Music of the United States

The music of the United States includes a number of kinds of distinct folk and popular music, including some of the most widely-recognized styles in the world. The original inhabitants of the United States included hundreds of Native American tribes, as well as native Hawaiians and Inuits, who played the first music in the area. Beginning in the 15th century, immigrants from England, Spain and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. Africans imported as slaves provided the musical underpinnings of much of modern American music, including blues, jazz, rock and roll and hip hop. Other styles of music were brought by Hispanics from Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Cajun descendants of French-Canadians, Jews, Eastern Europeans and Irish, Scottish and Italian immigrants.

In contrast to many other countries, the United States has not had centuries of cultural evolution, producing a distinctive field of American music. Instead, the music of the United States is that of dozens or hundreds of indigenous and immigrant groups, all of which developed largely in regional isolation until the Civil War. It was only during the Civil War, when soldiers from across the country commingled, that the multifarious strands of American music began to crossfertilize each other, a process that was aided by the burgeoning railroad industry and other technological developments that made travel and communication easier. The Civil War, however, brought people together from the whole of the country in army units, where they traded musical styles and practices. Indeed, with a few limited exceptions, such as New England hymns, the ballads of the Civil War were "the first American folk music with discernible features that can be considered uniqe to America: the first 'American' sounding music, as distinct from any regional style derived from another country" ^[1].

The music of the United States can be characterized by the use of syncopation and asymmetrical rhythms, long, irregular melodies (which are said to reflect the wide open geography of the American landscape) and elements of distinctively American jazz, blues and Native American music ^[2].

Folk music

Main article: American roots music

Folk music in the United States is varied across the country's numerous ethnic groups. The Native American tribes each play their own varieties of folk music, most of it spiritual in nature. African American music includes blues and gospel, descendents of West African music brought to the Americas by slaves and mixed with Western European music. During the colonial era, English, French and Spanish styles and instruments were brought to the Americas. By the early 20th century, the United States had become a major center for folk music from around the world, including polka, Ukrainian and Polish fiddling, Ashkenazi Jewish klezmer and several kinds of Latin music.

Native American music

Main article: Native American music

The Native Americans played the first folk music in what is now the United States, using a wide variety of styles and techniques. Some commonalities are near universal among Native American traditional music, however, including the lack of harmony and polyphony, the presence of choiral vocals, the use of vocables and the descending melodic figures. Traditional instruments include the flute and many kinds of percussion instruments like drums, rattles and shakers ^[3].

Since European and African contact was established, Native American folk music has grown in new directions. Waila, or chicken-scratch music, is a fusion of Mexican-Texan norteño and European dance music like the polka and mazurka.

Hawaiian music

Main article: Music of Hawaii

The earliest known music of Hawaii was the hula, which featured a chant (mele) accompanied by ipu (a gourd) and 'ili'ili (stones used as clappers). Listeners danced in a highly ritualized manner. The older, formal kind of hula is called kahiko, while the modern version is auana. There are also religious chants called mele, which may be addressed to families or gods or chiefs. When a mele chant is accompanied by dancing and drums, it is called mele hula pahu. ^[4].

African American music

Main article: African American music

The ancestors of today's African American population were brought to the United States as slaves, working primarily in the cotton plantations of the South. They were from hundreds of tribes across West Africa, and they brought with them certain traits of West African music including call and response vocals and complexly rhythmic music ^[5].

The first slaves in the United States sang work songs, field hollers ^[6] and, following Christianization, hymns. In the 19th century, a Great Awakening of religious fervor gripped both blacks and whites across much of the country, especially in the South. Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became a feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the south. When blacks began singing sometimes adapted versions of these hymns, they were called Negro spirituals. It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs and field hollers, that blues and gospel developed.

Spirituals

Main article: Spirituals

Originally monophonic and a cappella, spirituals are antecedents of the blues. Spirituals were often improvised and used call-and-response vocals, in which a leader and a chorus alternated lines and refrain responses ^[7].

Spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith, sung by slaves on southern plantations. Secular songs that also fall within the genre sometimes contained hidden messages of a slaveowner’s unexpected return, or of rebellion or escape. "Follow the Drinking Gourd," for example, contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad, instructing escapees to follow the Big Dipper (the "drinking gourd.") "Wade in the Water" was another such song that combined religious imagery and codified instructions for potential runaways.

