Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  The traditional styles discussed in this book result from the hybridization that keeps traditional American music in constant evolution. Its lyrics are forever in flux and have never been frozen into immutable texts with fixed melodies. Diversity within established aesthetic boundaries, however, is an important key to these musical forms. Traditional songs and the instruments that frequently accompany them are combined in a variety of contexts. The very human sound of a harmonica, for instance, can be heard accompanying the clogging of a Franco-American dancer in northern Vermont, as the heavily amplified lead instrument of a Southside Chicago blues band, or integrated into a small Louisiana Cajun stringband.

  “Our Goodman” was recorded in 1929 by Coley Jones, a black Texas singer, and the famous Georgia hillbilly fiddler, Earl Johnson, long before Rusty heard it performed in Union Grove in the 1980s. Rusty’s melody is similar to Coley Jones, though less ornate than Johnson’s fiddle tune. As early as the 1880s the text for “Our Goodman” began to be “collected” by folklorists and English professors across the entire country. This ballad remains one of the most popular of the British ballads that is still sung in the United States.

  In the twenty-first century music that once thrived through face-to-face transmission within small communities was disseminated quite rapidly, largely because CD players, radio, television, jukeboxes, phonographs, and tape players reached into every corner of the United States. The explosion of the Internet in the late 1990s added yet another dimension to the dissemination of music. Scholars have long suggested that the mass media will eventually obliterate today’s racial, ethnic, regional, and traditional styles of American music that clearly stem from their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century roots. In other words. . . that mass communications will result in the “death” of folk music.

  This may eventually come to pass, but not anytime soon. The fact remains that the multilayered interaction fostered by the mass media inevitably enriches and expands our musical vocabulary, leading to yet new musical vistas. One example is the steadily building interest in “world music,” which increasingly melds with aspects of the American vernacular. In the teens, for instance, many traditional musicians were entranced and influenced by Hawaiian slide guitar styles. Today you are just as likely to see a hybrid like Nigerian juju that draws upon American music, especially funk and soul, for some of its inspiration.

  THE ROOTS OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY FOLK MUSIC

  Distinctly American music began to emerge almost as soon as the first Europeans and Africans arrived in the New World. Both the European settlers and African slaves brought instruments and musical traditions with them. The Europeans contributed fiddles and pianos, while Africans brought the knowledge of making and performing upon banjolike instruments with them. By the nineteenth century, these three instruments were played by black and white Americans, but often in very different ways. White settlers brought their ballads; transplanted Africans contributed the concept of call and response. While the races may have remained legally separate, legislating the strict segregation of musical ideas and instruments proved impossible. Twenty-first-century American folk music draws from this common background.

  The states east of the Mississippi River dominated our country into the early part of the nineteenth century. Outside of New England, the Middle Atlantic states, along with the far Southwest, became the first extensively settled sections of the United States. Scotch, Irish, and German pioneers settled in the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains, far from the port cities and slowly growing cities on the Piedmont. In the Southwest, pioneering Spaniards gradually moved into what would become New Mexico and Arizona.

  Face-to-face communication among these settlers was the norm. Most people remained illiterate or obtained the most meager formal education. Travel along the rutted, unpaved roads (or along trails) proved difficult at best and impossible during the worst of times; physical and sometimes spiritual isolation was common. As the United States emerged from the shadow of British domination, new hybrids began to emerge. The seeds of syncretization had been planted and the beginnings of distinctly American folk music could be heard in the first few decades of the nineteenth century.

  Outside of the major cities most of the United States remained a rural, insular world populated by neighbors and family that one knew almost always from birth until death. Paved roads were unknown, telephones didn’t exist, and electricity came to many with “rural electrification” programs of the New Deal 1930s. Musical activity was an important means of entertainment at home, at homes of neighbors, and in church. The fact of isolation combined with slowly developing American idioms ensured that we would be blessed with regional differences in folk music. Not only did we have French-speaking citizens in Louisiana and northern New England in 1800, but the physical separation of Maine lumbermen from Kentucky River roustabouts also led to unique regional differences. The tripart electric and electronic levelers of musical regionalism (phonograph records, radios, and television) lay in the future, poised to forever alter our modern world.

  The folk musics of white and Hispanic Americans remains a complex, complicated topic involving a variety of vocal and instrumental traditions. The eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century musical styles largely followed the lead of their counterparts from the British Isles and Spain, in part because of the ongoing domination by England of the eastern United States and the influence of Spaniards in the Southwest. Churchgoers sang Wesley’s hymns, and ballads of British and Spanish origin entertained folks at home, while the old-world fiddle tunes provided dance music on Saturday night.

  Our knowledge of early folk music is almost entirely derived from a crazy quilt of primary and secondary printed sources: newspaper and magazine articles, diaries, travel accounts, and fiction. Fascinated by slavery and black people, literate people often wrote of everyday black life. Until the 1820s some writers occasionally noted aspects of African survivals such as drumming, singing, and dancing. Most writers, however, seemed more interested in the contemporary black folk music that surrounded them. Visual evidence, especially paintings of blacks performing music, also suggests the widespread development of black American music. Unfortunately few blacks wrote accounts of their own music until after the Civil War, a true loss to American music history but not a surprising one given the trying conditions under which slaves lived.

