The History Of American Music

 

American roots music

Benjamin CarrBenjamin by John Sartain after John Clarendon Darley

The first musicians anywhere in North America were Native Americans, who consist of hundreds of ethnic groups across the country, each with their own unique styles of folk music. Of these cultures, many, and their musical traditions, are now extinct, though some remain relatively vibrant in a modern form, such as Hawaiian music.

By the 16th century, large-scale immigration of English, French and Spanish settlers brought new kinds of folk music. This was followed by the importation of Africans as slaves, bringing their music with them. The Africans were as culturally varied as the Native Americans, descended from hundreds of ethnic groups in West Africa. American music is, like most of its hemispheric neighbours, a mixture of African, European and a little bit of native influences. Still later in the country's history, ethnic and musical diversity grew as the United States grew into a melting pot of different peoples. Immigration from China began in large numbers in the 19th century, most of them settling on the West Coast. Later, Japanese, Indian, Scottish, Polish, Italian, Irish, Mexican, Swedish, Ukrainian and Amenian immigrants also arrived in large numbers.

The first song copyrighted under the new United States Constitution was The Kentucky Volunteer, composed by a recent immigrant from England, Raynor Taylor one of the first notable composers active in the US, and printed by the most prolific and notable musical publisher of the country's first decade,Benjamin Carr 

African American music

 

The Slayton Jubilee Singers entertain employees of the Old Trusty Incubator Factory, Clay Center about 1910.

In the 19th century, African-Americans were freed from slavery following the American Civil War. Their music was a mixture of Scottish and African origin, like African American gospel displaying polyrhythm and other distinctly African traits. Work songs and field hollers were popular, but it was spirituals which became a major foundation for music in the 20th century.

 Spirituals (or Negro spirituals, as they were then known) were Christian songs, dominated by passionate and earthy vocals similar to the church music of Scotland, which were performed in an African-style and Scottish style call-and-response format using hymns derived from those sung in colonial New England choirs, which were based on Moravian, English and Dutch church music. These hymns spread south through Appalachia in the late 18th century, where they were partnered with the music of the African slaves. During the Great Awakening of religious fervor in the early 19th century, spirituals spread across the south. Among some whites, slave music grew increasingly popular, especially after the American Civil War, when black and white soldiers worked together and Southern slaves fled north in huge numbers.

By the end of the 19th century, minstrel shows had spread across the country, and even to continental Europe. In minstrel shows, performers imitated slaves in crude caricatures, singing and dancing to what was called "Negro music", though it had little in common with authentic African American folk styles. An African American variety of dance music called the calewalk also became popular, evolving into ragtime by the start of the 20th century.

Appalachian folk music

 

Jimmie Rodgers

The Appalachian Mountains run along the East Coast of the United States. The region has long been historically poor compared to much of the rest of the country; many of the rural Appalachian people travelled to cities for work, and were there labelled hillbillies, and their music became known as hillbilly music. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived in large numbers. They mingled there with poor whites of other ethnic backgrounds, as well as many blacks. The result was a diverse array of folk styles which have been collectively referred to as Appalachian folk music. These styles included jug bands, honky tonk, honky tonk and bluegrass, and are the root of modern country music 

Appalachian folk music began its evolution towards pop-country in 1927, when Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family began recording in a historic session with Ralph Peer (Barraclough and Wolff, 537). Rodgers sang often morbid lyrical themes that drew on the blues to create tales of the poor and unlucky (Collins, 11), while the Carters preferred more upbeat ballads with clear vocals, complementary instrumentation and wholesome lyrics (Garofalo, 53). Their success paved the way for the development of popular country, and left its mark on the developing genre of rock and roll.

Other forms of American roots music

Pow Wow in Helena, Montana.

Linda Ronstadt was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by The Latin Recording Academy in 2011.

