STUDY GUIDE: ETHNIC NORTH AMERICA
A North American folk festival can be seen as a trait of mixed North American ethnicity. A folk
festival is an event that brings together many different cultures and fits them into a single
performance frame. However, participants make musical concessions to comply with festival
limitations as much as immigrant traditions in North America change to adapt to overlapping
ethnic boundaries in a new nation.
Festivals juxtapose competing notions of ethnicity. On one hand, organizers cause
homogenization: they display the diversity of a city in a unified package that is comprehensible to
Canadian audiences. At such events, performers often conform to the same space and format of
presentation on a stage, as though it were a Western concert. They also struggle to define and
present their cultural heritage to expectations conditioned by a market-driven media.
In the case of Polish Americans in Pittsburgh, we see a conflict between the younger generation,
trying to revive an “authentic” Polish tradition, and the older generation, who feel that the
Chicago-style Polish American polka best expresses their bicultural position. Ethnomusicologists
realize that the “authentic” music the younger generation wants to recapture is a romantic
recreation of a past that no longer exists. Conversely, the pro-bicultural position represents the
present state of the music’s evolution with hybrid traits. Here, tradition is remodeled by its
adaptation while the old gradually becomes extinct, just like in Charles Darwin’s theory of
evolution wherein adaptation of a species for its survival governs the laws of its change.
Although, sentimentally, ethnomusicologists also regard music as an endangered species. Hugh
Tracey, in the case of African music in the 1950s, believed that music, through time, must be
recorded or else it will be forgotten. This is now also the case with North American traditional
folk musics.
Traditional repertoires might be retained, but most often their roles in community life changed
because the settings and functions of performance has changed. For example, there is no need for
sheep herding songs in Pittsburgh in the 21st century, but they are still sung rearranged in fourpart harmony by large choirs. Places of performance may range from the home, where songs
preserve language, to a social club. At clubs, people come together to reconcile regional
differences since their own population is lacking in their new land. Inter-communal contacts
recast symbols of ethnicity and juxtapose new conceptions in a new North American context.
The New Immigrant Music and the Politics of American Identity
 What are the conjunto, the mariachi and the polka?
 Who was Whoopee John Wilfahrt?
Multiplicity of Musics in North America
Define ethnicity. How is it understood in ethnomusicology?
How do New World ideas of cultural organization and identity affect our understanding music
culture?
Ideas about Music
 What is the relationship between home life and preservation of culture?
 What is the role of religious organizations in this?
 What is hymnody?
 Who are the Amish? In what language is their music? What is the Ausbund? How is
their music transmitted?
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What is a Gesangbuch?
Who are the Québecois?
What are the accordion and the Jew’s harp? How are they played?
Wha are the Cajun?
Musical Instruments
Identify and explain the significance of the following:
Concertina
Bandura
Hardingfele
The fiddle
The banjo
Multiethnic Culture
 Who are blackface minstrels? When did they perform?
 What is Klezmer?
Music of an African American Community
 What is call-and-response? Where does it come from?
 What are the Blues? Where does it come from? What North American music does it
affect?
Music Festivals
 Describe the musical styles and roots of zydeco, celtic and techno music.
Deeper Questions
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What is ethnicity?
How can ethnic music be used as a means of representing identity?
How is ethnic music accepted by second and third generation immigrants in our society?
In what ways may an ethnic group’s musical boundaries be maintained?
Why was polka the model with which many ethnic musics blended?
Why does traditional music blend with North American popular music?
How may we observe that many North American musical instruments are no longer used
as much?
How is North American musical culture changing in the technological age, and how
much regard is there for the traditional forms as there once was?
Has music always changed in North American culture, and how so?