Blues

Main article: Blues

Blues is a combination of African work songs, field hollers and shouts, chants and hymns and spirituals. It developed in the rural south in the 20th century.

Gospel

Main article: Gospel music

Christian spirituals and the rural blues music were the origin of what is now known as gospel. Beginning in about the 1920s, African American churches began to feature early gospel in the form of worshipers "testifyin'", or proclaiming one's religious devotion in an improvised, often musical or semi-musical manner.

From these early 20th century churches, gospel music spread across the country. It remained associated almost entirely with African American churches, and usually featured a choir along with one or more virtuoso soloists.

Old-time music

Main article: Old-time music

Old-time music, a traditional style of American music, has roots in Irish, Scottish and African folk music. During the late 19th and early 20th century, minstrel, tin pan alley and other popular music also entered the genre. Practitioners play it with stringed instruments such as the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin and bass.

Bluegrass

Main article: Bluegrass music

Bluegrass developed in the 1930s, a fusion of old-time Appalachian folk music with blues, jazz and other styles. Bill Monroe is the most well-remembered pioneer of bluegrass' early days.

Bluegrass continues to rely on acoustic stringed instruments: The fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar or folk guitar, mandolin, and upright bass are sometimes joined by the dobro (also known as a resophonic guitar or steel guitar), and a bass guitar is occasionally substituted for the upright bass. This instrumentation originated in rural black dance bands and was being abandonded by those groups (in favor of blues and jazz ensembles) when picked up by white musicians (^[8]).

Besides instrumentation, the distinguishing characteristics of bluegrass include vocal harmonies featuring two, three, or four parts, often featuring a dissonant or modal sound in the highest voice (see modal frame); an emphasis on traditional songs, often with sentimental or religious themes; and improvised instrumental solos.

Cajun and Creole

Main article: Cajun and Creole music

The Cajuns are a group of Francophones who arrived in Louisiana after leaving Acadia in Canada ^[9]. The Creoles are African Americans who combine elements of Cajun culture with their own. The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, being a major port, has acted as a melting pot for people from all over the Caribbean basin. Thus, many Caribbean music styles have left their mark on Cajun and Creole music.

In southwestern Louisiana in the 1800s, the fiddle was the most popular Cajun instrument and the music still carried clear influences from the Poiteu region of France and the Scottish/Canadian influences of their earlier homeland. In the late 19th century German immigrants spreading outward from central and eastern Texas and New Orleans soon brought the accordion as well. African American farmhands at the time sang a rhythmic type of work song called juré, which mixed with Cajun folk music to form la la, a central component of Creole music. La la was primarily rural, played at parties also known as la las.

Anglo-American music

Main article: Anglo-American music

The Thirteen Colonies of the original United States were all former English possessions, and Anglo culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music.

Many American folk songs use the same music, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. American Anglo songs can also be distinguished from British songs by having fewer pentatonic tunes, less prominent accompaniment (but with heavier use of drones) and more melodies in major ^[10].

Anglo-American traditional music, dating back to colonial times, includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks (especially in New England) and murder. Folk heroes like John Magarac, John Henry and Jesse James are also part of many songs. Folk dance of Anglo origin include the square dance, descended from the European high society quadrille, combined with the American innovation of a caller instructing the dancers. ^[11]

Folklorist Alan Lomax described regional differences among rural Anglo musicians as included the relaxed and open-voiced northern vocal style and the pinched and nasal southern style, with the west exhibiting a mix of the two. He attributed these differences to sexual relations, the presence of minorities and frontier life ^[12].

Tex-Mex and Tejano

Main article: Tex-Mex and Tejano

Mexico controlled much of what is now the western United States until the Mexican War, including the entire state of Texas. After Texas joined the United States, the Mexicans living in the state (Tejanos) began culturally developing somewhat separately from their neighbors to the south, and also remained culturally distinct from other Texans.

Central to the evolution of early Tejano music was the blend of traditional Mexican forms such as the corrido, and Continental European styles introduced by German and Czech settlers in the late 19th century. In particular, the accordion was adopted by Tejano folk musicians at the turn of the 20th century, and it became a popular instrument for amateur musicians in Texas and Northern Mexico. Small bands known as orquestas, featuring amateur musicians, became a staple at community dances.

