MUSI 2006 F09

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MUSI 2006 F09

• Lecture 3 Folk Traditions II

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• Last week we noted in passing that the fusion of
  African and European musical cultures was a key
  force in creating distinctive North American
  musical styles (and also South American and
  Caribbean ones).
• As we go along, Ill talk about which features of
  particular styles reflect more European or
  African influence, although keep in mind that
  musical cultures are never completely distinct or
  separate. Some features became common in North
  America because they were familiar to both
  Africans and to Europeans, and so could form a
  basis for musical communication (for example, the
  ballad tradition survived as well as it did
  partly because narrative poetry is important in
  both Africa and Europe, and the banjo might have
  become widespread in part because it derived from
  an African interpretation of European/Middle
  Eastern instruments).

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• Having said that, there are certain musical
  features which are often called africanisms, to
  indicate that they are especially common in
  Africa (especially West Africa), and are also
  found widely throughout the Caribbean and the
  Americas (i.e., along the slave route and in
  places heavily influenced by the African
  diaspora).
• Well discuss each of them in depth, partly
  because they are also important music theory
  concepts for studying popular music

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• Call and response
• Playful voicedness
• Vocal styles which border between speech and song
• Use of voices to imitate instruments and
  vice-versa
• Descending melodic profiles
• Emphasis on repeated rhythmic cells, often
  layering several simple ones to create a complex
  composite effect
• Emphasis on percussion and drums, often use of
  the body as additional percussion (with or
  without integrated dance)
• Emphasis on the social function of the music, and
  on group music-making
• Improvisation
• Preference for buzzing, complex timbres over
  simple ones
• Blue notes (use of scales outside 12-tone equal
  temperament)

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• Now that were on music theory concepts, we
  should also discuss the idea of texture, since
  different textures are important in
  distinguishing certain kinds of folk music and
  early popular music.
• The simplest situation is for a single voice or a
  single instrument to play a melody alone, one
  note at a time. This texture is called monophonic
  (or monophony).
• If a group of people or instruments sing the same
  melody together, but each of them are free to
  improvise a little (so that the parts are similar
  but not identical), this is called heterophony.
  Question can we link heterophony to the social
  ideals described in the list of africanisms on
  slide four?
• If a group of people or instruments play so that
  they are all on the same rhythm, but playing
  different notes in harmony, this is called
  homophony. Question what kind of vocal group
  usually sings this way?

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• With all that in mind, we can look at details of
  a few African-American folk genres.
• Work songs are very common in Africa (although
  they are also common in Europe e.g. sea
  shantys). Lets listen to an example of a typical
  African-American work song, and then talk about
  which features from the previous slides we can
  hear in it.
• Audio Old Alabama
• Form A(aab) A(aab) A(aab)
• Which features from slide four can we hear? Which
  of the textures on slide five described this
  performance?
• How does this formal structure relate to the
  social function of the music? And what about the
  hammer sound? How about tempo?

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• Aside from work songs, plantation life for slaves
  also included distinctive instrumental and dance
  traditions. Unfortunately, we have no recordings
  or reliable transcriptions of instrumental slave
  music, so we cant be sure how it sounded. The
  dance tradition survived a little better, in
  various forms (i) its influence on later dance
  styles in jazz and after (ii) in illustrations
  and written descriptions (iii) in stereotyped
  but widely-distributed versions performed by
  minstrels, and later in vaudeville.
• By contrast with Euro-American folk and ballroom
  dances, African-American dances were often more
  athletic and improvisational, with a more fluid
  balance between individual, couple, and group
  dances. One form that became quite widely known
  was the cakewalk, which involved dressing in your
  Sunday best and parading in a stately fashion.
  Whites tended to regard this as charmingly
  ridiculous, missing the fact that it was probably
  meant in part as a send-up of the white ballroom
  tradition.

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• The three main contexts for early
  African-American music were work, the frolics
  (plantation dances), and worship. Black American
  religion was highly syncretic, combining elements
  of traditional African religions with
  Christianity. Similarly, some of the associated
  musical styles were very African in tone, and
  some were very European.
• One of the most clearly African-derived styles
  was the ring shout. It survived for an especially
  long time in the Georgia Sea Islands because of
  the relative isolation of this region, and the
  necessity for most whites to leave during malaria
  season, African cultural forms in general
  survived better there than most other places in
  the US.
• Audio Adam In The Garden.
• Notice how this has some of the same features as
  the work song, but also adds some others from
  slide four that are new. Also is it easy to
  categorize this texture?

