Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  These modern accordions were developed in Germany and Austria in the 1820s and 1830s. They were particularly popular in France in the middle nineteenth century, which perhaps accounts for their widespread use among French-speaking Americans. Monarch and Hohner models have long been favored by Cajun musicians, though a younger generation (most notably Marc Savoy of Eunice, Louisiana) now makes a “Cajun accordion.” This model improves the timbre of the upper range, and its bellows are easier to use.

  Banjo

  What began as an African instrument migrated to the United States by way of West Africans brought as slaves. Despite its origins, the banjo is closely identified with country music. As early as the late seventeenth century banjolike instruments made from gourds and called names like banzas, bandores, or banjas were being played by New World slaves. Contemporary accounts of life in the Middle Atlantic states from around the time of the American Revolutionary War suggest that the banjo was the most common instrument used by slaves and freed blacks. The number of strings on early banjos varied anywhere from three to eight, although by the 1820s these homemade instruments usually had four strings.

  The size and shape of banjos began to be regularized by the middle of the nineteenth century. Joel Walker Sweeney and other minstrel show entertainers brought banjos to the attention of urban white Americans at about the same time that they began to be made commercially. Within thirty years white musicians in the rural South and, to a lesser degree the Northeast, had embraced the banjo as their own instrument. During Reconstruction the banjo gradually became more closely associated with Anglo-American music and began losing its African American identity. By the 1950s most blacks had lost interest in the instrument.

  Pre–Civil War banjo playing was often done with a down stroke of the thumb and back nail of the index or middle finger. This style is often called “clawhammer” or “frailing.” A new style of finger picking developed and gained rapid acceptance during the late nineteenth century and it closely resembles the guitar picking upon which it was modeled. By 1900 many folk musicians were using this two-finger style, although in the 1940s the three-finger “bluegrass roll” began to gain wide favor.

  Around the turn of the twentieth century, banjos flirted with popular acceptance. Transcriptions of light classical and popular music were marketed to the innumerable banjo, mandolin, and guitar orchestras that sprang up on college campuses and in cities across the United States. During the 1920s commercially produced four-string tenor banjos were coming into vogue. They were preferred by the musicians who performed with popular dance and jazz bands. Slovenian polka bands and Norwegian old-time string bands also utilized them in their ensembles around the same time. However, the five-string banjo made its comeback following World War II because of bluegrass, the folk revival, and its continued use in commercial country music.

  Dulcimer

  The best-known dulcimer is the Appalachian mountain or lap dulcimer, which developed from the German zither, known as a scheitholt, that came with immigrants to Pennsylvania. Developed in the southern Appalachian mountains, the American version is narrow and usually between two and three feet long. Dulcimers date from the early nineteenth century, though the “modern” shape did not emerge for another one hundred years. Today’s dulcimers feature an extended fretboard and four strings. The melody is played on the first string, with the other strings serving as drones. Dulcimers are usually placed across the performer’s knee and plucked with some type of pick. Dulcimers are used to accompany both dances and singing.

  A hammer dulcimer is an entirely different instrument. It is also a member of the zither family, but it is always played with small mallets that are handheld in order to strike the sixty or so strings. Hammer dulcimers are shaped like a trapezoid that is between 2.5 and 4 feet in length, 1 to 2 feet in height, and 3 to 6 inches in depth. These instruments were introduced by English settlers sometime prior to 1700. Nineteenth-century dulcimers were made both commercially and by folk artisans. The tradition has remained largely in New England and upstate New York, although it diffused to Piedmont, North Carolina, and the Great Lakes region during the early twentieth century.

  Some quaint and perhaps unique 1920s string band recordings by the Perry County Music Makers (Tennessee) feature the hammer dulcimer. In some of the Moravian Czech and Volga German settlements in Texas, Colorado, and Nebraska, a few musicians still play the cymbalum and hackbrett, which are hammer dulcimers by another name. By and large, however, most twenty-first-century hammer dulcimer players began playing as the result of a revival of interest that began in the late 1960s.

  Fiddle

  Violins and other closely related instruments, such as a viola, were first used by European musicians during the sixteenth century. The size and precise shape of fiddles, as they are called by American folk musicians, became standardized by the seventeenth century. With only a few minor alterations, violins look almost exactly like they did three hundred years ago. The highly skilled craftsmanship of early Italian makers like Stradivari and Guarneri has resulted in instruments the rich sound of which is hard to match today.

  Unique fiddle. Courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  These instruments have been among the mainstays of European art music, and fiddles were among the first instruments to arrive in the New World. They were not only popular but highly portable and versatile, too, for they could be used for performing music in all idioms. Within a few decades Americans were making their own violins. Some people crafted their instruments with great skill and reference for European craftsmanship. Others, particularly African Americans, were forced to use whatever materials and means they could muster.

