You know this how?Let's see the data to support this categorical assertion.
This is literally a whole thread on what a humungous mash-up of influences American Country music has become.
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Country and Western
- Thread starter ElectroVibe
- Start date
This is literally a whole thread on what a humungous mash-up of influences American Country music has become.
Well, somehow my post offended someone so I'll try to repeat it in a bland format:I very much agree with you. But... between 1670-ish (fleeing the Church of England) and 1900 (equally influential Sears Catalog) is a long time for Appalachian music to develop it's American "root ball" in "relative isolation".
The period of time you're talking about I believe is why the Scotch-Irish (or, if that offends, call it Ulster Scots) aspect of the culture persists so strongly even today in country music.
You know this how?
Well, isn't the basic concept of "traditional folk music" to play traditional folk music?
I mean, if you take Gregorian chants, apply advanced bebop harmonies, speed them up, and perform them with an Andrews-Sisters style quarter over a death metal background rhythm, you may have something quite interesting, but Gregorian chant it ain't.
When Led Zeppelin or the Who did Robert Johnson tunes, we didn't call what they did "Primitive Delta guitar blues".
No argument, although today Virginia would be considered mid-Atlantic, not southern. Some few years a go a U of Alabama history prof published a book which posited that the earliest settlers of the northeast colonies were of Anglo-Saxon (English ) stock, whereas in the south it was Celtic (Scotch-Irish) stock. The principal difference between the two? The Celts liked to fight amongst themselves more.
That was Grady McWhiney of TCU, whose book I'm apparently not allowed to name.
One must also consider the very important differences between tidewater settlers and backcountry settlers. If we look at the FFV I think we'd find they're all English in origin, not Scotch-Irish; and they tend to Church of England (later Episcopal) membership and ran large plantations with extensive slave labor; whereas the Scotch-Irish were more the back country settlers; small farmers; Presbyterians (later, Methodists and Baptists as well), rarely owned slaves, or at most one or two. Within the colonies (at least south of the Dixon line) these differences were at least as important as the north-south differences, at least up till say 1800 or so.
The common stereotype is that the music of the tidewater planters was typically English and European in influence whereas the backcountry Scotch-Irish had more of the traditional ballads and songs from their part of Britain and Ireland. But there are a multitude of stories and each individual musician's experience was individual, so we're only talking about large tendencies. For every large tendency there will always be found counterexamples, but those don't necessarily negate the large tendency.
Trad musicians can be serious hard-asses about upholding the standard, yes. As well we should be. If one should roll up & assert themselves on, for example a jazz session, and can't play time or doesn't comprehend the repertoire; there's no excuse to get indignant about being invited to lay out.
In my +40 years immersed in the trad music scene I can tell you a lack of diversity is astoundingly false to presume.
Musicians in the New England Contradance community, for example have a pretty constant track record of fusing varied ethnic styles for their sound. In France, various regional 'bal folk' groups have abandoned fiddles, hurdy-gurdies & the cornemuse for brass, reeds and gigantic bohemian accordions.
Consider as well the popularity of contemporary prominent artists in the American old-time music scene : Rhiannon Giddens, Jake Bount, Alison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves, Kaia Kater, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, Sabine McCalla, Allison Russell ....
Pretty much bingo. Ralph Peer, who essentially created the market for country music saw it as a valuable commercial commodity and as such it has been largely tailored and marketed as such since it's inception.
As a commercial radio enterprise, it's been used as a vehicle to sell everything from life insurance to cars to baby diapers, dog food & all purpose flour.
Getting close to splitting hairs here.
My perspective comes from my own Protestant Wessex English family who began setting in the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia ca 1670. Their successive progenies would go on to settle the western frontier at the same time as the arrival of Irish immigrants in the early 18th c.
The Chesapeake Bay had several of the first deep water ports for international trade, and Hampton, Va in particular was the colonial deep water port where in 1619 the first slave ship arrived in the Colony.
With it brought notable non-anglo/non-celtic cultural influences (eg African, Creole, French, and Spanish). With the English being the dominant empirical force in the Colonies, the Latin and African accents naturally become muted.
Escaped slaves would find their way to the western frontier and Native American lands in the Appalachians and had established communities there by the beginning of the 18th c.
Je suis d'accord. Sans the poverty porn re: "The Celts liked to fight amongst themselves more"
Old Kentucky guy here. Yeah Whiskey was and is a "real country music" staple. But I grew up took a train ride out and eventually found scotch.
...and Country and Western icon Bruce Springsteen earned half his fan base with tight jeans.
I like country and western, the old tunes. Voices and melodies are great and simple.
If you ever come across the obscure song Joe Bean by Johnny Cash, give it a listen. That’s a good ballad, easy to play.
If you ever come across the obscure song Joe Bean by Johnny Cash, give it a listen. That’s a good ballad, easy to play.
I take lessons from Marvelous Marla the Mandolinist. This music is not Celtic, it's Irish. All of these allegedly celtic nations have their own folk styles and bundling them all under the celtic banner is not much appreciated, although imo that is inevitable.
bin bothering me for Well over half a century…
dammit!
Now ya made me think of them again.
bin bothering me for Well over half a century…
dammit!
Now ya made me think of them again.
Rod Stewart mispronounced it too and he is Scottish.
