APHG
Unit 3
Diffusion of Music
Instructions:
1. Find 5 songs that have some geographical significance to a particular place or mention what has
been or will be studied in our AP Human Geography class.
2. Print a list of those songs with the geographic reference listed next to each song.
3. Also on this list, include the musical hearth of each of the groups you have listed. Explain how
each group’s/artist’s music spread (contagious, hierarchical, relocation). Make sure to provide
proof of type of diffusion for your artist. (how you found out about the artist). Finally, express
how this music has influenced your cultural identity.
This list is due on Monday, Oct. 12. This grade will be an extra credit grade in the projects category.
Your list should resemble the following example…
Song Title
Artist Geographical Reference Hearth
Name:
Period:
Diffusion Type/Proof
** Great web sites for finding lyrics related to Diffusion of Music assignment: **
1. http://www.Contemplator.com/bycount.html
*Folk songs sorted by country
*Great explanations of lyrics
2. www.azlyrics.com
*A universe of music lyrics!
3. http://www.lyricsondemand.com/
*all the lyrics you could ever want!
4. http://www.songlyrics.com
*lots of lyrics to every type of music
5. www.absolutelyrics.com
*All genres of music lyrics are available at this site.
Influence
Dave Matthews Band and the Diffusion of Music
Music and Popular Culture - The reality of popular music is scary. Think about all the money that is spent by people
to market music, advertising in magazines like Rolling Stone and obviously the money spent on producing music,
purchasing it and spending money on concert tickets!
Hearths of Popular Culture
Pop culture diffuses hierarchically in the context of time-space compression, with
diffusion happening most rapidly across the most compressed spaces.
Bands that begin on college campuses or in college towns and build from their base
typically follow the path of building a hearth for their sound’s diffusion first through contagious
diffusion and then through hierarchical diffusion. Towns like Athens, GA, Burlington, VT,
Seattle, Washington and Charlottesville, VA are all examples of musical hearths.
The Dave Matthews Band created and perfected their sound in Charlottesville, VA in the
early 1990s. Lead singer and guitarist Dave Matthews was born in South Africa and later landed
in Charlottesville as a young adult after living in Johannesburg, New York and London.
Matthews was a bartender at Miller’s in Charlottesville when he met Ross Hoffman, a
local songwriter who mentored Matthews in song writing. The Dave Matthews Band was
formed when Matthews invited Carter Beuford (drums), LeRoi Moore (sax, died in 2008),
Stepan Lessard (bass), and Boyd Tinsley (violin) to join him in created a demo of some of his
songs. And the rest, as they say, is history…
DMB’s first live show was in Charlottesville, VA in 1991 on Earth Day. Manager Coran
Capshaw followed the path of diffusion that was initiated by groups such as Phish and the
Grateful Dead. This path was one of word of mouth (contagious diffusion).
Hierarchical diffusion of the band soon followed, through the hierarchy of college towns
in America. DMB often crossed paths in many of these college towns with the group, Hootie
and the Blowfish. The first DMB album was an independent label album which was released in
1993. Later the following year, they released their first studio album, Under the Table and
Dreaming. By the time their album was released in 1994, they had built up such a following,
that the album entered the album charts at #34 even though MTV hadn’t even heard of them at
the time. In 1994, the Dave Matthews Band played right here in Atlanta for the first time at the
Fox Theatre. I was there. I could tell that what I was witnessing that night was something huge.
This band was going to be around for a long time to come.
The band has grown exponentially in popularity throughout the world as you can see the
number of concerts played in different locations since 1991. Today, the official DMB fan club
has over 80,000 paying members. Along with Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffet, DMB is one
of the highest grossing tours each year.