Other immigrant communities

Main article Music of immigrant communities in the United States

The United States is a melting pot consisting of numerous ethnic groups. Many of these peoples have kept alive the folk traditions of their homeland, often producing distinctively American styles of foreign music.

Some nationalities have produced local scenes in regions of the country where they have clustered, including Cape Verdean music in Rhode Island, Armenian music in Fresno, California, Norwegian music in Minnesota and Italian music in New York City. Some of these local scenes have produced performers with some mainstream appeal, such as Pawlo Humeniuk, a star of the Ukrainian fiddling scene.

Irish American music

Main article: Irish American music

Irish people and their music have long been a major part of American music, at least as far back as the 19th century. Beginning in the 1960s, performers like the Clancy Brothers become stars in the Irish music scene.

Italian American music

Main article: Italian American music

Italian people and their music are mostly associated with the urban areas of the East Coast, in cities such as New York.

Klezmer

Main article: Klezmer

Klezmer is a style of Jewish music that came to the United States through Ashkenazi Jews immigrating from Eastern Europe. The United States soon became a major center for klezmer development.

Polka

Main article: Polka

Classical music

Main article: American classical music

The European classical tradition was brought to the United States with some of the first colonists. By the 19th century, many American composers were incorporated national elements into their works; soon after, old-time music, jazz, blues and Native American music were used in classical compositions.

Colonial music

First New England School

Main article: First New England School

European classical music was brought to the United States during the colonial era. Many American composers of this period worked (like Benjamin West and the young Samuel Morse in painting) exclusively with European models, while others, such as William Billings, Supply Belcher, Daniel Read, Oliver Holden, and Justin Morgan, also known as the First New England School, developed a native style almost entirely independently of European models. Many of these composers were amateurs, and many were singers: they developed new forms of sacred music, such as the fuging tune, suitable for performance by amateurs, and often using harmonic methods which would have been considered bizarre by contemporary European standards

19th century

Second New England School

Main article: Second New England School

During the mid to late 19th century, a vigorous tradition of home-grown classical music developed, especially in New England. The composers of the Second New England School included such figures as George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, and Horatio Parker.

20th century

In the early 20th century, George Gershwin was greatly influenced by African American music; however, this was during an era of legally enforced "Jim Crow" segregation during which his music perhaps enjoyed undue fame owing to the refusal of white listeners to listen to music that formed Gershwin's sources. On the other hand, he created a convincing synthesis of music from several traditions once considered to be irreconcilable, and which continues to enjoy enormous popularity.

Many of the major classical composers of the 20th century were influenced by folk traditions, none more quintessentially, perhaps, than Aaron Copland. Other composers adopted features of folk music, from the Appalachians, the plains and elsewhere, including Roy Harris, William Schuman, David Diamond, and others. Yet other early to mid-20th century composers continued in the more experimental traditions, including such figures as Charles Ives, George Antheil, and Henry Cowell.

Popular music

Main article: American popular music

The United States has produced many of the most popular musicians and composers in the modern world. Beginning with the birth of recorded music, American performers have continued to lead the field of popular music. The country has seen the rise of many popular styles, including ragtime, the blues, jazz, rock, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, heavy metal, punk rock, disco, salsa, grunge and hip hop.

Ragtime

Main article: Ragtime

Tin Pan Alley

Main article: Tin Pan Alley

Country music

Main article: Country music

Nashville Sound

Main article: Nashville Sound

Bakersfield Sound

Main article: Bakersfield Sound

Outlaw country

Main article: Outlaw country

Country music: 80s and 90s

Urban Cowboy

Main article: Urban Cowboy

Alternative country

Main article: Alternative country

Jazz

Main article: Jazz

Swing

Main article: Swing

Bebop

Main article: Bebop

Gospel

Main article: Gospel

Gospel is an impassioned, declamatory style of Christian song. Though evolving out of spiritual worship music, gospel's modern form evolved in the first half of the 20th century. By the 1950s, it had become popular in mainstream America. Its top star was Mahalia Jackson, a singer whose fame rivalled any other African American to that date. She was perhaps the first black musician to make black music that all kinds of Americans listened to. She also became associated with the Civil Rights Movement, meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in 1955, then participating in the Montgomery bus boycott ((ref|Werner}}.

Later in the 1950s and the early part of 60s, gospel was secularized in tone by performers like Sam Cooke. The result was called soul music. The secularization caused some protest among the gospel community, who viewed it as an appropriation of religion for personal profit and, in many minds, glorifying immoral behavior.

