home

= = American Roots Music

This are the questions that we have to follow as we are creating our American Roots Music's project:

Before popular music achieved international acclaim in the 20th century, blues, rock and roll and country were some of the most well-known genres of American music, which began with the Native Americans. American roots music includes the creation of African American, Appalachian Folk and other forms of music. This is where it all began! 
 * 1) Which ethnic groups influenced the music during your assigned decade(s)?
 * 2) What were the popular or evolving genres of music?
 * 3) Who were the famous composers, songwriters and artists?

"Buck Dancer's Choice," "Railroad Blues," and "Knoxville Blues (Sam McGee), Old Dan Tucker ( Bruce Springsteen), Joel Sweene , Earl Scruggs, W.C Handy, Joe Falcon and Nathan Abshire, Jimmie Tarlton ("Columbus Stockade Blues" Fiddling has been associated with classic American heroes. George Washington had his favorite fiddle tune ("Jaybird Sittin' on a Hickory Limb"), as did Thomas Jefferson ("Grey Eagle"). Davy Crockett was a "ferocious" fiddler (the tune "Crockett's Reel" is still played today), and Andrew Jackson's victory over the British in the War of 1812 is still celebrated with the popular "Eighth of January."In the early 20th century, this style swept the US as part of a fad for Hawaiian music, and soon American roots musicians like Jimmie Tarlton ("Columbus Stockade Blues") were learning from touring Hawaiian guitarists how to play this style. Both white and black guitarists (from Bashful Brother Oswald to bluesman [|Son House] ) developed the slide style, and its popularity gave rise to a hybrid instrument called the resonator guitar, or "dobro." 
 * 1) How does the music of that time directly influence the music of today?

In more modern times, Henry Ford started a series of fiddling contests in the 1920s to help preserve the old American values. Though the fiddle was the main instrument in early country music in the 1920s, it was gradually replaced by the steel guitar and electric guitar. It re-emerged in popularity in the 1940s as [|Bill Monroe], [|Earl Scruggs] and [|Lester Flatt] developed bluegrass. Innovators like Chubby Wise, Scotty Stoneman, Kenny Baker, and Benny Martin turned the fiddle into a driving vehicle for improvisation. Polkas, schottisches, and waltzes were especially popular in the early days, but by the dawn of the 20th century, tejano musicians were combining the accordion with the bajo sexto to create a different style and more original repertoire. Today the accordion is still a distinctive part of Cajun and norteno music.
 * 1) Which type of instruments influenced the music? [[file:Del_McCoury_Band_250x200.jpg|http://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_instruments_innovations.html]]
 * 2) Culturally, socially, politically and/or economically, what was happening in the U.S. during this time that influenced music in the U.S.? How would you describe the environment in the U.S. at that specific time? Yes, they influenced so much, the United States was living some changes "During the 20th century, the United States experienced monumental changes wrought by developments such as industrialization, integration and globalization." Other major historical events influenced too, the social and economics changes had an enormous effect on blues and white country, people were moving from a rural to an urban environment and this event exposed music to a new and diverse influences.

Links para pesquisa: <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #3b5998; font-family: 'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif;">@http://www.caramoor.org/festival/american-roots-music @http://raicesdelsonido.blogspot.com.br/ <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;">[] <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;"> []

[] <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;"> []

[] [] <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;"> [] [] [] @http://www.parlorsongs.com/insearch/amerindian/amerindian0.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4r4YoVzyU media type="youtube" key="Vh4r4YoVzyU" width="560" height="315" align="center"

This is a video that tells a little bit about the roots of american music and relates the influences that Africans brought in american songs when introducing the banjo. The violin as well, brought by European people, if I'm not wrong. It's is claimed that the Mountains were where the American music was created. In my opinion, these songs and the real origins of american music show a pain (as we can see when they sing) that is a reflex of all the suffering that Americans had been through some day. It's beautiful.



This is another video about the roots music. This video is about blues and radio beginning. [] . <span style="color: #f61d1d; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">MUSIC OF THE UNITED STATES The **music of the United States** reflects [|the country's multi-ethnic population] through a diverse array of styles. Among the country's most internationally-renowned [|genres] are [|hip hop], [|blues] , [|country] , [|rhythm and blues] , [|jazz] , [|barbershop] , [|pop] , [|techno] , and [|rock and roll]. After Japan, the United States has the world's [|second largest music market] with a total retail value of 3,635.2 million dollars in 2010 [|[1]] and its music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of [|American popular music] have gained a near global audience.

