What is the one true American Music?

sorry ian i think you are really cool dude but barring that this might a joke i think this poll idea is fucked

No Americana, no credibility

b/c the answer is, like, all of these

lol i mean, i'm not suggesting that there is ONLY ONE TRUE MUSIC THAT CAN BE CALLED AMERICAN. I'm just curious like, what evokes the feeling of the idea of "America" most for you when listening to these musics.

lol i see

feeling patriot today fuck off ;)

which smiley face is the one true american smiley face

:-)

Country Jazz really

Least American music here is disco, easy. (Though it's at least partly -- maybe even half? -- American)

"Nothing, to me, says America like country & western music."

Nothing says rural America maybe, but like don't most people live in cities?

Weird question

I like American music

It's gained considerably in popularity in recent years

voted CRABCORE

well, applying the reverse-hongro scale, whatever's most truly american must be least european -- i.e. privileging rhythm over (or at least on equal footing with) melody, and anchored in blues structures. and of course it helps if it's by black people. so i think "rhythm & blues/soul" is the answer.

Jesus music

this is like those X vs Y polls where Y wouldn't exist without X, x1000

what about folk?

It isn't American

Nothing says rural America maybe, but like don't most people live in cities?

http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Various-Artists-Urban-Cowboy-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack.jpg

Seems like it has to be country, blues or gospel, as those are the oldest American forms, and arguably the well that all the others draw from. I'll say the blues, because it seems to tie the other two together, and because it's still so present/alive in rock, jazz, R&B and hip-hop. Zydeco should be on this list.

I keep staring at the name in small-print in the upper left-hand corner of the Urban Cowboy OST. Is it "Jimmy Buffet"? If so, f---k this OST imo.

Which would be sad, because I kind of love the Urban Cowboy OST.

the line from the academy has always been "jazz is the truly american music" and tbh I accept that - country's basically a continuous line from british & irish folk song through proper "country" (i.e. piedmont, ozarks, etc) music into "country & western" i.e. country music & western swing, that's a super-crude reduction but country's reputed american-ness is more a careful p.r. decision. not to mention that half the country you hear is Canadian, ain't it?

rock and roll by process of elimination

country; too sitting-on-my-porch-ey
jazz; too nerdy
blues; too slouchy
gospel; too faithy
r&b, soul; too sappy
hip hop; i wish! but too anti-american
disco; lol what

also rock and roll wins by virtue of not giving a shit what you think but being universally loved, anyways.

SB Country, where the flavor is.

country's basically a continuous line from british & irish folk song

Nah, I don't buy this -- that British stuff really had to merge with the blues before country got off the ground in the 20th Century here. (Though of course banjos came from Africa too, right?) (Not sure how the "and western" or "western swing" would make country not-American, either.)

half the country you hear is Canadian

A huge exagerration, but sure, a lot of it is. (Though Canada's also part of North America.) Though you could just as easily say that half the rock n roll you hear is British/Australian/Canadian/South American/Japanese/ etc. Doesn't mean Americans didn't invent it.

Thing about disco is that it's not even obvious that the genre first materialized in America, no more than say Germany (as in Silver Convention, first album 1975) or Belgium (Chakachas' "Jungle Fever," 1972) or someplace like that. Though obviously there were plenty of transitional pre-disco records out of Philly Soul and from Eddie Kendricks, Bohannon, Isaac Hayes, whoever.

Really, country's "countryness" was probably the big PR decision. (And I don't doubt there were fiddlers in Appalachia or Nova Scotia or wherever who were playing more purely British reels or schottisches etc before anything blues-related came into play; just not sure whether you could accurately call it country yet at that point.)

Rock n Roll is the only genre in here that feels to me in tune with the so called American spirit. It mirrors freedom and equality. There isn't a racial dominance in performers, it's just a fun mesh of both black (blues) and white (rockabilly) influences.

