Saga-Spinning Songs

The American folk-music heritage is a vast amalgam of music derived from events, eras and people on local and national scales, songs and tunes which have sprung from immigrant backgrounds. Time and travel have often wrought changes in form in songs and ballads, while others have remained vir­tually unchanged.

Folk songs and ballads, although not always accurate his­torical documents, have managed to capture and convey the prevailing mood of the time. Many songs are composed from direct experience and this obviously makes them more convinc­ing and realistic in content.

“Dust Bowl” songs deal with the mass migration of workers across the United States from the dry, dusty country of Texas and Oklahoma to the rich, fruit-yielding lands of Cali­fornia. The songs describe hardships and privations they suf­fered while travelling and the humiliation and exploitation they underwent on arrival and are among the best examples of modern folk balladry.

The first real lure to move westward was gold, discovered in the Sacramento Valley in 1848. The rush started and fortune­hunters, travelling on foot, wagon and steamship, headed

for California. Many never arrived, dying of hunger, thirst, disease, and at the hands of hostile Indians.

One gold-hungry group from Massachusetts was given a rousing musical send-off with a song that became the unofficial anthem of gold-seekers. Titled “Ho! For California,” it started:

We’ve formed our band, and we’re all manned,

To journey, to the Promised land,

Where the golden ore is rich in store,

On the banks of the Sacramento shore.

Of all the songs to emerge from the War of Intervention, the shanty, “Santy Anna,’’ is perhаps the best known. Gen­eral Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led the Mexican forces to defeat, yet in many variations of this shanty.

Oh, Santy Anny gained the day.

Heave Away, Santy Anna,

He gained the day at Monterey,

All on the plains of Mexico

was the preferred version.

By 1849, San Francisco was the centre of the gold-fields, and the miners would come in and spend their hard-earned gold in gambling halls, theatres, saloons and dance halls. They thirsted for entertainment, and eventually troupes played the mining camp circuit, taking the entertainment to the miners. Among the performers were ex-miners, and some be­came quite famous, like John Stone, “Doc” Robinson and Ben Cotton.

John Stone, known by the nickname “Old Put,” wrote “When I went off to Prospect,” a humorous account of the hazards of mining:

A sicker miner every way

Had not been seen for many a day,

The Devil it always was to pay

When I went off to prospect.

Although the cinema glamourised the cowboy, a tradition­al song “Cowboy’s Life is a Dreary, Dreary Life” soon dis­pels any misconceived ideas about the life of a cowhand:

The cowboy’s life is a dreary, dreary life,

He’s driven through the heat and cold,

While the rich man’s a-sleeping on his velvet couch,

Dreaming of his silver and gold.

The real settlement of the West began after the passage of Homestead Act, 1862, and the completion of the trans­continental railway, 1869. A poster of the period offered two

million farms in the Dakotas for, whoever wanted them. An old song, “Dakota Land”, based on a hymn, gives an idea what these pioneering farmers faced.

We’ve reached the land of desert sweet,

Where nothing grows for man to eat,

The wind it blows with feverish heat,

Across the plains so hard to beat.

In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the WorId (I.W.W.) organisation was launched, and became extremely powerful in the West. It was devoted to a belief in the class struggle industrial unionism — the “One Big Union’’ to which all would belong. The”Wobblies”_‚ as they were known, used as a powerful means of propaganda and they had their own Llttle Red Songbook”.

The most famous of these song-writers was Joe Hill, the ‘Wobbly’. From 1910 to 1915 he wrote many songs, including “Casey Jones’’, “The Rebel Girl” and “The Preacher and the Slave” a parody on the hymn “In the Sweet By and By”.

In 1941, the U. S. Department of the Interior decided to harness the Columbia River to provide hydro-electric power for home and industry. In an inspired moment, someone hired Woody Guthrie to chronicle in song the building of the Bonneville Dam project. He wrote 26 songs. Many of those songs, like ”Grand Coulee Dam,’’ “Talking Columbia Blues” and “Roll On Columbia,” live on today.

Jazz

Jazz is a kind of music that has often been called the only art form to originate in the United States. The history of jazz began in the late 1800’s. The music grew from a combination of influences, incudlng black American music, African rhythms, American band traditions and instruments, and European harmonies and forms. Much of the best jazz is still written and performed in the United States. But musicians from many other countries are making major contributions to jazz. Jazz was actually widely appreciated as an important art form in Eu­rope before it gained such recognition in the United States.

One of the key elements of jazz is improvisation—theability to create new music spontaneously. This skill is the distinguishing characteristic of the genuine jazz mu­sician. Improvisation raises the role of the soloist from just a performer and reproducer of others’ ideas to a composer as well. And it gives jazz a fresh excitement at each performance.

Another important element of jazz is syncopation. To syncopate their music, jazz musicians take patterns that are even and regular and break them up, make them un­even, and put accents in unexpected places.