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• At the other extreme of the Africa-Europe
  influence continuum, we find the concert
  spiritual style. Spirituals took traditional
  African-American religious songs and set them to
  choral arrangements which relied heavily on the
  norms of European classical music. Spirituals
  were mostly presented as concert music, in venues
  that would normally be used for classical
  performances, rather than as functional worship
  music.
• The group most associated with founding the
  concert spiritual style was the Fisk University
  Singers. Fisk University was founded in Nashville
  in 1866 (discuss significance of 1865 for
  African-American culture). It was one of the
  largest and best-known black universities, but
  came into financial difficulty within a few
  years. The singers were formed in 1871 and became
  popular on the concert circuit, not only in the
  Southern US but also in the North and in the UK.

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• Overheads Fisk Singers
• Audio Honor Honor
• Form ABABCBDBCB
• In what ways does this performance show strong
  influence of Western classical music? Consider
  form, texture, timbre, and degree of
  improvisation.

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• Several African-American genres blur the
  distinction between speaking and singing.
  Sometimes these genres are largely improvised, as
  with the dozens. In cases like that, they
  emphasize desirable personal traits (a quick wit,
  being cool under pressure, competitiveness).
• The tradition called toasting, by contrast, is
  not improvisational and is very much like the
  ballad tradition a toast is a long recited
  narrative poem, usually about some heroic or
  dramatic event.
• Audio Stackolee
• This particular example is important because the
  character called stackolee appears in many
  African-American toasts and ballads, and many
  Euro-American ballads as well. He is one of a
  family of themes and characters that link the two
  traditions, and he combines the African trickster
  archetype with the European outlaw one.

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• Although toasts were popular in the oral
  tradition, they didnt form the basis for a major
  recorded genre (at least not until they served as
  one influence on hip-hop). By contrast, singing
  preachers were central to African-American daily
  life and developed into a successful commercial
  recording genre (which became one source for the
  gospel music industry of the later 1930s and
  1940s).
• Audio Two Fish sermon
• Question Name all of the musical elements you
  can hear in this recording. What is the
  effect/purpose of this style of performance?

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• Up to now Ive been emphasizing African-American
  vocal traditions of the pre-Civil War period. In
  Euro-American communities, there were some
  similarities and also some distinctive
  developments.
• In rural white communities (which were generally
  working-class at the time), styles of worship
  often resembled those in the black church. For
  example, consider the lining hymn, which was a
  very widespread style of white rural worship
  music (especially in the South)
• Audio Testimony and Amazing Grace
• Why would this style of performance be called
  lining? How does this resemble the
  African-American genres weve looked at? How is
  it different?

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• The lining hymn tradition catered to
  congregations where most members didnt read
  music and didnt have any formal training. By
  contrast, in New England there was a tradition of
  psalm singing which drew upon published
  collections called psalters. Some of the common
  ones went back to the 1600s, and struck a balance
  in their arrangements between folk-like
  simplicity and more classical techniques.
• Audio Northfield
• Form ABBABBABB
• Notice the use of two textures homophony and
  imitation. The formal approach is simple, but
  worked out ahead of time, without improvisation.
• Eventually, American composers began to produce
  anthologies of vocal music for worship. One of
  the most significant was William Billings, who
  printed the first psalter of all American
  compositions in 1770.

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• In African-American communities before the Civil
  War, there didnt tend to be a musical elite to
  resist or try to improve the folk forms. By
  contrast, within the urban white community there
  were some who found forms like the lining hymn to
  be offensive, and who took it upon themselves to
  educate congregations into more classical
  styles.
• In the early 1700s, this movement was centered in
  Boston and the style it endorsed was called
  regular singing.
• Related to this, there also developed an urban
  (and mostly Northern) tradition of newly composed
  classical-style worship music. This formed an
  important market for the emerging music
  publishing business.
• Audio Chester

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• One offshoot of the regular singing movement was
  the appearance of shapenote hymnals, which became
  widespread by the 1800s.
• Overhead Excerpt from The Sacred Harp
• The first shapenote hymnal is generally said to
  date from 1801. The form didnt catch on in the
  North, partly because the regular singing people
  exerted strong influence in favour of standard
  notation. But it flourished in the South. The
  best-known shapenote hymnal was The Sacred Harp
  (first edition 1844). It went through many
  editions, and is still commonly used today.
• A singing tradition grew out of this hymnal,
  called sacred harp singing. This is generally
  done a-cappella, with not set leader (people take
  turns calling tunes) and no fixed pitch
  reference. The first sacred harp convention was
  in Georgia in 1845.