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.