MUSIC 26AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Carter Family, African-American Music, Mexican Americans
Coutry Musi Otoer , 7
• Country music - roots and historical context
o Solidified as a genre in the music industry
o Country: a hybrid musical genre that originated in the southern US and is associated most
closely with lower-class, rural white people
o The iagery attahed to outry is that it is priarily rural
o Cultural sources of country – feed in from the south
▪ Anglo-Celtic folk music (instrumental, ballads, parlor songs)
▪ European American and African American religious singing
▪ African American secular folk styles
▪ In Southwest, Mexican and Mexican American styles (ir: corrido, mariachi)
o Local flavor creates a lot of independent styles that people are playing
▪ Music industry picks up varied material and places it under a shared umbrella (ie:
racicalized music)
▪ Initially, country music was thought of as very diverse
o Roots
▪ 18th century: 1st European migration to Appalachia (Scottish-Irish)
• Steady movement of immigrants further inland in the US
▪ 19th and early 20th century: growth in manufacturing (coal, mining, lumber, iron,
steel)
▪ 1930s (Great Depression): movement of people to the West
o Country musicians were primarily associated with white folks
• Musical features
o Oral transmission: a lot of people ould’t read usi; piked up usi through social
engagements; music could be learned by ear
o Language: Southern accent and dialect (ie: nasal quality of ballad singers, grammatical
construction in songs)
▪ The Carter family: started recording traditional music in 1927; sang about the family
life culture; thumb scratch guitar and instrumental style
o Instrumentation (primarily banjo, fiddle, guitar, steel guitar/dobro, mandolin, upright bass):
string instruments are more prominent; not necessarily all used together
▪ Keep o the “uyside
▪ Tone color and range vary with all the string instruments
o Social music (honky tonks – small, working/rural/lower-class social congregations): dancing
and singing
• There is no defined form for country; there are a variety of forms that got put under the country label
• Influence of technology and music industry (shares connections to blues)
o Greatly shaped by the radio and different recording technologies
o Radio distitie: iportat for early disseiatio, eoes oseratie sigle forat
in the 1950s
▪ A lot of listeners lived in the rural areas so it was crucial for early dissemination
▪ Broadcasted strong signals so it could be heard in rural areas
▪ First radio broadcast (1922): featured a range of styles and bands
▪ Tightly controlled format (starting in the 1950s)
o Photographs
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