  Since the late eighteenth century, fiddles have been among the most prominent folk instruments in the United States. Some Anglo-American fiddlers have repertoires that include scores of tunes, some of them brought over from the British Isles. Genres such as early hillbilly and bluegrass feature fiddles as one of their principal lead instruments. Most of these fiddlers hold the instrument against their chin, though a minority of players nestle the instrument against their chest.

  Fife

  A fife is a wind instrument similar to a flute. Long associated with military marching bands, these fife and drum band corps first formed in late seventeenth-century England and eventually in other European countries. Fife and drum bands were heard in the United States during the Revolutionary and Civil wars and remain part of New England’s musical landscape.

  This same ensemble, consisting of multiple drummers and fifers, became part of African American folk culture in the Deep South during Reconstruction. Black Americans eventually began to use the local cane to make their own twelve- to fifteen-inch fifes, most of which have six fingering holes in them. In the early twenty-first century African American fifers, accompanied by two or three drummers, continue performing in the Mississippi hill country, though at least one band from western Georgia was located and recorded around 1970.

  Guitar

  Although now commonly associated with folk and rock music, the six-string guitar was developed in southern Europe in the late eighteenth century. It was regularly imported to the East Coast by 1800, though the first American-made instruments did not appear until the 1830s. These early models were plucked by the fingers, smaller than contemporary acoustic guitars, and strung with gut or silk strings. The C. F. Martin Company became the first American company to manufacture guitars, but it was not until Reconstruction that they were joined by Ephiphone (1873), Harmony (1892), and Gibson (1894).

  During the 1890s steel-string guitars, which were commonly found in Central America, began to be mass produced in the United States. Both Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Company sold mail-order guitars for under $10. Within thirty years the production of guitars had risen to approximately 150,000 annually. This same period witnessed two important innovations. Gibson’s “arch-top” instruments, with their f-shaped sound hol
e and arched body, came into vogue during the 1920s. They gave some competition to the slightly softer Martin flattop models, which remained popular. Slightly earlier both Hawaiian guitars and dobro resonator guitars, which are primarily made from steel and are usually played with a slide or bottleneck rather than finger-picked, became popular. They found a ready audience because of the volume they generated with little effort.

  Gibson experimented with electronic pickups for guitars in the middle 1920s, but the first amplified guitars were not introduced for another ten years. These hollow-body models did not gain prominence until after World War II, however. Solid-body electric guitars, developed primarily by Leo Fender and Les Paul, became affixed on the scene by the middle 1950s.

  Rather than eschew technology, today’s folk musicians play both electric and acoustic instruments. Those who play electric guitars generally use hollow-body instruments, although many African American blues performers use the solid-body models. Since the 1950s flattop acoustic models have been the instrument of choice among American folk musicians.

  Harmonica

  This is a free reed instrument of German descent and is related to the accordion. It was perfected by Christian Friedreich Ludwig Buschman about 1828, whose first prototype was successful because it was easy to play and to control its dynamics. The instrument slowly caught on in central Europe, where its manufacture constituted a cottage industry for several decades. By the 1860s harmonicas caught the eye and imagination of Mathias Hohner. He spent several years hand making harmonicas before he discovered a method to mass produce them. His annual output skyrocketed to almost a million harmonicas by 1885, and nearly two-thirds of these were exported to the United States. Today Hohner remains the predominant name in the manufacturing of harmonicas.

  There are two types of harmonica: diatonic and chromatic. With the exception of a few “Chicago-style” blues musicians, folk harmonica players almost always use diatonic harps. This ten-hole instrument is tuned to a tonic chord, which is attained by alternating exhaling and inhaling. Chromatic harmonicas are larger and consist of twelve holes with a slide on one end. You depress the slide to attain the accidentals needed to complete a major scale. These instruments have a three-octave range.

  Diatonic harmonicas are played by all types of American folk musicians. They are quite important in the blues idiom, where they are one of its essential instruments. Early-twentieth-century country musicians also used them to accompany singing or as a lead instrument in a small string band.

  Mandolin

  This stringed instrument came to the United States by way of Italian immigrants beginning in the late eighteenth century. It is small bodied and features a double set of four strings, which causes it to ring out loudly. Mandolins are almost always played with a flat pick, permitting a tremolo effect.

  For over one hundred years it was used almost exclusively within the Italian community. The mandolin’s popularity increased during the 1880s because of touring European string ensembles that featured it. By the turn of the century it was not unusual to find mandolin orchestras or societies in small towns and colleges across America. Such groups played contemporary rags, marches, jigs, and so on that they learned from other musicians or from one of the many specialty periodicals that sprang up to serve these musicians. During this same period, hybrid instruments such as mandolas and mandocellos were developed but never gained widespread acceptance.