(Not sure how the "and western" or "western swing" would make country not-American, either.)

that's not implied in what I wrote, or if it is, it's not what I meant - only that any alleged specifically-american quality attrib'd to c&w is being attrib'd to a genre which derives from a mixture of british isles music as played in insular mountain/piedmont communities for 100+ years. I mean, the obvious q for a thread like this is "what does american mean?" which is yr standard am lit q also - at what point is american literature not a branch of british literature but its own thing. I think audibly, melodically, country until the mid-fifties was a roots-in-British-Isles folk tradition - when it things get all rock-and-rolly that changes a lot, and at that point it's hard to say what's coming from where. I'm just saying as Uniquely American Music, I don't buy c&w, unless you want to exclusively be talking about Country As It Now Is being a uniquely American admixture, which, I mean, OK, sure, that's the american artistic way - adopt/incorporate/brand. me, I'm still siding with jazz.

audibly, melodically, country until the mid-fifties was a roots-in-British-Isles folk tradition

Well, only if you leave out minor artists like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Dock Boggs, Charlie Poole, the Delmore Brothers, and Uncle Dave Macon (all of whom would have been unthinkable without a blues influence as well, which was my point.) (Not trying to argue with you, John, honest -- and there are things about the real early roots of country I'm fuzzy on myself. So I'm not saying you're all wrong -- there were definitely British/Irish influences in there, too.)

not to mention that half the country you hear is Canadian, ain't it?

how is this even remotely true j0hn? (serious ?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACJ3VOHmhY

dock boggs from a melodic perspective is firmly rooted in the folk songs of the british isles. so's hank williams!

yeah well, i mean i get the brit isle point but then there's only one answer in all this, which would be native american music.

i guess i meant how is "half" the country you hear canadian? like country music as it has come to be known pretty much developed in the american south.

and you can say maybe dock boggs is brit isles but then i guess i wish i'd heard more british isles folk that sounded like dock boggs....by the time it gets to hank, he's changed a WHOLE lot about...everything in the music

rock and roll by process of elimination

country; too sitting-on-my-porch-ey
jazz; too nerdy
blues; too slouchy
gospel; too faithy
r&b, soul; too sappy
hip hop; i wish! but too anti-american
disco; lol what

also rock and roll wins by virtue of not giving a shit what you think but being universally loved, anyways.

― samosa gibreel, Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:51 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

wow

btw jazz imo

blues imo, kinda covers a lot of the bases

enlisted u.s. army personnel singing 'god bless america' at yankee stadium during the world series amirite

There isn't only one but the closest is Jazz.

I mean afaik the genesis & growth of country music as a derived-from-largely-british-traditions thing isn't exactly a JD Breakin' New Ground thing although the relationship between country & british antecedents is plenty contentious f'rexample see here which assuming you accept the music of appalachia as indispensibly contributing to c&w is interesting

tbh I didn't know ppl argued about this, I thought brit isles => appalachia was asked-and-answered so, fuck me, learn somethin' every day! that makes today a good day for me

i guess i meant how is "half" the country you hear canadian?

that was just one of my tm challop exaggerations cause so much of the stuff is made up there & I'm a big hater of pretty much anything presently passing as country

hmmm i think we're just splitting hairs (on ILM even!) but i guess for me, i see "country" proper as something apart from even, say, jimmy rogers and the carter family etc (which i think are roots of country but still more folk, to me at least) that develops later on....

the answer then is mutt lange?

I think it's accepted among most folks interested in hillbilly/mountain music/old-time music that there is a definite link between the ballads of the Britishers isles & country music, though many people also make a distinction between mountain music & capital-C Country music. There are plenty of popular musicians from the genesis of country music who take just as much if not more from the blues as they do from any Anglo folk music. Aside from the examples Chuck cited, I'd also suggest Clfif Carlisle, Darby & Tarlton and many of the other 'early country musicians' who focused more on the steel/bottleneck guitar than the fiddle. Early rural american balladry is inextricably linked to ballads US immigrants brought with them, but it could be argued that that's pure folk music and not country music at all. xp

I agree with matt.

strike the US in the last sentence, it's unnecessary and confusing.

next thread should be "most american food" and you fuckers better vote for frito pie or there'll be hell to pay.

