]

Tulsa is frequently mentioned in country music, so I assume it has a southern culture? Does OKC have a midwestern culture or is it something like Dallas?

[Skunk]

I definitely wouldn't classify OKC as having a "midwestern" culture, OKC is way too fond of its cowboy past for that (go Pokes!) although it isn't entirely southern. I'd say a Dallas comparison is fairly accurate, both Oklahoma City and Tulsa are pretty big in the country scene.

A lot of museums in the Tulsa area at least, can't really speak for OKC as I don't really visit that often, are also big on Native American heritage too and will feature many Native American art galleries and the like of that. Tulsa and OKC aren't Southern in the way Nashville or Atlanta or some of the other bigger Southern metro areas are, but they definitely have more in common with those than say Minneapolis.

[TDAS04]

Tulsa is frequently mentioned in country music, so I assume it has a southern culture? Does OKC have a midwestern culture or is it something like Dallas?

Oklahoma is definitely more of a Southern state than not, but an association with county music is not automatically indicative of "Southern culture."

[Indy Texas]

Southeastern Oklahoma ("Little Dixie") is very culturally similar to the Upper South.

But Oklahoma City and Tulsa are very much cities of the Great Plains -- cowboys, cattle, wheat, dust, the occasional oil well.

[jimrtex]

Tulsa is frequently mentioned in country music, so I assume it has a southern culture? Does OKC have a midwestern culture or is it something like Dallas?

More likely this would mean that Nashville has a western culture.

OKC (pronounced OkieC) started from the '98 Land Rush. 'Sooners' were those who snuck into file claims before the starting time. Lots of Midwesterners who had missed out on Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, etc. Northern Oklahoma is wheat-growing just like Kansas.

Tulsa developed as a oil center, and attracted a more cosmopolitan population. It is considered the cultural and arts capital of Oklahoma. It is more like Houston, while OKC is more like Dallas.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Oklahoma is Diet Texas.

*sits back, relaxes, and waits for the death threats to pour in*

[muon2]

Country music is less of a measure of geography than it once might have been. I find rural areas throughout the upper Midwest (IA, WI, etc) are pretty big fans. One source I saw had Las Vegas right behind Nashville when it comes to the popularity of country music.

[DINGO Joe]

Oklahoma is Diet Texas.

*sits back, relaxes, and waits for the death threats to pour in*

I believe the Okies like to refer to Texas as Baja Oklahoma.

I lived in Tulsa from K-6th grade in the 70s, so obviously I have a skewed viewpoint.  They loaded up the schoolkids every year to go to the Philharmonic and listen to "Peter and the Wolf".  You'd go to museums and look at the art, though I didn't realize until after moving away that art didn't require a cowboy to be in it.  You'd go to a big ranch called Wooloroc where buffalo roamed outside and inside the mansion an oilman had tried to shoot at least one of every animal on the planet.  Besides Boy Scouts you could belong to Indian Guides which were way cooler even if it was cultural appropriation.  The radio liked to play a novelty song called "Freeze a Yankee (drive 75 and freeze 'em alive)".  You could watch "Hee-Haw" and "Soul Train" every Saturday, and I did. There was a popular morning show with country music that would play in house as I got ready for school but all the kids went to Peaches and bought the rock and roll. They taught us Tulsa history in 6th grade but omitted the part after World War I when the white people bombed and burned down the black part of town. The workaround for being very segregated was magnet schools which I guess didn't work since my elementary had more black teachers (2) than black kids (1).  Tulsa was "Green Country" and every child was required by law to play soccer and they tried their darndest to teach us the metric system.  The most important restaurant in town was Casa Bonita (later made famous by South Park) and it's Italian sister "Crystal's".  Weird Al Yakovich's classic "UHF" was filmed in Tulsa.

Tulsa had enough oil money to put on the airs of culture and modernity.  It was tidy and had quite a bit of park space, but it wasn't a place I'd call dynamic.  It was suffering from the same thing OKC and New Orleans have suffered in that the corporate headquarters for energy were steadily consolidating in Houston.

[DINGO Joe]

Country music is less of a measure of geography than it once might have been. I find rural areas throughout the upper Midwest (IA, WI, etc) are pretty big fans. One source I saw had Las Vegas right behind Nashville when it comes to the popularity of country music.

Chicago was quite the beacon for country music at one point and the Sundowners were a great "house" band for decades. Plus,  John Prine came out of Chicago.   Bloodshot Records is one of my favorite labels and does a nice job of keeping some insurgent country alive among other music styles.  Of course there's Americana and Outlaw and Pop Country and the fans of all three don't always mix.

[Old Man Willow]

Country music is less of a measure of geography than it once might have been. I find rural areas throughout the upper Midwest (IA, WI, etc) are pretty big fans. One source I saw had Las Vegas right behind Nashville when it comes to the popularity of country music.

I don't listen to modern country though, I'm talking about music from the 80s/90s. Tulsa was frequently mentioned in lyrics in this time period.

[Kingpoleon]

Generally speaking, upper class people from Tulsa consider themselves Southern gentry - more emphasis on the gentry than the Southern bit, though. I’m actually a quarter Tulsan on my father’s side, and people in Tulsa usually have rather Southern accents. However, their Southern accents always sound slightly nasal to my ears.

[Del Tachi]

Comparing the two, OKC seems more like a quintessential frontier town while Tulsa seems a bit more "uppity".