• From: BELGIUM
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 3,403

Topic: american music

I posted already a topic.
I just wanted to know more about the origin of CONTEMPORARY US MUSIC.
The music culture in the States: what is the influence for music like BLUES, BLUEGRASS, COUNTRY, ROCK AND ROLL, and a lot more.
To repeat myself influence of all the different Ethnic population:
- Native Americans: their contribution
- Afro Americans: their contribution
- Immigrants: IRISH & influence, ITALIANS & influence, and more.

I just like to know, and for me this means a lot this TOPIC, I really hope to receive answers, about the history of the music, and their different styles like origin of Jazz, and also with a particular interest about the influence in music, by the American Native people: rhythm? please help me on this topic.

[color=blue]- GITAARDOCPHIL SAIS: TO CONQUER DEAD, YOU HAVE TO DIE[/color]   AND [color=blue] we are born to die[/color]
- MY GUITAR PLAYS EVERY STYLE = BLUES, ROCK, METAL, so I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY IT.
[color=blue]Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.[/color]

gitaardocphil's Website

  • From: Starkville, Mississippi USA
  • Registered: 2006-03-04
  • Posts: 2,069

Re: american music

Hi gitaardocphil.  Native American (First Nations) music is alive and well.

However, the music (drumming & chanting) is inseperable from the dancing and sacred/spiritual expression that go along with it.  The various tribal nations have in recent decades taken great pride in their unique heritages and celebrate their sacred traditions.

I have had the pleasure of experiencing some of the celebrations of the Choctaw nation here in Mississippi.  The drummers/singers/dancers resplendent in beautiful regalia.

I also saw a group of Inuit dancers 'welcome' a US Navy ship to the port of Juneau Alaska in the summer of 1982.  Seems that there had been a tragic run-in between the US Navy and the Inuits back in the days of the Alaska Gold Rush.  A Navy patrol boat blasted an Inuit village into oblivion.  Now, whenever a Navy ship comes to the port, the Inuit 'welcome' them at the dock with extensive drumming/chanting/dancing.  The sailors had to wait on deck of the ship for a very long time while the Inuit delegation made their dance back and forth along the pier.  When the dance was done, they just stopped and walked away without looking back.

There is a whole lot about this musical/sacred tradition that I do not fully understand, but I love it.  Very powerful stuff.

Because the music, singing, and dancing are all inseparable it is hard to say just how just the music itself has influenced contemporary US music.  James

"That darn Pythagorean Comma thing keeps messing me up!"
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_comma[/url]

James McCormick's Website

  • From: Bellevue, WA
  • Registered: 2006-06-15
  • Posts: 3,336

Re: american music

A great deal of "American" music (blues, rock, etc) grew out of the slave and field songs sung by southern blacks prior to and following our Civil War in the 1860s.   The blues grew directly out of that common repetitive framework that was good for passing time while doing manual labor in cotton fields.   Rock grew directly from that.

It's an interesting dive into American history, and provides an interesting slant on it.

Someday we'll win this thing...

[url=http://www.aclosesecond.com]www.aclosesecond.com[/url]

jerome.oneil's Website

  • Zurf
  • Zurf
  • Blunt but well meaning moderator
  • Offline
  • From: Virginia, USA
  • Registered: 2007-06-27
  • Posts: 7,522

Re: american music

Like Jerome.Oneil says:
Slaves did a lot of it.  They brought their rhythms with them and from those grew field songs and spirituals.  I've heard it said that some of the spirituals and field songs were really directions to get to the Underground Railroad.  If the field hands were singing "Jimmy Crack Corn" it meant that the overseer wasn't around and it was safe for the runaways to cut through the field of corn. Interestingly, quilt patterns were used for much the same purpose depending on how they were hung to dry and such.  From spirituals and field songs grew blues and Gospel.  Country and rock are just different forms of blues.  They all use the same chord progressions and a pentatonic scale.  Country uses the major pentatonic scale, while blues flattens the thirds and sevenths and rock sometimes flattens thirds and sevenths and sometimes doesn't depending on the song. 

Take the slave traditions and add in the French and Spanish influences down in the Gulf states and you get Zydeco.   

Jazz and Dixieland, I don't know where that came from. 

Bluegrass is a direct descendent of Scottish Highland jigs and reels.  Listen to bluegrass, Cape Breton, and Highland music together.  They'd fit quite nicely into the same concert. 

Corrections requested.  This is all just bits and pieces remembered through the fog of pre-coffee morning. 

- Zurf

Granted B chord amnesty by King of the Mutants (Long live the king).
If it comes from the heart and you add a few beers... it'll be awesome! - Mekidsmom
When in doubt ... hats. - B.G. Dude
  • From: Nebraska
  • Registered: 2006-04-30
  • Posts: 183

Re: american music

As far as the blues and ryhtm and blues goes is mainly influened by african american slaves and there work songs in the 1800s and the later in the 1920s with some seriou opression goin on it gave rise to some classics.

Native americans were largely left out of the mix but there are some good alternative/techno songs out there.

I grew up a folky bluegrassy boy in north conneticut (which believe it or not is farm land)
It is largely contributed to from irish tunes and later southernfied stuff helped to create folk bluegrass is older stuff which came from everyday people singing about everday stuff.

counrty to me sounds alot like early rock at least the older stuff did more reccent stuff seems to be keeping up with rock

So Red Delicious
  • From: BELGIUM
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 3,403

Re: american music

As far as I know, you guys are super, because it is not a very easy topic, I know that the slaves in, just some states, ALABAMA, MISSISSIPI, GEORGIA, LOUISIANA, the most important COTTON states. It was also a kind of communication, and they were singing songs, in "African", their owners didn't like that, because, somewhere they were afraid, not understanding their language, but this "problem" disapeared mostly with the second and for sure with the third generation, lyrics changed, they started to believe in "God" and the songs they sang were primitive gospel songs, roots of gospel and singing in a specific rhytme, starting the "blues". I think they were not allowed to have instruments, but they were inventive, and a bass string and a "thing" to have resonnance, was all they needed.
But, is there an "NATIVE INDIAN" influence?
Bluegrass, country, I think that especially the Irish people were responsable for that OTHER kind of music, if you listen to IRISH folk songs, you can understand more. Concerning the south, you had like you wrote a huge influence by FRENCH and Spanish immigrants. MOST of people think that only LOUISIANA was French, it was far bigger, as it was for SPANISH too.
If they didn't sell their property, and if Spanish territorium would still exists, I think that what we know now as the USA, would be approximately 50-60% smaller.
It is still unbelievable that the ENGLISH people, popped up everywhere where other immigrants were. CANADA: FRENCH, but wars with who? British soldiers.
South Africa: DUTCH, again British attack. They had an extremely high urge to expand. Thety were also responsable for the FRENCH-BELGIUM (FLANDRES AT THAT TIME) - NETHERLANDS
Take a map you will see ENGLAND being an Island, controlling the very, maybe the most important  sea, and channel in the world, and on the other side what is now French-Flanders, Flanders - Netherlands, having more coastline than the British, and the fact that the Netherlands had all the control and rights (east India Cooperation ) so the king was "not amused". Just a little bit of history. I am even now UNABLE to understand why the British Government, having it almost all, started always wars, to obtain places where other settlers lived.

[color=blue]- GITAARDOCPHIL SAIS: TO CONQUER DEAD, YOU HAVE TO DIE[/color]   AND [color=blue] we are born to die[/color]
- MY GUITAR PLAYS EVERY STYLE = BLUES, ROCK, METAL, so I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY IT.
[color=blue]Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.[/color]

gitaardocphil's Website