HIST 390 Blog Posts

In a previous post, I mentioned my fondness for country music. This is no less true. For homework this class, we’ve been assigned a scavenger hunt to find the earliest reference of our favorite type of music. Thus, it was a given that I would choose country music.

In today’s day and age, it should be easy to find the earliest reference of “country music” by inserting the phrase exactly as written with quotation marks into the Google search bar. That is, if you don’t bother to read the passages it referenced.

Using the “Google Ngram viewer”, I search the popularity of the phrase throughout the years, discovering very few references, though some were mentioned as far back as somewhere in the late half of the 1700s. Imagine my jubilation and confusion when we learned in class that country music as we know it didn’t Come about until somewhere in the 1920s. My next step was to look for this early reference in Google Books. So, you know the little captions Google inserts next to the book you search, listing the word or phrase you looked for? Turns out, I didn’t even need to click the link to discover that this was not in reference to the country music I know and love. Here’s the quote: “This Rizzio must have come, so advanced in life as he did, from ltaly, and strike so far out of the common road of his own country’s music.” So as to avoid copyright infringement, this came from “The European Magazine, and London Review”, as it stated. The “country music” quote refers to an Italian man who played the traditional music of his county. Get it? Country music. Also, for those curious, ‘Rizzo’ is an Italian surname for someone with curly hair. Threw me for a loop first time I read this sentence.

My next order of business was to find a reference to ACTUAL country music, which took me a good hour and a half to find (mostly due to sorting through bad sources). In Google, the earliest reference I
found was published in a newsletter by the Country Music Foundation in the year 1970. A long way from the previous 1786 usage, right? Anyway, here’s the quote: “The Carters, A. P., Sara and Maybelle, and Jimmie Rogers were initially recorded in Bristol, Tennessee, in August of 1927. These recordings, August 1, 2, and 4, mark the beginning of modern country music”. Not only is this the first written reference (on Google) of country music, but it also states that country music was founded before 1927. The key phrase ‘modern country music’ suggests that there was an another, older version of country music, that which I could not find a reference for. Insert pouty face.

Next, and no, I’m not finished yet, I looked on another website my teacher recommended. This one had a lot of newspapers from the last 100 years! Unfortunately, there was nothing about earlier country music, but I did find this: “Other events of the day are an open house at the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, free boat cruise for the kiddies at Vereen’s Marina, a Phillip Morris Country Music Show at the Air Force Base at 6 p.m.…”. This was found on page 6 of the June 05, 1957 issue of the Tabor City tribune. It was the earliest mention of ACTUAL  country music that I could find, not “a country’s music”, or just straight up “In our own age and country, music…” or “…country. Music…”, etc.

I’d welcome any earlier finding of what we consider country music, just not a “country’s music”. Thus is the earliest online Google and “Chronicling America at Library of Congress” reference I’ve been able to find.

Today’s class began as a mini explanation of how everything we’d learned thus far tied together. The Cold War produced the technology we have now, yet maintained authority over it all through control of information: hiding its presence and that which it produced. However, the father/inventor of the internet built into its code the complete opposite of this: a form of free, fast, and easy universal information sharing. The result, as he stated, was “a revolution in control over information, and the way we understand authority”. What’s this mean? Control of information goes to everyone, as it’s simple enough to put a rumor or fact into place. But notice how I stated one or the other? A fact is generally considered true, yet a rumor is generally considered false, but still interesting. How do we tell the difference?

In class, we began to discuss the idea of black men as soldiers in the confederate side of the civil war. Does this seem plausible? this idea was spread through social media, textbooks, etc. with much skepticism. It is currently still being looked into as true or false. This photo here is one that our teacher showed in class as proof of African Americans in the Confederate army. We discussed the probabilities of its true value, then he showed us another picture. This happens to be the uncropped version of the original photo. The commander of the group is wearing a union uniform. The most likely reason the African Americans are wearing the grey uniforms is due to the fact that there were very few uniform regulations during this time, resulting in wearing whatever you could get your hands on. Ever heard the story that many soldiers had trouble distinguishing friend from foe during the civil war? That’s why. And when they did begin to regulate uniforms (grey vs blue), how much difference is there between their colors anyway?

