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Lecture Guide North America

The document is a lecture guide covering various aspects of United States music culture, including Native American music, Appalachian ballad-singing, blues, bluegrass, Cajun, and country music. It highlights key characteristics, historical origins, and significant artists associated with each genre. The guide emphasizes the cultural significance and evolution of these musical styles within American society.

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Bella Grace Finck
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2 views

Lecture Guide North America

The document is a lecture guide covering various aspects of United States music culture, including Native American music, Appalachian ballad-singing, blues, bluegrass, Cajun, and country music. It highlights key characteristics, historical origins, and significant artists associated with each genre. The guide emphasizes the cultural significance and evolution of these musical styles within American society.

Uploaded by

Bella Grace Finck
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture Guide: United States

Arrival: USA

Mass Culture:
Popular Culture:

1. Native American/Native Peoples


a. Over three-hundred tribes
2. Musical Characteristics
a. Generalizations made:
i. Use of voice
ii. Vocables
iii. Drums and rattles
iv. Spiritual or symbolic significance
b. Powwow
i. A pan-tribal American Indian event celebrating Native American identity
and culture, generally also open to non-Native Americans.
1. Music and dance are the main focus
2. Encourage intertribal participation
c. Vocables: Words considered only with regards to sound, not in terms of
meaning.
d. Drums: spiritual center of performance.
i. Symbolic of Mother Earth
e. Case Studies
i. Dance:
1. Aural Analysis: “Plains Chippewa Song”
ii. Hoop Dance: example
1. Invented in 1930
iii. Southwestern
1. Native American flute: Zuni
iv. Pacific: Chumash

Appalachian Music & Ballad-Singing


1. Ballad: A song that tells a story, usually performed by a solo voice but representing
different “speakers.”
1. Taught orally
2. Lyrics change
3. Stories–violent/depressing
*Listening Example

WOM. La Barre 1
Student Presentation:

1. Blues
a. A secular folk music created by African American artists in the early 20 th century,
originally in the South.
b. Musical Signals:

• The 12-Bar Blues & Jazz


• structural pattern in blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz.
• repetitive structure
• Phrase: short passage of music.
• pattern– “question—answer—question”
• Robert Johnson (1911–1938)
• Chicago Blues

3. Bluegrass
a. “High-lonesome sound”
b. High tenor harmony over a baritone vocal melody
c. Bluegrass: A style of American folk music characterized by virtuosic instrumental
performance and the “high lonesome” vocal style, in which a harmony line is
sung above the main melody.
d. Musicians have to be highly skilled
i. Bill Monroe (1911–1996)
1. Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys
2. Kentucky=bluegrass state
3. White working-class rural populations
e. Instruments
i. Mandolin: A high-ranged fretted lute of Italian origin commonly used in
bluegrass music.
ii. Banjo: A fretted, plucked lute from the United States, the resonator of
which has a membrane face.
1. Site: “Bluegrass”
4. Cajun
a. Acadian

WOM. La Barre 2
b. Creole: A term referring to populations to French descent that are found in the
southern United States, primarily Louisiana.
c. Zydeco
i. Dance music south Louisiana that shares many commonalities with Cajun
music.
1. Dance styles
2. Came from Cajun music style.
d. Different emphasis on “melodic” content than Cajun, more emphasis on beat
i. Blends rhythm and blues and Cajun
1. Artist spotlight: “Buckwheat Zydeco” Stanley Dural Jr.
2. Spotlight: Queen Ida
a. Accordionist

5. Country
a. Genre of music originally from the South and Southwestern regions of the US.
b. Originated in Bristol, Tennessee (1920s) as “Hillbilly” Music
c. Called Country Music in the 1940s
d. American folk music+ Western music
e. Ballads, dance tunes
f. Simple forms and harmonies, accompanied by strings (banjo, guitar, fiddle)
g. Historical Roots
i. Ballad singing, blues, honky tonk
ii. Music for the populous
iii. African traditions
iv. Black Cowboy Culture
v. Vocal and instruments
vi. Banjo
vii. Vocal music: adapted from Black sources: spirituals, work songs
viii. Mexican Roots of Country
1. The vaquero (cowboy) is a figure of Mexican origins.
2. Influence of rancho culture
3. Fiddle
4. Mexican-American War

Student Presentation:

WOM. La Barre 3

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