this is a stupid question but the canonical answer is jazz for several very good reasons.

oddly, Americans pretty much don't care about jazz and haven't since the late 60s

also - geir got sb'd? what for?

for the good times iirc

seriously?

maybe I should've said "what thread" I can pretty much guess "what for"

crypto-racist hater of raps banned from I Love Music message board, ffs get with the picture

xp j0hn D. more diplomatic...as usual >:[

"for the good times" = also the answer to this thread. Kris Kristofferson.

i very sincerely hope geir gets unbanned and is back soon.

btw why are so many people 'stupid thread' about this? what constitutes "american," in music but also in literature, art, shoot even in cuisine, is a longstanding chew-the-fat subject...seems like a good q to me!

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:16 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Thank you john.

also in cuisine, besides frito pie i'm thinkin corn dogs and cheesesteaks.

american = "alternative"

also carbonated sugary drinks with trade names

btw the other correct answer to this thread is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z77VGHcmn4w

listen to it 20x in a row to really get the true flavor of what it means to be American

There are plenty of popular musicians from the genesis of country music who take just as much if not more from the blues as they do from any Anglo folk music...Early rural american balladry is inextricably linked to ballads US immigrants brought with them, but it could be argued that that's pure folk music and not country music at all

Yeah, not sure I'd argue that -- just that country as we know it (and had known it decades before the '50s) was as much a direct offshoot of, say, 19th century minstrel shows as anything else. (Emmett Miller being one obvious missing link.) The reason British Isles music doesn't sound like Dock Boggs is that he'd heard the blues, and the old Brits hadn't (though right, melodically he was still connected to them).

(And yeah, I know, the Brits had their minstrels, too. But they were a different kind of minstrel.)

What about Tin Pan Alley-era pop / musical theater? In the 50s, wouldn't people automatically have answered "Stephen Foster"? At least the honchos at the Longines Symphonette Society thought so.

What about Tin Pan Alley-era pop / musical theater?

Tin Pan Alley is right out of English music hall though ain't it?

afaik tin pan alley is the most english

most english is prog innit?

"Tin Pan Alley is right out of English music hall though ain't it?"

No way! TPA is full of Jews and ragtime and whatnot.

I know zippo about English music hall, but I was thinking about songs like:

"There'll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight"
"Hello! Ma Baby (Hello Ma Ragtime Gal)"
"Shine on Harvest Moon"
"Alexander's Ragtime Band"
"Yes, We Have No Bananas"
"Sweet Georgia Brown"
"My Blue Heaven"
"Happy Days Are Here Again"
"God Bless America"
"Swanee"

just to c&p a few from Wikipedia. About as far from anglich as you can get imo

yeah but the musical styles I think are music hall transplanted & enriched by other American/transplanted-American strains

also Italian popular song figures in at some point but I don't know much about it

Pretty sure Tin Pan Alley is pretty immigrant-driven from the start, with all sorts of faux-ethnic novelty stuff, lots of Jewish influence, some minstrelsy. By the time of Irving Berlin, at least, whatever's Brit about it is vestigial.

folk music, duh. they don't call it the anthology of AMERICAN folk music for nothing.

yea but you listen to that and what do you hear? so much of that collection seems to sound like country AND blues AND gospel AND folk at the same time

boogie woogie

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gif
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gif
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gifhttp://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj227/Zaiyu/lulz/emot-banjo.gif

NO CRABCORE NO CRED!

I really hate to drag quotes from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia into this and I hope that someone that knows their shit will contribute, but according to the article on Music Hall:

In America from the 1840s Stephen Foster had reinvigorated folk song with the admixture of Negro spiritual to produce a new type of popular song. Songs like Old Folks at Home (1851)[38] and Golden Slippers (James Bland, 1879)[39] spread round the globe, taking with them the idiom and appurtenances of the minstrel song.

so there were influences going both ways.

Damn, firsted by Shakey Mo.

