Module 2

In this module, we begin moving from folk songs and the work songs of slavery being the musical voice of the people to the start of America's first native musical art form, jazz.

I was reminded last night about the strong role that folk songs have always played in our vernacular musical culture, however.  There is a group of young rock stars (wannabes), made up of students from the school I teach at.  They had a "bar gig" last night at a local bowling alley.  As three of the five members are currently students of mine (and a fourth is now an alum), at their invitation I came out to listen.  Sitting at the bar with the drummer's dad (my booster club president), the drummer's mom (my colorguard instructor), whilst the barmaid (the bass player's girlfriend's mom) served our tasty beverages, I was enjoying their music making, er, rock'n'rolling.  At one point, I leaned over to my booster president and shouted, "ARE THEY REALLY SINGING 'LOCH LOMOND?'" He smiled and shouted back, "YES!" and the barmaid smiled too and shouted, "KIND OF A DROPKICK MURPHY'S VIBE, HUNH?"  Right isles, wrong island, but close enough.  Yet the point is this, folk music has always been a part of our popular musical culture, and ancient folk songs still are even now in the 21st Century.  The boys of Barely Civil showed me that last night.

And it was this initial fusion of folk music and work songs that melded into the jazz art form that would later give rise to rock'n'roll.  The boys last night opened with a cover of a Beatles tune.  In the time period of this week's module, the rhythm section is primarily only the piano and drums.  Strings, and especially the upright bass, are still the property of classical music and the orchestra world, but it won't be much longer and the primary rhythmic force of the rhythm section will be appropriated.  In fact, as this module wears into the next module, that transformation of the addition of the upright bass is already happening.  The saxophone is not yet on the scene either.  About the same time as this module, military bands like the ones Holst was writing for are using the "outdoor" clarinet more as a reinforcement of the alto lines in the music that what vernacular and big band composers would use it for.  This, it is the clarinet and trumpet that we hear doing the counter melodies and solos in I Got Music.  Grainger loved the Sax for what he considered its tuning capabilities and used it in his contemporaneous music almost to death, and in popular music today it is often relegated to be of a more schmaltzy “love” nature (as well as an even more erotic nature), but it would be the big bands that followed Gershwin that would use it to its best ability.

Going back to the lack of bass, I can hear this clearly in My Blue Heaven.  It’s a jazz ballad (indeed readily available from stock arrangers for all level of public school big band), but the piano is the main accompaniment with little or no percussion or other rhythm section.  When we get to the 30s and we have this instrument fully integrated, my ears become much happier.

The Tiger Rag is a chart that has been around in many incarnations, much like Barbara Allen from last week’s listening. I played the “Tuba” Tiger Rag version at University of Wisconsin.  It’s a jazzy, proto-big band rag with everything we’d expect from music of this time, while the more modern arrangements almost seem to amplify the bass-line as if to make up for the lack of it during its original existence.

Week 1 Listening

The Olde Tyme Music of this week's introductory listening reflects the origins of the modern American vernacular music, but much of it was also the vernacular music of its day.  The bulk of the listening for this week is folk music of the Americas, and folk music has always been the music of "the people," especially the working class or average people.  The more upperclass people, especially the aristocracy and nobility, have always identified more with the "art" musics of their days, while the average "joes" for lack of better term, stuck with folk music, likely because it was much more easily accessible to them.  


Yet the art music composers utilized folk music in their music, and folk music has always been a supportive body of works for classical music.  We will see in the running of this course that folk music, the pre-20th Century vernacular of American music, would morph into the modern vernacular just as classical music drew upon it previously.  Master composers such as Vivaldi, Handel, Holst, Grainger, and Beethoven have all woven folk music into their masterworks.  Barbara Allen is just case in point.  In this week’s listening, we hear a British folk song (I can’t find any information quickly that it has Welsh origins, but I might be thinking of The Ash Grove) that has become an American folk classic.  In my research, I heard Art Garfunkel cover it, and he’s not the only.  Like Swansea Town or Danny Boy, it stays with us, centuries after inception.  Art Garfunkel’s version combines his “folksy” ways, popular music, and “legit” sounds to bring us something very memorable, with Art’s tenor voice lilting above the stratosphere on the part. 

Stephen Foster is an important composer of American vernacular prior to 1900, and much of his vernacular is tied to American folks music.  How many of his folk songs can be found in the school band music of Grundman or LaPlante?  The Irish connection comes through in one of my research recordings, John McCormack trills it for us with his light Irish brogue.  No bassline has been developed yet, and the piano parts are very classical in nature, but, along with Barbara Allen (which, itself, turns up in several versions of A Christmas Carol as one of the folk songs sung by young Scrooge and Marley at a party hosted by their first employer), is a folk song that grounds Americana and forms the formation of what is to come. 

There is a second component to Americana music and that is the fusion of slave music, which we need to form American popular music of the early 20^th Century.  Long John, which uses a great deal, understandably, of African tribal rhythmic techniques, gives us that second component.  As we take these work songs and spirituals and combine them with our folk songs, while exploring other styles, we get the early jazz of the 20^th Century, which then will delve into pop music.