Though Appalachian and African American folk music became the basis for most of American popular music, the United States is home to a diverse assortment of ethnic groups. In the early 20th century, many of these ethnic groups supported niche record industries and produced minor folk stars like Pawlo Humeniuk, the "King of the Ukrainian Fiddlers" (Kochan and Kytasty, 308). Some of these ethnic musicians eventually became well-known across the country, such as FrankieYankovic, the Slovenian polka master.

This same period also saw the rise of Native American powwows around the start of the 20th century. These were large-scale intertribal events featuring spiritual activity and musical performances, mostly group percussion based (Means, 594).

Large-scale immigration of Eastern European Jews and their klezmer music peaked in the first few decades of the 20th century. People like Harry Kandel and Dave Terras become stars within their niche, and made the United States the international center for klezmer (Broughton, 583).

In Texas, ethnic Mexicans who had lived in the area for centuries, played a distinct style of conjunto, different from that played in Mexico. The influence of Czech polka music was a major distinguishing characteristic of this music, which gradually evolved into what is now known as norteno (Burr, 604).

The Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana have long constituted a distinct minority with their own cultural identity. The Cajuns are descendants of French-Canadians from the region of Acadia, the Creoles are black and French-speaking. Their music was a mixture of bluesy work songs mixed with jazz and other influences, and included styles like la la and jure. Though these genres were geographically limited, they were modernized and mixed with more mainstream styles, evolving into popular zydeco music by the middle of the century (Broughton and Kaliss, 558).

Beginnings of Popular music

The first field of American music that could be viewed as popular, rather than classical or folk, was the singing of the colonial New England choirs, and travelling singing masters like William Billings. It was here that techniques and traditions like shape note, lined-out hymnody and Sacred Harp were created, gradually spreading south and becoming an integral part of the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s was a period of religious fervor, among whites and blacks (both slave and free), that saw passionate, evangelical ‘Negro spirituals’ grow in popularity (Ferris, 98).

John Philips Sousa

During the 19th century, it was not spirituals that gained truly widespread acclaim, but rather peppy comic songs performed by minstrels in blackface, and written by legendary songwriters like Stephen Foster  and Daniel Emmett. During the Civil War, popular ballads were common, some used liberally by both the North and the South as patriotic songs. Finally, late in the century, the African American cakewalk evolved into ragtime, which became a North American and European sensation, while mainstream America was enthralled by the brass band marches of  John Philips Sousa

 

Mamie Smith, performed in various styles, including jazz and blues.

Tin Pan Alley was the biggest source of popular music early in the 20th century (Garofolo, 17). Tin Pan Alley was a place in New York City which published sheet music for dance songs like "After the Ball Is Over". The first few decades of the 20th century also saw the rise of popular, comic musical theater, such as the vaudeville tradition and composers and writers like Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome kern and Ira Gershwin. At the same time, jazz and blues, two distinct but related genres, began flourishing in cities like Memphis, Chicago and New Orleans and began to attract some mainstream audiences.

Blues and jazz were the foundation of what became American popular music. The ability to sell recorded music through phonographs changed the music industry into one that relied on the charisma of star performers rather than songwriters. There was increased pressure to record bigger hits, meaning that even minor trends and fads like Hawaiian steel guitar  left a permanent influence (the steel guitar is still very common in country music). Dominican merengue and Argentinian tango also left their mark, especially on jazz, which has long been a part of the music scene in Latin America. During the 1920s, classic female blues singers like Mamie Smith became the first musical celebrities of national renown Gospel, blues and jazz were also diversifying during this period, with new subgenres evolving in different cities like Memphis New York, New Orleans and Chicago.

Jazz quickly replaced the blues as American popular music, in the form of big band swing, a kind of dance music from the early 1930s. Swing used large ensembles, and was not generally improvised, in contrast with the free-flowing form of other kinds of jazz. With swing spreading across the nation, other genres continued to evolve towards popular traditions. In Louisiana, Cajun and Creole was adding influences from blues and generating some regional hit records, while Appalachian folk music was spawning jug bands, honky tonk bars and close harmony duets, which were to evolve into the pop-folk of the 1940s, bluegrass and country. The American Popular music reflects and defines American Society.