As always.

in the being a little raincloud game? better luck next time.

still the blues

Re. the country / brit folk question: were revival singers in the late 19th century playing music that was essentially British rather than American? What about Pentecostal singers in the early 20th century? I'm not being coy; I just don't know. But where I'm pushing is (maybe) that country gets its specific American-ness from its religiousness. Like, were there folk-ish hymns in the British Isles prior to the invention of gospel music in the Americas?

This is kinda making me want to have voted gospel but I voted jazz. But I think they're both the right answer.

http://cmgonline.com/images/stories/features/Test_Rides/08_yamaha_v-star950/deliverance.jpg

were there folk-ish hymns in the British Isles prior to the invention of gospel music in the Americas?

about 400 years prior, yeah. corpus christi carol and coventry carol are folk hymns, no? there's also quite a few of the ballads collected in the 19th century which have a religious theme: about judas, the virgin mary or st stephen's martyrdom. when you've got a latin liturgy and bible, i guess you have to spread the stories somehow. but this stuff mingles fairly happily with songs about elves or arthurian legends or robin hood or whatever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_Child_Ballads

Aren't the Child Ballads a collection of popular ballads, where "popular" is to be contrasted with "religious"? In any case, very few of the Child Ballads are at least overtly religious---though it may be that they code religious discourse in various ways (in the way Shakespeare is sometimes alleged to have done for Catholicism in England).

my point was that things like the coventry carol are overtly religious, sung on religious occasions (though not in church) and use the forms of popular songs. they are folk hymns, surely? arguably most of the hymns of the isaac watts/wesley tendency are folk/popular songs with religious lyrics, since the real religious music was sung mass or metrical psalms.

apart from that, i was just trying to point to a strain of religious themed folk songs, since you were wondering if the religion in country music is part of its unique american-ness. i don't think so. and not least because congregational singing was a large part of popular music in britain at times - hence the appearance of male voice choirs in the lol one true britishes music poll.

J0hn I am so fucking furious with you for getting me to listen to that "I.M. Me" song

admittedly I am more furious with myself for not turning it off

The congregational singing thing is a great point---was it someone here who pointed out that many of the great British singers sung in church choirs in their youth?

Wesley is a good point...for instance the Carter family, best I can tell, were Methodists (I can't find definitive evidence on the net, though; I need a real library). On the other hand A.P. Carter did a lot of rambling looking for songs, and picked up a bunch of Holiness material. But the connection you wanted to draw is there, for sure.

Ok, here's something more, from the Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music (Routledge, 2005), entry for "Spirituals":

"Songs and rhythms from Africa, mixed with what the slaver owners allowed them to say, formed messages to prevent capture, since all assemblies were banned and drums could not be played because they could carry messages. The first Christian music was believed to have been sung by Negro house slave servants. They were hymns by John and Charles Wesley (brothers) and Isaac Watts. The hymns were brought to America during the Wesleyan Methodist Evangelical movement in 1766. Slaves mixed their work songs, feelings, interpretation of Christianity, and hymns, producing what became known as Negro spirituals."

btw this is the correct answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEDZnM_TZE&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wumr8rX5Qjg

i'm starting to think rock n' roll is the best answer because it combined stuff from all the others

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

intersting.

lurkers <3 disco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl4ouzRoEb8

"pretty sure most americans above the age of 15 have heard of miles davis, charlie parker, duke ellington, mingus, john coltrane and many of the other 'big names' of classic jazz. at least when i was growing up jazz was definitely part of the 'musical education' curriculum up through high school. kids in many high schools take saxophone or trumpet or what-have-you as an extracurricular (or something curricular!) activity. it's not a niche genre in the same sense as like, NDW or garage punk or anything like that."

When I had my music history class in high school, we spent a week on the Beatles and less than half a class on all jazz (the same amount of time we spent on rock and roll that wasn't Beatles). We did, however, spend over a fucking month on chansons and madrigals.

I'd be shocked if 5% of Americans over 15 knew who Mingus was.

i'm starting to think rock n' roll is the best answer because it combined stuff from all the others

― my gangsta ain't NEVER been on trial (M@tt He1ges0n), Friday, October 30, 2009 4:50 PM (3 days ago)

OTM