R&B

Main article: R&B

Doo wop

Main article: Doo wop

Blues

Main article: Blues

Rock and roll

Main article: Rock and roll

Rockabilly

Main article: Rockabilly

Surf

Main article: Surf

British Invasion

Main article: British Invasion

Psychedelic music

Main article: Psychedelic music

Country and folk rock

Main articles: Country rock and folk-rock

Progressive rock

Main article: Progressive rock

Alternative rock

Main article: Alternative rock

Grunge

Main article: Grunge

Indie rock

Main article: Indie rock

Soul

Main article: Soul

60s soul: Motown

Album-oriented soul

Funk

Main article: Funk

Popular Anglo folk music

Folk music in the 1960s

Singers and songwriters

Main article: Singer-songwriter

Latin music

Main article: Latin music in the United States

50s and 60s dances

Main articles: Chachacha, mambo, boogaloo

Tejano pop

Salsa music

Main article: Salsa music

Heavy metal

Main article: Heavy metal music

Hair metal

Main article: Hair metal

Thrash metal

Main article: Thrash metal

Punk rock

Main article: Punk rock

Hardcore

Main article: Hardcore punk

Disco

Main article: Disco music

Hip hop

Main article: Hip hop music

Hip hop is a cultural movement, of which music is a part (as are graffiti art and breakdancing). The music is itself composed of two parts, rapping, the delivery of swift, highly rhythmic and lyrical vocals, and DJing, the production of instrumentation either through sampling, instrumentation, turntablism or beatboxing.

Hip hop arose in the early 1970s in Harlem, New York City. Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc is widely regarded as the progenitor of hip hop; he brought with him the practice of toasting over the rhythms of popular songs (the root of modern dub music and ragga). In New York, DJs like Kool Herc played records of popular funk, disco and rock songs. Emcees originally arose to introduce the songs and keep the crowd excited and dancing; over time, the DJs began isolating the percussion break of songs (when the rhythm speeds and climaxes), thus producing a repeated beat that the emcees rapped over.

Rapping included greetings to friends and enemies, exhortations to dance and colorful, often humorous boasts. By the beginning of the 1980s, there were popular hip hop songs like "Rappers Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang and the major celebrities of the scene, like LL Cool J and Kurtis Blow. Other performers experimented with politicized lyrics and social awareness, while others performed fusions with jazz, highlife, cumbia, heavy metal, techno, funk, reggae, soca and soul.

Gangsta rap

Main article: Gangsta rap

Gangsta rap is a kind of hip hop, most importantly characterized by a lyrical focus on macho sexuality, physicality and a dangerous, criminal image. Though the origins of gangsta rap can be traced back to the mid-1980s raps of Philadelphia's Schoolly D and the West Coast's Ice-T, the style is usually said to have begun in the Los Angeles and Oakland area, where Too $hort, NWA and others found their fame. This West Coast rap scene spawned the early 1990s G-funk sound, which paired gangsta rap lyrics with a thick and hazy tone, often relying on samples from 1970s P-funk; the best-known proponents of this sound were the breakthrough rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Alternative hip hop