1940s and 1950s

In the 1940s, jazz evolved into an ever more experimental bebop scene. Country and folk music further developed as well, gaining newfound popularity and acclaim for hard-edged folk music.

The dawn of rock & roll

 

Bill Haley and His Comets had the biggest selling rock and roll single in the history of the genre.

Starting in the 1920s, Boogie Woogie  began to evolve into what would become rock and roll, with decided blues influences, from 1929's ‘Crazy About Baby’ with fundamental rock elements to 1938's ‘Roll ‘Em Pete’ by Big joe Turner, which contained almost the complete formula. Teenagers from across the country began to identify with each other and launched numerous trends. Perhaps most importantly, the 1940s saw the rise of the youth culture. The first teen stars arose, beginning with the bobby soxer idol Frank Sinatra; this opened up new audiences for popular music, which had been primarily an adult phenomenon prior to the 1940s. In the 1940s, boogie woogie was using terms like "rocking" and "rolling" borrowed from gospel and blues music, as in ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight by Roy Brown. In the 1950s, rock and roll musicians began producing direct covers of boogie woogie and R&B stars, for example Shake Rattle and Roll  " by Big Joe Turner’ (covered by Bill Haley and his Comets in 1954) and ‘Hound Dog’ by Big Mama Thornton (covered by Elvis Presley in 1956), and their own original works likeChuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene" in 1955.

Roots of country music

 

  Willie Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music

The early 1940s saw the first major commercial success for Appalachian folk. Singers like Pete Seeger emerged, in groups like the Almanac Singers and the Weavers Lyrically, these performers drew on early singer-songwriter likes Woody Guthrie, and the whole scene became gradually associated with the political left (Garofolo, 196). By the 1950s, the anti-Communism scare was in full swing, and some performers with a liberal or socialist bent were blacklisted from the music industry.

In the middle of the 1940s, Western swing reached its peak of popularity. It was a mixture of diverse influences, including swing, blues, polka and popular cowboy songs, and included early stars like Non Wills, who became among the best known musicians of the era.

With a honky tonk root, modern country music arose in the 1940s, mixing with R&B and the blues to form rockabilly. Rockabilly's earliest stars were Elvis Presley and Bill haley who entertained to crowds of devoted teenage fans. At the time, black audiences were listening to R&B, doo wop and gospel, but these styles were not perceived as appropriate for white listeners. People like Haley and Presley were white, but sang in a black style. This caused a great deal of cheeze controversy from concerned parents who felt that "race music", as it was then known, would corrupt their children. Nevertheless, rockabilly's popularity continued to grow, paving the way for the earliest rock stars like Chucl Berry Bo Diddley Little Richard and fats Domino 

Among country fans, rockabilly was not well-regarded Instead, the pop sounds of singers like Hark Williams and Patsy Cline became popular. Williams had an unprecedented run of success, with more than ten chart-topping singles in two years (1950–1951), including well-remembered songs still performed today like I’m so lonesome I could cry’ and cold, cold Heart It was performers like Williams that established the city of Nashville, Tennessee  as the center of the country music industry. There, country and pop were mixed, resulting in what was known as the Nashville Sound 

Gospel and doo wop

 

Mahalia Jackson is known as the "Queen of Gospel".

The 1950s also saw the widespread popularization of gospel music, in the form of powerful singers like Mahalia Jackson. Gospel first broke into international audiences in 1948, with the release of Jackson's "Move on Up a Little Higher", which was so popular it couldn't be shipped to record stores fast enough. As the music became more mainstream in the later part of the decade, performers began adding influences from R&B to make a more palatable and dance-able sound. Early in the next decade, the lyrics were secularized, resulting in soul music. Some of soul's biggest stars began performing in the 1950s gospel scene, including Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington, Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin.