[|Native Americans] were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, [|immigrants] from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. [|African slaves] brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributed to a [|melting pot]. Much of modern [|popular music] can trace its roots to the emergence in the late 19th century of [|African American] [|blues] and the growth of [|gospel music] in the 1920s. The African American basis for popular music used elements derived from European and indigenous musics. The United States has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of the [|Ukrainian], [|Irish] , [|Scottish] , [|Polish] , [|Hispanic] and [|Jewish] communities, among others. Many American cities and towns have vibrant music scenes which, in turn, support a number of regional musical styles. Along with musical centers such as [|Philadelphia], [|Seattle] , [|New York City] , [|San Francisco] , [|New Orleans] , [|Detroit] , [|Minneapolis] , [|Chicago] , [|Atlanta] , [|Nashville] , [|Austin] , and [|Los Angeles] , many smaller cities such as [|Asbury Park, New Jersey] have produced distinctive styles of music. The [|Cajun] and [|Creole] traditions in [|Louisiana music], the folk and popular styles of [|Hawaiian music] , and the [|bluegrass] and [|old time music] of the [|Southeastern] states are a few examples of diversity in American music.

[] This is about religious songs: =<span style="background-color: #db8d29; color: #0010ff; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; text-align: center;"> Both black and white Southerners generally received their musical education in a milieu that stressed religious music. Songs such as "Amazing Grace" and "Farther Along" were common to both groups. media type="youtube" key="k1dVxCa77sI" width="560" height="315"media type="youtube" key="hRS_91oJL8M" width="560" height="315"=

Influence of Native <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The music is considered American either because it is native to the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, contemporary folk music, rhythm and blues, and jazz. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The**music history of the United States**includes many styles of <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|folk] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|popular] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> and <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|classical] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> music. Some of the best-known genres of American music are <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|blues] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|rock and roll] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|country] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, began with the <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|Native Americans] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">. The first people to live in North America. The music of these people was highly varied in form, and was mostly religious in purpose.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Native American music **<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> is the <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|music] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> that is used, created or performed by <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|Native Americans in the United States] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> and <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|First Nations] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> people of Canada, specifically traditional <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|tribal] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|pan-tribal] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> and inter-tribal <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|genres] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> as well as distinct Native American <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|subgenres] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> of <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|popular music] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> including: <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|rock] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|blues] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|hip hop] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|classical] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|film music] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, and <span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|reggae] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, as well as unique popular styles like //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #0b0080; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|waila] //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> ("chicken scratch").]

[] <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">INSTRUMENTS AND INNOVATIONS <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Each segment of the //American Roots Music// series is built around important developments in American music forms. In actuality, innovations and modifications of the instruments themselves and how they have been played has often been what spurred these new forms. Too often any detailed accounts of instruments have been relegated to footnotes in the history of American music and have taken a backseat to discussions of the musicians and the songs. Yet to the musicians themselves, a good instrument is all-important. Old-time fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who started the //Grand Ole Opry//, would reverently take his violin "Old Betsy" at the end of a performance and return it to its case, carefully covering it with a red satin cloth. Bluegrass star <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: none;">[|Bill Monroe] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> engaged in a legendary quarrel with the Gibson Company because he felt they had not repaired his cherished mandolin properly. This page offers a succinct history of the major instruments of roots music, and the ways in which the great original makers of the music altered and improved them.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Guitar **





<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">If American vernacular music has an archetypal instrument it is certainly the guitar. Though figures like Benjamin Franklin played a guitar-like instrument, and genteel ladies like Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel played a gut-stringed "parlor guitar," the instrument didn't really achieve widespread use in the country until the twentieth century. As early as the 1600s, Spanish settlers had brought to the New World an European style guitar with five sets of double strings. By 1800 the six string instrument known today had evolved in southern Europe and was brought over from places like Italy and France. Though they were seldom known in the mountains or with the white working class of the South, a study of ex-slave narratives reveals a number of memories of guitar-playing by blacks in pre-Civil War times, almost all of them located in the Mississippi River delta. There is little documentation as to how these guitars were played, but the location is significant: it would later be the center for the classic delta blues. By the turn of the century, improved guitar-making techniques allowed manufacturers like Martin (founded 1833) and Gibson (founded 1894) to offer steel-string guitars. When played with picks, this allowed a much brighter, louder sound and let the guitar hold its own in a string band, at a square dance and as a solo instrument in its own right. It was about this time that the singer [|Lead Belly] discovered an inexpensive Stella 12-string with steel strings and as loud as a piano. Soon mail-order catalog stores like Wards and Sears-Roebuck were adding inexpensive guitars to their catalogs. Sears' models ranged from $2.70 to $10.30, and one inventory in 1900 reported that over 78,000 guitars had been manufactured that year. Another popular playing style had its origins in the Hawaiian guitar. As early as 1830, Mexican cattle herders had brought the guitar into the Hawaiian islands, and the local natives soon adapted it to their own music, creating a "slack key" or open tuning. Along the Texas-Mexico border, another type of guitar called the banjosexton emerged as a central instrument in popular conjunto string bands. Looking like a cross between a standard guitar and a cello, the large banjo sexton featured twelve strings, most tunes an octave below standard guitar. This gave the player the chance to play bass and chord at the same time, and gave the music a propulsive bass sound. When combined with the button accordion, the drums, and possibly an electric bass, the banjo sexton became a crucial ingredient in the popular tejano music of today.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Accordion **



