MusH 440/540
Spring 2007
Bring to Test #2 (Thursday May 19)
FINAL PROJECT
Chart the chronology and interaction of the major streams of US roots music (and non-roots genres that we studied in class) from about 1850 to 1960. This should account for all of the genres and major individuals and movements we have studied during this 110-year period.
Vertical lines should indicate the duration of genres/styles (e.g. Charles Ives 1895-1920 [his active years as a composer]). The major organizational categories should be
Musical Theater:
Popular Music:
Jazz (even though we didn't discuss jazz per se, it should be reflected as a continuum from about 1900 to 1950 so that you can show influences of the other genres to and from jazz)
African-American (subsets ragtime. blues, spirituals, gospel)
Hillbilly/Country Music
Place these labels across the top of the chart, positioning them as you see them relating to the categories I provide, on a continuum from European to African influence. Use lines and arrows to show influences and the direction of influence among the above columns. Vertical lines extenind down from the major organizational categories should clearly indicate the duration of a style.
Although the chart starts around 1850, you will want to sketch in some pre-1850 genres (Anglo-American folk song, black spirituals, for example) that continue to be practiced after 1850.
Please keep the organization I give you, even if you decide to transfer it to a computer.
OPTIONAL: Add a separate category along one of the margins which includes major social trends, themes, and events that have an impact on the music.
Song biography model for MusH440/540
Basic Info:title, performer or composer if this is significant, approx. date (early-middle-or late century for pre 20th century; decade for 20th century), geographical location of the performance, genre.
Context: what is the social, religious, historical context for the performance of this kind of music (or perhaps this specific work)?
Important style/text/performance characteristics: consider things like vocal style, instrumentation, subject matter of text and style of text, and perhaps other elements of musical style such as rhythm and melodic characteristics.
Significance: why is this type of music (or piece) important, Or what does it represent in the history of US roots music?
Short Version example:
Muddy Waters "Hootchie Cootchie Man", 1940s, maybe Chicago, Rhythm and Blues
Black popular music marketed on race records to segregated market.
Jazz-influenced small combo backup, rough, gospel and blues-influenced voice, stop-time effect, strong blues influence in harmony, pitch inflections, bluesy text.
Rhythm and Blues was a major root of rock ‘n roll in the 1950s and had a continuing effect on later styles like soul and funk.
Study Guide For Test #1
Terms, concepts and people: who, where, when, what, why? (social, historical). Know underlined in greater depth. Be able to write on any of these, and/or to apply them to the listening and score examples.
folk music
Child ballad
oral transmission
early psalmody
theoretical introductions (rudiments of music)
lining out (The Old Way)
singing school
degenerative change in folk song texts (general)
continuity in folk song texts (general)
William Billings
Alan Lomax
Great Awakening
cantometrics
parlando rubato
tempo giusto
broadside ballad
Ainsworth Psalter
Bay Psalm Book, 9th edition
Isaac Watts
Regular Singing movement
anthem
fuguing tune
First New England School
syncretism, acculturation
African-American music characteristics and practices pre-1850
Mainstream Protestant hymnody
Lowell Mason
Stephen Foster
Signifying
Minstrel Show
The Great Divide (Crawford's thesis)
spiritual
work song
camp meeting
parlor song, plantation song, minstrel song
Dan Emmett, Christy's MInstrels
Jim Crow, Zip Coon (Long-Tail Blue)
Mr. Tamb, Mr. Interlocutor, Mr. Bones
banjo
Hutchinson Family
Social Orchestra
copyright
Richard Allen
revival hymn
ring shout
Place Congo
folk hymn
Listening: be able to identify all works on your listening list, and similar works you haven't heard before, up through Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair. Know a short biography for each one.
Articles on American Music
Articles on American Music for MusH440/540
Abbott, "Play that Barber Shop Chord," AM, Fall 93.