Doo wop, a complex type of vocal music, also became popular during the 1950s, and left its mark on 1960s soul and R&B. The genre's exact origins are debatable, but it drew on groups like the Mills Brothers and The Ink Spots who played a kind of R&B with smooth, alternating lead vocals. With the addition of gospel inflections, doo wop's polished sound and romantic ballads made it a major part of the 1950s music scene, beginning in 1951. The first popular groups were The Five Keys ("Glory Of Love") and The Flamingos ("Golden Teardrops"). Doo wop diversified considerably later in the decade, with groups like The Crows ("Gee"), creating a style of uptempo doo wop and the ballad style via The penguins ("Earth Angel"), while singers like Frankie Lymon became sensations; Lymon became the first black teen idol in the country's history after the release of the Top 40 pop hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" (1956).

Latin music

Main article:  Latin music in the United States

Demi Lovato performing on the Jonas Brothers Live in Concert in September 2010

Latin music imported from Cuba (chachacha, mambo,rumba) and Mexico (ranchera and mariachi) had brief periods of popularity during the 1950s. The earliest popular Latin music in the United States came with rumba in the early 1930s, and was followed by calypso  in the mid-40s, mambo in the late 1940s and early 1950s, chachachá and charanga in the mid-50s, bolero in the late 1950s and finally boogaloo in the mid-60s, while Latin music mixed with jazz during the same period, resulting in Latin jazz and the bossa nova fusion cool jazz.

The first Mexican-Texan pop star was Lydia Mendoza, who began recording in 1934. It was not until the 1940s, however, that musica nortena became popularized by female duets like Carmen y Laura and Las Hermanas Mendoza, who had a string of regional hits. The following decade saw the rise of Chelo Silva, known as the "Queen of the (Mexican Bolero", who sang romantic pop songs.

The 1950s saw further innovation in the Mexican-Texan community, as electric guitars, drums and elements of rock and jazz were added to conjunto. Valeria Longoria was the first major performer of conjunto, known for introducing Colombian cumbia and Mexican ranchera to conjunto bands. Later, Tiny de la Rosa modernized the conjunto big bands by adding electric guitars, amplified bajo sexto and a drum kit and slowing down the frenetic dance rhythms of the style. In the mid-1950s, bandleader Isidro lopez used accordion in his band, thus beginning the evolution of Tejano music. The rock-influenced Little Joe was the first major star of this scene.

Cajun and Creole music

Main article: Music of Louisiana

Louisiana's Cajun and Creole communities saw their local music become a brief mainstream fad during the 1950s. This was largely due to the work of Clifton Chenier, who began recording for Speciality Records in 1955. He took authentic Cajun and Creole music and added more elements of rock and roll: a rollicking beat, frenetic vocals and a dance-able rhythm; the result was a style called zydeco. Chenier continued recording for more than thirty years, releasing over a hundred albums and paving the way for later stars like Boozoo Chavis and Buckwheat Zydeco.

1960s and 70s

Main article: Music of the United States (1960s and 70s)

Bob Dylan performing in 2011.

In the 1960s, music became heavily involved in the burgeoning youth counter culture, as well as various social and political causes. The beginning of the decade saw the peak of doo wop's popularity, in about 1961, as well as the rise of surf, girl group and the first soul singers. Psychedelic and progressive rock arose during this period, along with the roots of what would later become fuck, hip hop, salsa, electronic music, pink rock and heavy metal.

 An American roots revival occurred simultaneously as a period of sexual liberation and racial conflict, leading to growth in the lyrical maturity and complexity of popular music as songwriters wrote about the changes the country was going through.

Early 1960s

The first few years of the 1960s saw major innovation in popular music. Girl groups, surf and hot rod, and the Nashville Sound were popular, while an Appalachian folk and African American blues roots revival became dominant among a smaller portion of the listening audience. An even larger population of young audiences in the United Kingdom listened to American blues. By the middle of the decade, British blues and R&B bands like The Beatles, The Who and the Rolling Store were topping the charts in what became known as the British Invasion, alongside newly secularized soul music and the mainstreaming of the Bakersfield. Folk-based singer songwriters like Bob Dylan also added new innovations to popular music, expanding its possibilities, such as by making singles more than the standard three minutes in length.

