Saga-Spinning SongsThe 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 Folk songs and ballads, although not always accurate historical documents, have managed to capture and convey the prevailing mood of the time.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.
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