Fenster, " Preparing the Audience… John Lomax and Cowboy Songs…" AM, Fall 1989
Hamm, "Alexander and His Band" AM, Spring 1996
Abbott and Seroff, "…..Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial
Ascendancy of the Blues" AM, Winter 1996
Yurchenko, "…Recorded Blues, 1920s-1940s" AM, Winter 1995
John Spitzer, "'Oh! Susannah' : Oral Transmission and Tune Transformation" JAMS 1994
Tyler, "Music in American Department Stores, 1880-1930" JAMS, Spring 1992
Panetta, "’For Godsake Stop!’ Improvised Music in the Streets of New Orleans, ca. 1890",
Musical Quarterly Spring 2000
Jackson, "Is This Song Your Song Anymore?: Revisioning Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your
Land’ ," AM Fall 2002
Norton, "Who Lost the South?" AM Winter 2003
Miller, "’First Sing the Notes’: Oral and Written Traditions in Sacred Harp Transmission," AM Winter 2004
McNight, "....Nineteenth Century Rough Music in New Orleans AM Winter 2005
Brooks, "...Early Recordings by the Fiske Jubilee Singers and the Popularization of 'Negro Folk Music.'" AM Fall 2000
McCracken, "...Crooning, Geneder, and the Re-Creation of American Popular Song 1928-1933." AM Winter 1999
Dougan, "...Prison, Pop Music, and the Prisonaires" AM Winter 1999
AM= American Music; JAMS= Journal of the American Musicological Society. Paper (bound) issues of these journals are available in the UI Library on the second floor; they're also available online
Land Where the Blues Began (part of the Patchwork series by Alan Lomax)
Watch the film up through the scene of the men under the ship's hull
Be sure to address these questions in your response to the film:
What was the historical/social contect for the early blues?
How do musical practices surrounding the blues link to African practices?
How are the blues and dance linked
How do the blues lyrics reflect the lives of men and women in the rural South after the Civil War? How recently do they apply? (That is, were the issues still relevant as of the time the film was made?)
Describe the contexts for the singing of work songs.
If you would like extra credit, watch the rest of the film:
What connections do you see (hear) between the African-American music making (and other cultural manifestations) Lomax discusses throughout the film and contemporary American popular music such as hip-hop, rap, etc.? Devote about a page to this response.
Alan Lomax: "Feet, Don't Fail Me Now" (New Orleans Jazz Parades)
PBS Patchwork Series, I
What were the roots of New Orleans jazz and jazz parades in terms of:
the music
society
history
Two major influences on early jazz were rural Black culture, and creole culture. Where did these influences come from, and where did they meet in New Orleans?
What are some specific African influences in the music and spectacle of jazz parades?
What are the occasions for jazz parades?
What is the "second line" and what is its musical significance?
Oklahoma response paper. Due not later than Monday April 30. You will not have a specific day allocated to do this assignment (with no other homework), so I suggest you try to complete it a few days after you've seen the show.
Write a 3-page paper on Oklahoma as 1) a culmination of trends (genres, styles, etc.) in U.S. theater and popular music; 2) a reflection on on or more of the themes we've encountered in our study of U.S. Roots music (These can include dualisms such as city/country, East/non-East, educated/non-educated, etc) and 3)a musical that reflects specific issues the U.S. was facing in the early 1940s..
[Do not summarize the plot, the characters, or details of the creation or production of the show.]
Test 2 Spring 2007
Same format as last one: I'll ask you to provide "song biographies" for works on the syllabus starting with Geprge M. Cohan or similar ones. Know the composer or performer if they are on either of the lists below.
There will also be a short-answer section as in the last test , based on the terms, names, and concepts below.
Know Column 1 in more depth and breadth than Column 2
| Community Bands Professional Bands White Gospel Music Tin Pan Alley (the business and the songs) John Philip Sousa Scott Joplin Ragtime Irving Berlin James Reece Europe Blues (southern or Delta) WC Handy Race Records Roots of Jazz Second Line Crooner George Gershwin Hillbilly Music Mountain Music Country (Western) Music Jimmy Rodgers Carter Family Bluegrass Woody Guthrie Ralph Peer Thomas Dorsey The Modern Musical Rhythm and Blues Rock and Roll Folk Revival Elvis Presley Golden Gate Quartet Sweet Honey in the Rock Bob Dylan Soul |
The Sousa March "canned music" George M. Cohan Song Plugger Operetta Will Marion Cook Vaudeville The Musical Show Irene and Vernon Castle Paul Whiteman Microphone Urban Blues Showboat Oklahoma Cecil Sharp Archive of American Folk Song John Lomax Ruth Crawford Seeger The Bristol Sessions Hank Williams Kitty Wells Pete Seeger Bill Monroe Rockabilly Doo Wop Schlock Rock Leadbelly Honky Tonk "Cowboy" Music Cover Nashville |
There will be several "unknown" pieces on the test. They will either clearly represent one of the genres on your study guide, so you can essentially create a song biography for them, or they may represent a hybrid of two or more genres, or they might represent one familiar genre, but performed in a manner that is not usually associated with that genre. Be prepared to be both creative and analytical.
In responding to questions about these, be able to respond to these larger issues:
1. For the people (composers and performers) in the left-hand column: what repertories did they choose to sing? What was the source--oral tradition? print? recording?
2. How do people/genres/ideas in both columns relate to what is going on politically/culturally/socially in the US at the time?
3. How do performance choices (vocal style, instrumentation, etc.) relate to what's going on at the time in the US?