Psychedelic rock

Main article:  Psychedelic rock

Jefferson Airplane band.

Psychedelic rock became the genre most closely intertwined with the youth culture. It arose from the British Invasion of blues in the middle of the decade, when bands like The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who dominated the charts and only a few American bands, such as The Beach Boys and The Mamas & the Papas, could compete. It became associated with hippies and the anti-war movement, civil rights, feminism and environmentalism, paralleling the similar rise of Afrocentric Black Power in soul and funk. Events like Woodstock became defining symbols for the generation known as the Baby Boomers, who were born immediately following World War 2 and came of age in the mid to late 1960s.

Later in the decade, psychedelic rock and the youth culture splintered. Punk rock, heavy mental, singer-songwriter and progressive progressive rock appeared, and the connection between music and social activism largely disappeared from popular music.

Soul and funk

Main articles: soul music and funk

From 1960s to 1970s, female soul singers like Aretha Franklin, and female pop singer Dionne Warwick and Diana Rose were popular, while innovative performers like James Brown invented a new style of soul called funk. Influenced by psychedelic rock, which was on the charts at the time, funk was a very rhythmic, dance-able kind of soul. Later in the decade and into the 1970s, funk too split into two strands. Sly & the Family Stone made pop-funk palatable for the masses, while George Clinton and his P Funk collective pioneered a new, psychedelic funk. In 1970s Kool & the Gang and the Ohio Players were popular. Album-oriented soul also appeared very late in the decade and into the next, with artists like Marvin Gaye, AI Green and Curtis Mayfield taking soul beyond the realm of the single into cohesive album-length artistic statements with a complex social conscience.

It was in this context, of album-oriented soul and funk, influenced by Black and the civil rights movement, that African Americans in Harlem invented hip hop music.

Country and folk

Main articles: Country and Folk music 

Garth Brooks performs.

Merle Haggard led the rise of the Bakersfield Sound in the 1960s, when the perceived superficiality of the Nashville Sound led to a national wave that almost entirely switched country music's capital and sound within the space of a few years. At the same time, bluegrass became a major influence on jam bands like Grateful Dead and also evolved into new, progressive genres like newgrass. As part of the nationwide roots revival, Hawaiian slack-key guitar and Cajin swamp pop also saw mainstream success.

Tejano

Main article: Tejano music

With the widespread success of Tony de la Rosa’s big band conjunto in the late 1950s, the style became more influenced by rock and pop. Esteban Jordan’s wild, improvised style of accordion became popular, paving the way for the further success of El Conjunto Bernal. The Bernal brothers' band sold thousands of albums and used faster rhythms than before.

1970s

The early 1970s saw popular music being dominated by folk-based singer-songwritters like John Denver, Carole King and James Taylor, followed by the rise of heavy subgenres, glam, country rock and later, disco. Philly soul and pop-funk was also popular, while world music fusions became more commonplace and a major klezmer revival occurred among the Jewish community. Beginning in the early 1970s,hio hop arose in New York City, drawing on diverse influences from both white and black folk music, Jamaican toasting and the performance poetry of Gil Scott-Heron.

Heavy metal

Main article: Heavy metal music

Alice in chains

Heavy metal’s early pioneers included the British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, though American cult bands Blue Cheer and Velvet Underground also played a major role. Their music was hard-edged and bluesy, with an often menacing tone that became more pronounced in later subgenres. In the beginning of the 1970s, heavy metal-influenced glam rock arose, and musicians like David Bowie became famous for gender-bending costumes and themes. Glam was followed by mainstream bombastic arena rock and light progressive rock bands becoming mainstream, with bands like Styx and Chicago launching popular careers that lasted most of the decade. Glam metal, a glitzy form of Los Angeles metal, also found a niche audience but limited mainstream success.

