Five “Themes”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Listening Critically (terminology)
Music and Identity
Music and Technology
Music is a Business
Music has “Centers” and “Peripheries”
(places)
Music Centers & Peripheries
• “Centers” – money, power and control
- NYC, LA, Nashville (?!)
- aims at the mass (= urban, white) market
• “Peripheries” – the edges
- physically remote
- lacking in power or influence
- stylistically unique or “different” (often)
• Peripheries influence and change Centers
Streams of Traditions
• Three main sources of American Pop Music
• European
- chiefly white (Anglo) Northern Europe
- British Isles (Scotch, Welsh, Irish, etc.)
• African
- chiefly from West Central Africa
- imported slaves (mostly) to Southern regions
• Latin America
- Caribbean, Mexican, Brazil, etc.
- often mixes African w/ indigenous elements
“Latin America”
• South of United States
• Colonized by Europe
- Spain
- France
- Portugal
• Mixtures of
- Indigenous
- European
- African (sometimes)
“Enigue Nigue”
• Afro-Cuban
- based in drum ensembles
- docks of Matanzas (Cuba)
• Rumba (competitive dance)
• Guaguanco
- “Rooster and Hen”
- “vacunao”
• Examples
- Rumba Street Party 2 with Clave
y Guaguanco by AfroRomanzo –
YouTube
- Rumba Guaguancó - "El Solar
de los 6" - Cultura de Cuba viaDanza Tanzreisen – YouTube
• Textbook ex., p. 39-41
(on your own)
“La Negra”
• Mariachi
- entertainment
- marriage, social events
• Guadalajara, Jalisco
(western) Mexico
• Small string bands
• Professionalization (1930s)
- move to urban centers
- add trumpets, others
• Example
Mariachi Vargas de
Tecalitlan Son de La Negra
[Textbook, p. 42-3]
TEST # 1 Materials END Here
Anything on following slides belongs
to Test # 2 or later.
Chapter 2
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Earliest (original) US popular forms (18th C)
Minstrelsy (1840s-80s, and beyond)
Stephen Foster – 1st US popular composer
Bands – Brass and other
Tin Pan Alley – the Sheet Music Industry
Ragtime (1880s-1910s) – syncopated piano
Phonograph – modern technology
Early American (U.S.) Music
• No “native” music in the colonies
• European immigrant culture
(first of the “three traditions” – Chapter 1)
• English, Irish, Scots genres and forms
• Religious music (Pilgrims & others)
• Dance Music
• Others: Italian operatic, German orchestral, etc.
• Examples
- Henry Russell, “Woodman Spare that Tree”
woodman spare that tree (1837) The first environmental song? - YouTube
- Henry Bishop, “Home Sweet home”
Richard Conrad singing "Home, Sweet Home" - YouTube
Minstrelsy (defined)
•
•
•
•
Uniquely US popular form
Widespread from 1840s to 1880s (& beyond)
Origins in NYC (& elsewhere)
“Variety show” format
- song & dance
- jokes & comic dialogue/monologues
• Blackface (“covers”)
George Washington Dixon
(1801?-1861)
•
•
•
•
•
First (?) important US blackface performer
Working class background (NYC)
Circus act – singer & reciter of poems
“Ethiopean songs”
1829 – “Coal Black Rose” (NYC, Bowery)
- Coal Black Rose – YouTube (solo banjo)
- Coal Black Rose [364] (274) (vocal)
• Political satire & commentary
• 1834 – “Long Tail Blue” (see following slide)
- Long Tail Blue.wmv – YouTube (solo banjo)
- Long Tail Blue (banjo w/ voice)
Dixon as “Zip Coon”
Music Example: ZIP COON - Original 1834 Lyrics & Chorus - Tom Roush
Music Example: The Skillet Lickers-Turkey In The Straw
Music Example: Tennessee Mafia Jug Band "Turkey In The Straw"
Thomas “Daddy” Rice
(1808-1860)
• b. NYC (Lower East Side)
- the Bowery
• Traveling performer by 1827
• Mimics black/southern speech
- travels Ohio Valley & South
• “Jim Crow” – observations of
black workers/slaves
• 1830s - “Jump Jim Crow”
• Music Examples
- Jump Jim Crow – YouTube
- Melvin Wine - Jump Jim Crow
Virginia Minstrels
•
•
•
•
•
1843 – 1st performances in the Bowery
Dan Emmett (fiddle) and three co-performers
GROUP performance in blackface & costume
Extended “concert” w/ songs, dialect, etc.
“Jimmy Crack Corn”
- Jimmy crack Corn played by Brad Sondahl - YouTube
• “Old Dan Tucker”
- The Skillet Lickers-Old Dan Tucker
- Grandpa Jones - Old Dan Tucker – YouTube (start c. 0:30)
- Bruce Springsteen - Old Dan Tucker (Live 2006)
• “The Boatman Dance”
- "The Boatman Dance" with banjo & fiddle – YouTube
- Boatman Dance. – YouTube
- De Boatman's Dance (1843, credited to Dan Emmett)
“END MEN”
“Mr. Tambo”
[Dick Pelham]
Fiddle (Violin)
[Dan Emmett]
Banjo
[Billy Whitlock]
“Mr. Bones”
[Frank Brower]
Minstrel
Instruments
Banjo
Fiddle (violin)
Animal Bones
“Mr. Bones”
How to Play Bones with Dom
Flemons - YouTube
Tambourine
“Mr. Tambo”
The Minstrel Show
• “Mr. Interlocutor” and the “End Men”
- M.C. and jokes
- dialect (“stump speech”) [see online resources]
• Original Two-Part Structure (1840s)
- Northern Black characters
- “Plantation” sketch
• Later Three-Part Format (1850s & later)
- sentimental songs, genteel tradition (“white”)
- Olio – “variety show” (music, dance, stories, jokes)
- “walk-around” (“Cakewalk”)
Exs. (both c. 1900, i.e., recreations after the era passed)
- Minstrel Cakewalk Cake Walk Dancing – YouTube
- Uncle Tom's Cabin - Group and Solo Cakewalk dance (1903) - YouTube
Friendly Warning
Test # 1 - next meeting
4 February (THURSDAY)
covers Chapter 1 & Terminology
(Review Sheets now on Course
Website)
NB. Test begins at 12:30 pm, short
lecture (on chapter 2) precedes