Also, for those who are curious as to the origins of this photo, here it is: This is actually a union recruitment photo for African Americans in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Why have I been going on about this? Because it refers to the second part of the result of what we’ve learned so far in this class: “the way we understand authority”. With the advent of the internet, authority hopped in a car and took a permanent vacation in the Cayman Islands. Everyone can post something on the internet, which means everyone has authority. Now, I know that’s not what most people think of when the word ‘authority’ is broached. Typically, you refer to teachers, police, or some form of administrator. Where do you think they get all their information from? During this class, my teacher flat out stated that he got all this information on the internet. We have the burden of researching not only the topic or question in google, but also its validity. That is what it means to have a question of authority.

When this image is written on your history class’s whiteboard, that’s when you know that something weird just happened.

I know I’ve said that this class seemed similar to a music class, but when he was going over how beats in music were similar to one another, using this as a reference, I realized it truly was a music class. He then played a video in class of a band demonstrating this through a “four chord song”. Using only four chords (Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing melody), and replacing the lyrics with other popular songs, it’s possible to sing nearly all pop songs in existence because of their similarities. This transitioned into our reading of the book Segregating Sound, and how music was similar though separated by the racial border.

This book also went in to describe how many “black songs” were folkloric: they were all folk songs. In class, using the old definition of folk songs as according to the way they were defined in this era, these types of songs were created through isolation from the outside world and had no similarities to popular songs of the time: considered unheard treasures at the time, and many folklorists travelled the states to find and document these fading folk songs. Yet according to present day folklorists (people who study folklore), a folk song is any song played in a folk setting; this is a fancy way of saying any song played in a repeated gathering of people is considered a folk song. So why aren’t these songs considered folk? Technically they are. Yet these songs were not the only one’s played at these gatherings. Popular songs that talented musicians heard through the radio were also played in these gatherings, yet were not classified as folkloric because they were considered popular modern songs.

After the 1890s, folklore became extremely popular, especially in the form of songs. Still adhering to the old definition of folk song, the problem became, “Who are the Folk?”. The Who were based upon the consensual definition of folk at the time: customary, traditional, and untouched by ‘commercialization’. Considering white people to be the popular and therefore commercialized version of the world, this left all the discriminated minorities in the US: Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, and more. The main group under this scrutiny was the most marginalized minority in US history: blacks.

Here is a direct link to the youtube video he played in class, for those who are curious: Four Chord Song

Admittedly, this class went off on a few tangents, the major three I will list below:

1. Beats – a continuation: I apologize for leaving off my last post so unfinished, however the beginning of this class discussion was essentially a continuation. We began to discuss beats within measure. For any musically inclined people, this next statement will be irrelevant. Every measure has FOUR beats. If you listen closely, you can always count to 4 before the measure is put in repeat. Even the swing beat has a four count, if you count the silence before the measure resumes. What we discussed today is how to manipulate a beat: Moving the dot in the middle further away from the center to create different sounding music. Pushing the beat forward (the dot is moved to the left if you read it like a typical book) causes music to sound aggressive, like rock music. This is generally classified as “white” people music, as we have a tendency to like a faster and louder beat. The other option is to play behind the beat (sending the dot to the right edge of the circle and playing a little later than the central beat demands). This creates a more “sexy” and relaxed beat, most commonly associated with “black” people.
2. Migration – rural to urban beats: The second part of class talked mostly about specific artists (Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman) and the migration of people from the country to the city. Due to the Great Depression, many people were driven from their homes because of the poor economic state. Most moved to the big cities: NYC, Cincinnati, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc. in order to find jobs and make a living. This is where the concept of American “folk” music came into being, as many new musicians from the countryside tended to create music with the combined feelings of homesick nostalgia with city life enthusiasm. The reason the word folk has quotation marks above is because most of this American “folk” music was greatly exaggerated within the song.
3. Lastly, there was King records. In the fall of WWII, segregation is at an all time high: separate neighborhoods, separate schools, separate bathrooms, bus seats, doors… nothing was exempted from this separation, including music. In an earlier post, I mentioned that a white person to go to the black section of a record store was forbidden, because of the segregation. King records decided to work towards this problem of society, while also trying to make a buck. In a time when public facilities were segregated and intermarraige was prohibited by law, this music record company blatantly marketed itself as an interracial company, with both whites and blacks working together. While this seems nice and all, the catch is that each song was performed twice. In the King Record’s view, by spreading the same song in both markets, there was double the chance of hitting big and getting double the money typically earned for a song. Black musicians would sing a song, and then white musicians would adapt that same song into the popular style of their market and perform the same lyrics, and vice versa.

