HUM 223: Roots music ... keeping it real

So far we've concentrated on three categories of music ... folk music, popular music and art music like classical or jazz. So let's recap briefly. You fill in the blanks. Folk music is __________. Popular music is like folk music because it's __________. And it's different because it's __________. Art music is __________. How is it like folk music? How is it different? How is it like popular music? How is it different?

Now we're going to add a fourth category, roots music, which combines features of all three at times but is grounded in folk music. Here's a definition from a Wikipedia article on American folk music:

American folk music, also known as roots music, is a broad category of music including Bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. The music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and jazz.

And this:

Many Roots musicians do not consider themselves to be folk musicians; the main difference between the American folk music revival and American "Roots music" is that Roots music seems to cover a slightly broader range, including blues and country.

Roots musical forms reached their most expressive and varied forms in the first two to three decades of the 20th century. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were extremely important in disseminating these musical styles to the rest of the country, as Delta blues masters, itinerant honky tonk singers and Latino and Cajun musicians spread to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. The growth of the recording industry in the same approximate period was also important; increased possible profits from music placed pressure on artists, songwriters and label executives to replicate previous hit songs. This meant that fads like Hawaiian slack-key guitar never died out completely as rhythms or instruments or vocal stylings were incorporated into disparate genres. By the 1950s, all the forms of roots music had led to pop-oriented forms. Folk musicians like the Kingston Trio, pop-Tejano and Cuban-American fusions like boogaloo, chachacha and mambo, blues-derived rock and roll and rockabilly, pop-gospel, doo wop and R&B (later secularized further as soul music) and the Nashville sound in country music all modernized and expanded the musical palette of the country.

The roots approach to music emphasizes the diversity of American musical traditions, the genealogy of creative lineages and communities, and the innovative contributions of musicians working in these traditions today. In recent years roots music has been the focus of popular media programs such as Garrison Keillor's public radio program A Prairie Home Companion and the feature film by the same name.

Here's a good definition from a Public Broadcasting System series shown in 2001. (We'll watch it, too, later this month.) Here's what PBS says:

The term "American roots music" may not be a familiar one, and requires some explanation. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the term "folk music" was used by scholars to describe music made by whites of European ancestry, often in the relatively isolated rural South. As the century progressed, the definition of folk music expanded to include the song styles - particularly the blues - of Southern blacks as well. In general, folk music was viewed as a window into the cultural life of these groups. Folk songs communicated the hopes, sorrows and convictions of ordinary people's everyday lives. Increasingly, music made by other groups of Americans such as Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Cajuns came under the umbrella of "folk music." It was sung in churches, on front porches, in the fields and other workplaces, while rocking children to sleep, and at parties. The melodies and words were passed down from parent to child, though songs - and their meanings - often changed to reflect changing times.

In the 1960s, awareness of folk songs and musicians grew, and popular musicians began to draw on folk music as an artistic source as never before. "Folk music" then became a form of popular music itself, popularized by singer/songwriters such as Bob Dylan, who helped pioneer the intimate, often acoustic performing style that echoed that of community-based folk musicians. Music writers, scholars and fans began to look for new ways to describe the diverse array of musical styles still being sung and played in communities across America, though most often not heard on radios. The term "roots music" is now used to refer to this broad range of musical genres, which include blues, gospel, traditional country, zydeco, tejano, and native American pow-wow.

Here's why this stuff matters: The blues and jazz we're studying in HUM 223 qualify as one of the most important kinds of American roots music. But this semester, partly in response to things you guys have said in class, I want us to look at it in a context of what happens as other kinds of roots music "cross over" and become pop hits. I think if we do it that way, ask ourselves a lot of questions and make a lot of comparisons, the music of artists like Muddy Waters and his crossover disciples like Eric Clapton will come more alive to us. As jazzman Charlie Parker says, there are no boundaries to art. What is gained as the music crosses over? What is lost? How do crossover musicians keep it real? Or do they?

Today we'll watch a documentary called "To Hear Your Banjo Play" (16:09) produced by song collector Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress and narrated by folk revival singer Pete Seeger in 1947. It's hokey, but it shows the attitudes of the highly educated people who championed folk music as it crossed over in the 1930s and 40s. If you can overlook the ridiculous "country-fied" costumes the producers have the performers wear, it gives a decent ... but romanticized ... history of American roots music. And it features cameo performance by talented musicians including songwriter Woody Guthrie (best known for "This Land Is Your Land") and bluesman Brownie McGhee, among others. Which parts of it strike you as real? Which ones don't?




Recent documentary by West Virginia Public Broadcasting (26:51) on the Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop, W.Va. How, specifically, do these people keep their traditions alive? Can West Virginia teenager really play like someone old enough to be their grandfather? Is it real when they do? To whom? Why? How? What does it tell you about the nature of music?