  Early African American folk music resulted from the synthesis of African music, which often arrived by way of the Caribbean Basin, with European music to create a richly unique blend. Our interest is in the traditional music that developed out of this cultural clash. The majority of the early slaves came to the United States from West Africa, thousands of square miles ranging from beautiful beaches to large expanses of flat, hot savannah. Seventeenth-century West Africa was a huge and complex multicultural region that included sophisticated city-states as well as complex social organizations that ruled smaller areas.

  The musics of Africa were exceptionally diverse. Religious and public ceremonies, rites of passage, and other types of functions most often called for music making. Because of these inherent links between music and everyday life the contemporary West African musics were difficult to separate from the societies themselves. From formal court ceremonies to the songs chanted by pole-wielding boatmen, music was an integral part of these societies.

  Drums of varying sizes and shapes were the primary instruments of West Africans. Often played in ensembles of two or more, drummers sometimes used the palm of their hands or sticks to beat out the complex rhythms. Fingertips created yet more complicated rhythms, and drum ensembles played patterns that crossed meter, pitting duple against triple time. Master drummers of the highest skill became valuable members of any clan or tribe because they added so much to the rituals. Some of these drummers, in fact, were held in very high esteem among their peers and were viewed as specialists. Because percussion was so integral to West African musical culture, younger men—this was the domai
n of males—aspired to achieve higher status through drumming. We see this legacy as recently as the 1970s when funk, hip-hop, and go-go developed.

  Like their African ancestors, black Americans incorporated music into their everyday experience. This was difficult because of the conditions of slavery, in which slave owners attempted to control all vestiges of culture. Nonetheless, black Americans maintained customs and rituals utilizing music. They sang and drummed at Virginia funerals as late as the second decade of the 1800s. Secondary accounts suggest that blacks appropriated the Dutch “Pinkster Day” celebrations, a day free from work during which banjos, enthusiastic dancing, and spirited and complex drumming lasted for many hours.

  Precisely how quickly African music became integrated into our musical fabric remains difficult to ascertain. The legal sanctions against African culture—dancing, drumming, language, and so on—were in place before the dawn of the eighteenth century, but to measure the degree to which these actually affected the culture itself is not easy. Because of reports of drumming and African religious practices, it appears that acculturation in the West Indies took much longer.

  The sheer number of slaves imported to the southern United States indicates that this was true in the South. Except for South Carolina, where for a short period the number of slaves actually exceeded the white population, Africans brought to the South soon learned of European culture. The South was also home to most of the slowly maturing black American music; it spawned most of the unique forms of American folk music, such as blues, gospel, Cajun, and hillbilly, that have received the greatest worldwide attention.

  MUSIC IN OUR DAILY LIVES AND IN THE ACADEMY

  Our senses are bombarded daily by music that we hear on the television, in elevators, through speakers in our computers, or at the local shopping mall. Many cars come fully equipped with a radio, an MP3 input, and/or CD player so that we don’t miss a beat while we are stuck in traffic. Many younger people walk or jog with an MP3 player or other similar portable device in hand. When we attend a Baptist church service, an (Italian) opera by Puccini, or a concert by a pop group such as Phish, we are exposed to live performances of music. Some of these performances contain more improvisation and are less predictable than others. While most fans of opera are probably familiar with the libretto as well as the opera’s plot and the pop music aficionado might know Phish’s repertoire, the performance of contemporary popular music not only lacks a program but is also more likely to contain surprise of all sorts.

  Whether one prefers Beethoven’s compositions over the extended jazz works of Duke Ellington or the guitar artistry of Andre Segovia to Kentucky picker Merle Travis, at least we agree that these people are musical composers or performers. Some might argue that the popular “heavy metal” groups of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Led Zeppelin, KISS, Poison, Anthrax, or AC/DC, made devilish noise that barely qualified as music. Others might suggest that Brittney Spears or the Backstreet Boys are simply too saccharin to be taken seriously. Perhaps you feel that the polka music of Frankie Yankovic or the Six Fat Dutchmen is only good for easy listening while consuming bratwurst and beer, and to suggest that it is music worthy of serious study is laughable.

  Furthermore, are rap and hip-hop’s highly rhythmic, percussive vocalizing actually music? Others take the stance that opera stars, twentieth-century legends like Beverly Sills or Luciano Pavarotti, merely stand onstage in ludicrous costumes and bellow loudly but that they’re not really singing. I believe that during our objective moments, each of these detractors would accept the fact that all of these artists are engaged in making music worthy of our attention.

  “Music is a healing force in the universe” was the spiritual sentiment sometimes chanted during the late 1960s performances of jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders and vocalized by the late Leon Thomas. This premise was set forth during the close of a decade of exceptional turmoil and change in America and much of the rest of the world. We had struggled through the early stages of the civil rights movement and the dawning of the age of feminism (two struggles that remain ongoing), riots that had blackened many major cities in the United States, and students’ protests of the unpopular war in Vietnam. Today Sanders’s cry might sound naive, but his thoughts of love and peace directly reflected the hopefulness of its Aquarian age. The concept that music truly is a spiritual force binding us together is quite interesting and bears closer scrutiny. But is music a truly universal language? The easy initial response is yes, music is found across the entire world and in each society.