This last comment will lead into my next post on the book Segregating Sound; literally the segregation of sound continued.

Ever been told that you have 2 left feet?

Something interesting in class caught my attention: people can’t count music beats. How is this possible? Cultural exposure, of course!

Each culture puts their own emphasis on specific beats in music. New world music (including Europe and the US), accentuates the first and third beats in a four count. Meanwhile Old world music (Africa) tend to stress the second and fourth beats. Ever gone to a concert where there’s discordant clapping? This is why.

Most of the current world’s popular music (including but not limited to pop and R&B) emphasize the 2 and 4 count. Americans tend to accent the 1 and 3 beat. See the problem? Each culture is taught to accentuate different beats, leading to the double left feet. Recently even Justin Bieber got annoyed enough during a concert to correct the audience, who had been clapping on the wrong beats: Justin Bieber audience admonition

It is possible to train oneself to listen for the correct beat. Having taken dance classes since I was 5, I would watch new students come into class completely off beat, starting too early or too late. Within a relatively short amount of time, those same students were teaching the next group of new students how to count the beats in the music.

Another new type of beat becoming increasingly popular is the swing beat. It pretty much sounds a lot like its name: one beat is lost as it r=transitions from one beat to another, resulting in only 3 beats. One, two, and three, four. The third beat is displaced as there is no definitive direct beat.

To cover the missing days…

Day 8: we mostly discussed the various forms of technology and its evolution through time; the radio and computer for example. The class discussed the idea that “information wants to be free”, how the internet was created to share information, and that it is very difficult to try to hide something once its been online. The adage of “nothing is ever fully deleted from the internet” was a key concept.

Day 9: ? I was absent, but it turns out that this class was not so dissimilar from Day 10. Ever heard of a Minstrel? 

In today’s class, we delved into the origins of some popular music genres. Anyone like country? All nay-sayers are hereby banned from this website (just kidding… mostly…). In upstate New York towards Canada, this is the best music playing on the radio, and also the only music.

What does this have to do with minstrels? I’m getting there.

So, country music, where did it originate? Recently, I went to Paris. The lady I lived the month with had a radio on every morning. One of my first questions to her was, “where’s the country music?”. It broke my heart when she said she had no idea what that was. That’s when I realized that country music is a completely American concept. Or is it?

According to this class, country music is a play on Hawaiian and African roots.

But before continuing, minstrels… what are they? According to google under the historical tag, “a member of a band of entertainers with blackened faces who performed songs and music ostensibly of black American origin”, which is a fancy way of saying that white people liked to knock off what was considered black people music. This was done because of the racial and political lines dividing genres of music. It’s much lessened now, but music that was made by African Americans was considered ONLY for African Americans. Even though a large majority of the American population liked the music, it was considered taboo to go towards that section of a record store. So, people created knock offs, country music being a prime example of this.

Did you notice the picture above near the first mention of country music? More specifically, notice the instrument? When we think of country music, the first thing that comes to mind are cowboy boots, the cowboy hat, and a guitar. So, why the banjo? Well, before the guitars we know today, there was the banjo. Where did this instrument come from? African slaves. Brought over to the US, the banjo was a colonial era African instrument, that happened to have a very likable sound. So, like the minstrel shows, it was copied and pasted into country music, becoming associated with whites by the 1920s.

Then there’s the Hawaiians. Not technically, Hawaii was forced into becoming a state. This made Hawaii interesting to the US, as everything about it is different and unfamiliar with the everyday American culture. They were ruled by royalty, after all. One of the things that caught peoples attention was, you guessed it, their music. Island music was such a strange concept, and an enticing one. One of the first instruments brought over from Hawaii to the US essentially created country music: the steel guitar. If you go to YouTube and search “early country music steel guitar”, you’ll hear a tune between what we know as country and native Hawaiian music. It sounds suspiciously similar to Spongebob Squarepants.

Thus, country music includes the legacy of black-faced minstrelsy and appropriation of Hawaiian music.