  By World War I the craze had slowed down, supplanted by a mania for Hawaiian music and jazz. More folk musicians picked up the mandolin and it could be heard on some of the string band recordings of the 1920s. During the 1930s fraternal groups such as the Mainers (J. E. and Wade) and Bill and Earl Bolick (the Blue Sky Boys) were using it in tandem with the guitar. By the middle 1940s, Bill Monroe had made it the centerpiece of his first bluegrass band. Today mandolins are still primarily associated with bluegrass music, though country music and some rock groups have used them since the early 1960s.

  Homemade instruments. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Mouth Bow

  This is a single-string instrument that is shaped like a bow for shooting an arrow. Commonly found in Africa and South Africa, mouth bows are relatively rare in the United States. They resemble and sound like large Jew’s harps and are played in similar fashion. A mouth bow’s range and timbre is somewhat limited. It is played by resting the bow itself on one’s slightly parted lips and then plucking the strings with the fingers. The pitch that it produces is enhanced by the player who changes the size and shape of his or her mouth to achieve overtones. These harmonic overtones create a tune. Mouth bow playing is found in both black and white traditions.

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  Joe Patterson lived in Ashford, Alabama, and Ralph Rinzler came upon him while researching southern folk traditions for the Newport Foundation in 1964. This selection was recorded in May 1964 at Patterson’s home. It is a unique performance that combines playing with vocalizing. This is one of the very few examples of African American quill playing that has ever been made.

  Title Untitled

  Performer Joe Patterson

  Instruments percussion, quills, voice

  Length 1:30

  Musical Characteristics

  1. Patterson maintains a steady underlying duple meter with his homemade percussion instrument.

  2. The quills have a limited range of about five notes.

  3. A feeling of syncopation is established by the tension between the steady percussion and the quills’ mixed rhythmic patterns.

  4. This performance roughly follows an ab song form.

  This selection comes from the Smithsonian Folkways Archive.

  * * *

  One-String

  This instrument—also known as a diddley-bow or monochord zither—is most often associated in American folk music with blacks born in the Deep South. Well into the twentieth century, musicians from the Mississippi Delta often fashioned diddley-bows as their first instrument. They take a single strand of wire or a guitar string and nail it to the wall of a house, which serves as a resonator. They raise either end away from the wall with a block of wood and use a slide or bottle neck to fret the diddley-bow. The picking is done with a finger, a guitar pick, a metal nail, or some other similar object. Diddley-bows, which are almost always played by children, foreshadow the bottleneck guitar style. Mississippi blues men Muddy Waters and Big Joe Williams both first learned music on a diddley-bow.

  Quills

  These are a simple wind instrument, also known as panpipes, which are found across the entire world. Most quills consist of between four and eight tubes of increasing lengths bundled together; the longer the tube, the lower the pitch. Quills are most often made by the person playing them and are usually made of cane. A tone is produced by blowing across the top of each pipe. Blowing across the top of a partially filled bottle of soda pop produces a similar effect.

  Joe Patterson, Alabama quill player (1964). Bob Yellin photo, courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Panpipes were played by the ancient Greeks, who called them syrinx. They were also found in fifth-century China. Today panpipes are a folk instrument that is often heard from Burma eastward to western Latin America, especially in the mountainous sections of Peru and Ecuador. Panpipes are also found in many sections of Africa, and the technique of alternating between blowing and whooping is distinctly African. In the United States they were rarely found in twentieth-century American folk music, usually in the Deep South among African Americans.

  Washboard

  Many decades ago—before the invention of the washing machine—many people in the United States scrubbed their clothes clean on a washboard before hanging them up to dry. A washboard is simply a rectangular corrugated piece of metal framed by wood on all four sides. Folk musicians use spoons, nails, thimbles, or even metal guitar picks to provide rhythmi
c accompaniment for other musicians. Some washboard players also attach cowbells, shakers, tambourines, or woodblocks to their instruments to add tonal variation to their repertoire. Black American musicians playing blues and zydeco in small ensembles are among the leading proponents of washboards.

  FINAL THOUGHTS

  Even though America’s distinctive regional and ethnic characteristics remain strong, the differences are slowly (and perhaps inevitably) dissipating. The rapid changes in how American music is disseminated illustrate this process. Before the era of instant electronic communication (television, radio, telephones, and computers), improved long-distance transportation, and literacy for the masses, people spoke face-to-face. Most folk music was also transmitted directly from neighbor to neighbor or from a mother to her daughter or nephew. Because this music was passed along orally/aurally, most types of American folk music remained within small groups, relatively narrow geographic regions, or small communities. Today’s students of American folk music stand on a fulcrum glancing back toward our antecedents while on the other side are more contemporary developments brought on by increased acculturation.

  KEY FIGURES AND TERMS

  chord

  community

  creolization