Outlaw country

Main article:Outlaw country

With the Bakersfield Sound the dominant influence, outlaw country singers like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were the biggest country stars of the 1970s, alongside country rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers Band who were more oriented towards crossover audiences. Later in the decade and into the next, these both mixed with other genres in the form of heartland rockers like Bruce Springsteen, while a hoky tonk revival hit the country charts, led by Dwight Yoakam.

Hip hop

Main article: Hip hop music

Kool DJ Herc credited with helping originate hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s.

Hip hop was a cultural movement that began in Bronx in the early 1970s, consisting of four elements. Two of them, rappinga and DJing, make up hip hop music. These two elements were imported from Jamaica by DJ Kool Herc. At neighbourhood block parties, DJs would spin popular records while the audience danced. Soon, an MC arose to lead the proceedings, as the DJ began isolating and repeating the percussion breaks (the most popular, dance-able part). MCs' introductions became more and more complex, drawing on numerous African-derived vocal traditions, and became the foundation of rapping. By the end of the decade, hip hop had spread across the country, especially in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Salsa

Main article: Salsa music

Cuban and Puerto Ricans in New York invented salsa in the early 1970s, using multiple sources from Latin America in the pan-Latin melting pot of the city. Puerto Rican plena and bomba and Cuban chachacha, son montuno and mambo were the biggest influences, alongside Jamaican, Mexican, Dominican, Trinidadian, Argentinian, Colombian and Brazilian sources. Many of the earliest salsa musicians, like Tito Puente had had a long career in various styles of Latin music. Salsa grew very popular in the 1970s and into the next two decades, spreading south to Venezuela, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru and especially Cuba.

Punk rock

Main article: Punk rock

Punk rock arose as a reaction against what had come before. Early punks believed that hollow greed had destroyed American music, and hated the perceived bombasity and arrogance of the biggest bands of the 1970s. It arose in London and New York, with numerous regional centers by the end of the decade when acts like Ramones and Patti Smith saw unprecedented success for their defiantly anti-mainstream genre. It was the British band The Clash, however, that became wildly popular, more so in the UK than the U.S., and set the stage for adoption of elements of punk in popular music in the 1980s.

1980s and 90s

Main articles: 1980s in music & The U.S and NORTH American, 1990s in music & The and North American, and Music history of the United States (1980s to the present)

LL Cool J with the breakthrough success of his hit single "I Need a Beat" and the Radio LP, LL Cool J became an early hip-hop act.

The 1980s began with new wave dominating the charts, and continued through a new form of silky smooth soul, and ended with a popular glam metal trend dominating mainstream America. Meanwhile, the first glimmer of punk rock's popularity began, and new alternative rock and hardcore found niche markets. Hip hop diversified as a few artists gained mainstream success, finally breaking through in the last few months of the decade.

Hip hop

Main article: Hip hop music

In the 1980s, hip hop saw its first taste of mainstream success with LL Cool J and Kurtis Blow. Meanwhile, hip hop was continuing its spread from the East Coast to most major urban areas across the country, and abroad. At the end of the decade, two albums broke the genre into the mainstream. Public Enemy-s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton broke through with highly controversial and sometimes violent lyrics. N.W.A proved especially important, launching the career of Dr. Dre and the dominant West Coast rap sound of the next decade. That same year (1989), De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising became the earliest release of alternative hip hop, and numerous regional styles of hip hop saw their first legitimization, including Chicago hip house, Los Angeles electroclash, Miami’s bass, Washington, D.C’s go-go and Detroit’s ghettotech. Drawing inspiration from the rebellious attitudes of the Civil Rights Movement and groups like Public Enemy, many intelligent and politically minded rappers began what is known as underground hip-hop with artists like Boots Riley from The Coup leading the way.