Main article: Alternative hip hop

Musical theater

Main article: Theater of the United States

Broadway

Main article: Broadway

Musical institutions

Music education

Main article: Music education in the United States

Music festivals and holidays

Christmas

Main article: Christmas music

References

1. ^  Struble, John Warthen. The History of American Classical Music. 1995. Facts on File, Inc. ISBN 0–8160–2927 (pg. xvii)
2. ^  Ferris, Jean. America's Musical Landscape. 1993. Brown & Benchmark. ISBN 0–697–12516–5 (pg. 11) Much of (the distinctive American style in classical music) is in fact derived from (its) delightfully asymmetrical rhythms. (This characteristic (is) sometimes thought to reflect the wide-open spaces of (the United States).
3. ^  Ferris, Jean. America's Musical Landscape. 1993. Brown & Benchmark. ISBN 0–697–12516–5 (pg. 18) Indian music is generally monophonic. (M)elodies may be doubled at the octave by male and female voices singing together, but there is no harmonic accompaniment. (S)ongs are usually accompanied by... rattles or drums".
4. ^  Cooper, Mike. "Steel Slide Hula Baloos". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1–85828–636–0. pp 56 The mele were traditional chants addressed to the gods, to chiefs and to families, and they recorded the genealogy, hisory and sacred attributes of their subjects. Mele hula pahu (chants accompanied by dance and drums) are formal, sacred forms that are still treat with great respect. (emphasis in original)
5. ^  Nettl, Bruno (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc. (pg. 201) "The differences between American and British song are greater in the words than in the music, for the words are much more frequently of American origin (often they are parodies of British songs)". "(Anglo-American rural folk music features) more melodies in major, fewer pentatonic tunes, more songs in duple meter, fewer pentatonic tunes, but more use of the drone principle in instrumental accompaniment than has (British music)".
6. ^  Nettl, Bruno (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc. (pg 171) "(Characteristics of African music in African American music include an) emphasis on rhythm... and, perhaps as a result, in the use of syncopation and of complicated rhythmic figures... and the call-and-response pattern."
7. ^  Ferris, Jean. America's Musical Landscape. 1993. Brown & Benchmark. ISBN 0–697–12516–5 (pg. 50) (B)lacks... sang work songs and (created a kind of) long, loud shout that came to be called a field holler." (emphasis in original)
8. ^  Ferris, Jean. America's Musical Landscape. 1993. Brown & Benchmark. ISBN 0–697–12516–5 (pg. 99) "Many spirituals were originally improvised and performed in (a) call-and-response (style). (A) leader sang one line, which was then repeated by the group, or the leader sang the verses and the group responded to each verse with a simple refrain".
9. ^  Broughton, Simon and Jeff Kaliss. "Music Is the Glue". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1–85828–636–0 (pg. 552 – 553) "The French ancestors of the Cajuns were settled at the far end of North America, in rural Acadie... (Many Acadians) found their way to Louisiana, where they established themselves as the dominant clique among the other European and Afro-Caribbean groups in the region."
10. ^  Nettl, Bruno (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc. (pg 201–202) "Tall tales and other humorous exaggerations are a typical subject. Folk heroes such as the Negro strong man John Henry, the badman Jesse James, and the Slavic steel worker Joe Magarac abound. Broadside ballads telling of the murders and railroad wrecks of a locality are particularly popular, and songs telling of shipwrecks are a specialty of the populations of Newfoundland, Labrador and New England". "the square dance...is drived (sic) from the eighteenth and nineteenth century quadrilles of European high society. A distinctively American feature is the presence of a 'caller'."
11. ^  Lomax, Alan (1960), The Folksongs of North America in the English Language. Doubleday and Company. New York. (pg. 1) Cited in Nettl, Bruno (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc. (pg 202) "According to Alan Lomax, northern folk singers produced a rather relaxed, open-voiced tone, while southern ones are tenser and "pinched-voice", and those of the West are a blend of the two. Lomax attributes these differences to deep-seated cultural differences involving the relationship between the sexes, the hardships of frontier life, and the presence of the Negro minority in the South."
12. ^  van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214.
13. ^  Werner, Craig (1998). A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America. New York. Plume. ISBN 0452280656 (pg. 4–5)

• Crawford, Richard. America's Musical Life: A History. 2001. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393048101
• Chase, Gilbert. America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. 2000. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0–252–00454-X
• Williamson, Nigel and Mark Ellingham. "Try a Little Fairydust"; Ramiro Burr. "Accordion Enchilda"; Andrew Means. "Ha-Ya-Ya, Weya Ha-Ya-Ya"; Simon Broughton. "Rhythm and Jews"; Viv Broughton and James Attlee. "Devil Stole the Beat"; Tony Seeger and Richie Unterburger. "Filling the Map with Music"; Nick Barraclough and Kurt Wolff. "High an' Lonesome". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, pp 615–623. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1–85828–636–0
• Blush, Steven. American Hardcore: A Tribal History. 2001. Feral House. ISBN 0–922915–717–7
• The Vibe History of Hip Hop. 1999. Vibe magazine. ISBN 0609805037
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• Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "American Alternative Rock/Post-Punk". Allmusic.com. Retrieved Dec. 22, 2003 from http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDCASS70312222301011957&sql=J134
• Collins, Ace. The Stories Behind Country Music's All-Time Greatest 100 Songs. 1996. Boulevard Books. New York City. ISBN 1–57297–072–3
• Garofalo, Reebee. Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA. 1997. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN 0–205–13702–2

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