<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A cousin to the harmonica (both are classified by musicologists as "free reed" instruments) is the accordion, which exists in roots music in several forms. One of the earliest - one of the first of any sort - was the octagonal-shaped concertina, with sets of buttons on both sides, perfected around 1844 in England. These small bellows boxes were used by Irish and **Irish-Americans as both dance instruments and as accompaniment to singing**. The larger "piano-key" accordion was developed in Vienna and Paris and gained popularity in America in the early 20th century. Certain **folk musicians** in the South, especially buskers on street corners and railway stations, used the piano accordion as a substitute for an organ or piano, and often used them to accompany fiddlers. By the time of the Civil War, German settlers had brought the accordion to the Acadian population of **southwest Louisiana**, and the button accordion soon became an integral part of **Cajun music**, especially in the hands of masters like Joe Falcon and Nathan Abshire. A similar button accordion was introduced to **tejano music** about the same time, often played in a manner derived from German and other European styles.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Fiddle **



<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The oldest and **most basic instrument of roots music**, however, is not the guitar but the fiddle. For years the fiddle was virtually the only instrument found on the frontier, and in the South is was used widely enough that as early as 1736 we find written accounts of fiddle contests. Though often thought of today as primarily a white instrument - and indeed many tunes and styles came over from **Ireland and Scotland** - there arose in the 19th century a strong fiddle tradition among blacks. Some of it started out as **slave fiddling**, in which talented slaves were sent to places like New Orleans to learn how to fiddle standard dance tunes. Blues composer W.C Handy remembered his own grandfather in northern Alabama playing fiddle tunes in the late 1800s, and a strong style of blues fiddle developed and persisted well into the 1930s. Native Americans and Mexican Americans also developed important fiddle styles in the Southwest. A governor of Tennessee, fiddler Bob Taylor, liked to refer to the old fiddle classics in his speeches: "Every one of them breathes the spirit of liberty; every jig is an echo from flintlock rifles and shrill fifes of Bunker Hill."

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Banjo **



<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If the fiddle was the primary contribution to American music from northern Europe, the banjo was the primary contribution from **Africa**. The banjo has been called "the outstanding American contribution to the music of **folklore**," and can be traced back in some form to sub-Saharan cultures of the 13th century. It was almost certainly brought to the New World by slaves, and as early as 1781 Thomas Jefferson, writing about slaves on his own plantation, said, "the instrument proper to them is the **Banjar**, which they brought hither from Africa." Many of these early "banjars" were made from gourds and played with a fretless neck. We have no idea how these sounded, but surviving illustrations suggest they used heavy strings and probably had a deep, mellow sound. By 1847 we have eyewitness accounts of the fiddle and banjo being played together in the South - the origin of the modern string band or **bluegrass band.** This early black folk tradition eventually transferred the banjo to whites, especially in the **Appalachians**. Here, musicians made banjo heads out of groundhog skins and adapted their songs to the instrument's harmonics. The banjo became the central instrument of these "plantation melodies" and songs like "Old Dan Tucker" entered the pantheon of vernacular music. Early on in the minstrel show era, a Virginian named Joel Sweeney popularized a type of banjo with a fifth, short string and used it to develop a more complex picking style. Billed as "The Banjo King," Sweeney toured widely in the years before the Civil War, and even did a command performance before Queen Victoria.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In 1945, though, a young man from North Carolina named <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: none;">[|Earl Scruggs] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> took the banjo in a different direction. He perfected a three-finger "roll" which allowed him to play a rapid-fire cascade of notes that allowed the banjo to hold its own in the driving tempos of the new bluegrass music. Scruggs, who was as much a structural engineer as musical genius, also experimented with ways to improve the instrument's sound, and devices like the "Scruggs tuner" which allowed the player to bend notes by tightening and loosening the strings. Scruggs became probably the single most influential instrumentalist in American roots music, as generations of younger musicians took his style and built on it.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Harmonica **



<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The **harmonica**, that most modest of instruments, has ancestors that go back to Asia over a thousand years ago. But the "mouth organ" or "harp" as we know it today dates back only to 19th century Germany. Americans seem to have taken the harmonica to heart from the very first. They were carried by soldiers in the Civil War, and by 1890 were being sold mail order by dozens of catalogue stores. Though the harmonica was one of the few instruments that could not be home-made and harmonica sellers offered instruction books about the "proper" way to play, Americans quickly began to explore unorthodox ways of playing. Blues musicians learned how to cup their hands over the harmonica to get all kinds of bent and slurred notes; others would "choke" the instrument to get odd, percussive effects. White musicians liked to try the imitations of chickens or trains or a fox hunt. Harold Courlander, an early collector of African American folk music, has called the harmonica "**probably the most ubiquitous of Negro folk instruments**." It was featured as a solo instrument by pioneers like //Grand Ole Opry// star [|DeFord Bailey], and by Arkansas radio pioneer <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: none;">[|Sonny Boy Williamson] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">.

**The material above was taken from: [] **