The earliest jazz was performed by black Americans who had little or no training in Western music. These musicians drew on a strong musical culture from black life. As jazz grew in popularity, its sound was influenced by musicians with formal training and classical back­grounds. During its history, jazz has absorbed influ­ences from the folk and classical music of Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. The development of instru­ments with new and different characteristics has also in­fluenced the sound of jazz.

The sound of jazz

Jazz maybe performed by a single musician, by a small group of musicians called a combo, or by a big band of 10 or more pieces. A combo is divided into two sections: a solo front line of melody instruments and a back line of accompanying instruments called a rhythm section. The typical front line consists of one to five brass andreed instruments. The rhythm section usually consists of piano, bass, drums, and sometimes an acous­tic or electric guitar. The front-line instruments perform most of the solos. These instruments may also play to­gether as ensembles. A big band consists of reed, brass, and rhythm sections.

The rhythm section in a combo or big band maintains the steady beat and decorates the rhythm with synco­pated patterns. It also provides the formal structure to support solo improvisations. The drums keep the beat steady and add interesting rhythm patterns and synco­patians. The piano—or sometimes a guitar—plays the chords or harmonies of the composition in a rhythmic manner. The bass outlines the harmonies by sounding the roots, or bottom pitches, of the chords, on the strong beats of each measure. Any of the rhythm instru­ments, especially the piano, may also solo during a per­formance.

The brass.The principal brass instruments of jazz are the trumpet, the cornet, and the slide trombone. But the French horn, the valve trombone, the baritone horn, the flugelhorn, and even electronic trumpets have been used in jazz performances.

The cornet and trumpet are melody instruments of identical range. But the cornet is usually considered more mellow and the trumpet more brassy. Most jazz performers today use the trumpet. The slide trombone blends with the trumpet. The typical brass section of a big band consists of four or five trumpets and three trombones.

Jazz trumpeters and trombonists frequently use ob­jects called mutes to alter or vary the sound of their in­strument. The player plugs the mute into the bell (flared end) of the instrument or holds it close to the opening of the bell.

The reeds.The clarinet and saxophone are the prin­cipal reed instruments of jazz. The flute, though techni­cally a woodwind, is often classified as a reed in jazz. It is used especially as a solo instrument

Both the clarinet and saxophone families range from soprano to bass. Only the soprano clarinet has been uni­versally used in jazz. In early jazz, it was an equal mem­ber of the front line with the trumpet or cornet and the trombone. The clarinet eventually gave way to the saxo­phone, which is capable of much greater volume. Four members of the saxophone family—the soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones—are regularly em­ployed in jazz. A typical reed section in a big band is made up of one or two alto saxophones, two tenors, and a baritone. Musicians often ‘double’ by playing two or more reed instruments, such as an alto saxophone and a tenor saxophone, during a performance.

Drumsof various types were familiar to black Ameri­cans dating back to the days of slavery. These early per­cussion instruments played a vital role in the develop­ment of jazz.

As jazz grew, the drum set evolved until one drum­mer could play more than one percussion instrument at the same time. The invention of a foot-operated bass-drum pedal and pedal-operated cymbals freed the drummer’s hands to play other percussion instruments, such as snare drums, tom-toms, cowbells, and wood blocks. Another important invention was a wire brush that the drummer used in place of a drumstick or mallet to produce a more delicate sound on drums and cym­bals. Today, a jazz drummer may use electronic percus­sion instruments that can create an almost infinite vari­ety of sounds and reproduce them accurately at virtually any volume.

The piano.Since the earliest days of jazz, the piano has served both as a solo instrument and as an ensem­ble instrument that performs as part of the rhythm sec­tion. Today, other keyboard instruments, including elec­tronic organs, electric pianos, and synthesizers con­trolled by a keyboard, may substitute for pianos.

The guitar, like the piano, is capable of playing both chords and melodies. In the early days of jazz, these two instruments, along with the banjo, were often substi­tuted for one another. Later, however, the guitar and banjo were most often used in the rhythm section in ad­dition to the piano. The banjo eventually disappeared from almost all later forms of jazz. Jazz musicians have used the acoustic guitar in ensembles and as a solo in­strument since jazz’s earliest days. The electric guitar emerged in jazz in the late 1930’s to add sustained tones, greater volume, and a new assortment of sounds and ef­fects to jazz.

The bassplays the roots of the harmonies. The musi­cian normally plucks a string bass. The rhythm section may substitute a brass bass, such as a tuba or Sousa­phone. When an electronic organ is used, the organist can play the bass part with foot pedals on the instru­ment. Electric bass guitars have been incorporated into some jazz ensembles, primarily those that play a “fusion” of jazz and rock music.

Other instruments. Nearly every Western musical instrument and many non-Western instruments have been used in jazz at one time or another. The vibra­phone, an instrument similar to the xylophone, and the violin deserve special mention. The vibraphone has been especially popular in combos. The violin has had only a few notable soloists in jazz, possibly because its volume could not match the power of the trumpet or trombone in ensemble. But throughout jazz history there have been some violinists who have skillfully adapted this basically classical music instrument to jazz. Modern amplification and sound manipulation devices have given the violin new and exciting possibilities as a jazz instrument.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 552