  Despite the differences that cut across cultural lines, music is a part of each human society. And these differences in interpretation, presentation, and meaning are precisely what make the study of music so interesting and provide one of the most vital keys to understanding the varied nature of cultural expressions. Individual concepts of music are inherently tied to one’s culture. Just as some cultures embrace octopus, snails, and cow intestines as food for everyday consumption, other (mostly non-Western) societies cannot conceive of the work of avant-garde composer Philip Glass, Moondog’s ethereal vocalizing, Ron McCroby’s improvised jazz whistling, or the blues guitar of Charlie Patton as music. Our task is less problematic, of course, since Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States focuses upon what surrounds us.

  It’s far from simple, because our country of 260 million people is becoming increasingly multicultural due in large measure to in-migration from Asia and Latin America. Within two decades the Hispanic population of the United States will become the largest “minority” population, supplanting African Americans. The Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) are home to one of the largest Hmung populations in the United States, most of whom have migrated from Laos or Cambodia since the late 1960s. In Shoreview, Minnesota (a northern suburban community located just outside the Beltway and to the southeast of Coon Rapids), on June 5, 2000, the City Council voted that all of the newspaper ads regarding their biannual “Clean-Up Days” must be published in Hmung in addition to English.

  Dictionary definitions of music are not particularly helpful because they tend to overlook the difficulties inherent in describing its complexities. Such definitions typically use phrases like “the ability to pleasantly combine vocal or instrumental sounds” or “tones which incorporate varying melody, harmony, timbre, and a structured form to create an emotionally complete composition.” Although music is clearly an aural phenomenon, it simply cannot be defined in terms of sound alone. Most of these definitions fail to take into account the fact that music is a culturally based phenomenon that varies greatly over time and the geographical landscape. Consequently, the definition of music used in this text comes from a slightly different perspective:

  Music is any complex of vocal or instrumental sound that is organized in a manner agreed upon by members of a particular racial, ethnic, or regional group.

  But how do we learn about music, music history, and emerging trends? The electronic media, the Internet, our parents’ and friends’ tastes, and magazines are among the forces that help shape musical conceptions and interests in the United States. So do our teachers and academic institutions. The majority of the scholars affiliated with the academy, however, still look toward the notated music of western Europe as their field of study. Although this emphasis is clearly shifting to become more inclusive, professors with training in musicology still teach the majority of “music history” courses at colleges and universities in the United States. They largely concern themselves with the German, French, and Italian music created by educated white males between 1500 and 1900. Historical musicologists “teach” composers ranging from Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to Wagner, who wrote grand music that well deserves to be performed and studied today. Moreover, this imposing body of choral and chamber works, symphonies, and operas contains thousands of important artistic works invaluable in helping to establish and define Western culture. But what about the music, which encompasses
the overwhelming majority of the music performed across the world, that falls outside of these parameters?

  Ethnomusicologists, folklorists, anthropologists, and other interdisciplinary scholars are usually the ones who investigate the rest of music across the world and in more recent times: African juju, the tangos of Argentina, blues, Bulgarian women’s choruses, India’s ragas, calypso, contemporary Japanese popular songs, and American bluegrass. The list is most impressive and seemingly inexhaustible, especially as the investigation of our worlds of music thrives and expands. These allied fields are usually interested in music as culture; consequently, ethnomusicologists study music as one aspect of culture, and much of their work involves placing music in the context of human activity. Ethnomusicologists, in particular, generally receive training in anthropology, folklore, history, sociology, and linguistics in addition to music.

  Given their strongly contrasting interests and preparation, it is not surprising that musicologists and ethnomusicologists usually (though not always) spend their careers examining very different bodies of music with dissimilar ends in mind. And these music scholars also usually understand and treat music differently. Nonetheless, as interest in vernacular and world music expands and the scholarly preparation for musicologists ever so gradually shifts to be more inclusive, the differences between historical musicologists and others who study music appears to be diminishing ever so slowly.

  To illustrate some of these contrasting perceptions about the nature of music, let us briefly step outside of the United States border into the heart of Africa. Ethnomusicologist Alan Merriam points out that for the Basongye people who live near the Congo River music emanates only from human beings. Therefore birds cannot “sing” nor can electronic instruments produce music. The Basongye are uncertain about whistling. If whistling is used to signal during a hunt, then it is not music; however, the whistling that accompanies dancing is accepted as music. Closer to home, it is interesting to note that the traditional Navajo language has no word for music or musical instruments. The languages of many Native Americans generally lack a word to describe overall musical activity, though the Blackfoot’s word for dance describes a religious activity that encompasses ceremony, dance, and music. The Blackfoot also have a word that can be translated as “song,” but this excludes any instrumental music without words. It is clear that once we look outside of our own culture, defining music becomes more problematic.