Music in American Cultures

27 January 2011
Early European American music
• Religious (shape note) and secular
(ballad)

• Variety of European nationalities and

cultures within white racial category

• Music serves as record of new and

distinct immigrant experiences and
cultural change
 European migration to U.S.
• 1607 - First permanent settlement
• New colonists come for political, economic,
social (religious) reasons
• 1619 - First African slaves to U.S.
• 1620 - Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock
• 1776 - Declaration of Independence
• 1787 - Constitution
• 1861- Civil War begins
Shape-note Singing
 Early Anglo-American Music
From the early 17th century

• Psalmody
- Singing psalms from the Bible to simple
tunes
- Often sung a cappella (without
accompaniment)

• Sung by lining out

-Call and response – the leader sings a line, the
congregation repeats
 Shape-note singing
From the early 18th century

• Origins in New England “singing schools”

• A system of notation that uses shaped note-

heads to make music easier to read
…also called:

• Shape-note hymnody
• Sacred Harp singing
[Sacred Harp = human voice; also the name of a
book of shape-note songs]
Shape-note Singing
 Shape-note music and
performance
• “Open” harmonies—mostly fourths and fifths
• Melody in the tenor part (not the soprano)
• Tenor and treble (soprano) can be sung by
both men and women
• Mostly Christian texts
Seven-syllable system
Four-syllable system
 fa |la la |sol sol|la la |sol sol|la fala|sol fala|sol|| sol|fa fa |la sol |la lasol|fa fa|sol fa |la sol |la | la ||

Soprano (harmony)

sol |fa lafa|la sol| fa la |sol sol|fa la fa|la sola|sol| solla|sollasol|falasol|falasol|sol sol|fa lafa|la sol |fa |fa

Tenor (melody)

remember:
 Shape-note music and
performance
• Hollow square
• Leadership rotates
• Sing through songs on syllables, then words
• Pedagogical roots: the group is a “class,” to
lead is to “give a lesson”
 Books!
• Music literacy means printed music!

• Books contained repertoire of old

sacred and secular songs with new
harmonies and newly composed songs
 Community!

• Shape-note music sung in church, at religious

revivals, and at “singings”
• Singings retain church roots—no audience, everyone
participates
 Shape-note singing

• A combination of making music and

reading music—so is folk music only
oral tradition?
• Provided a social space for its
participants
 Shape-note singing
In the 19th century

• Fell out of favor in New England—was

seen as “too simple”

• Remained popular in the South; thus

came to be associated with rural, less
educated Americans
 Shape-note singing
Today

• Rise in popularity with the folk revival of the

50s and 60s

• Groups all over the US, including at UC

Berkeley!
Beginner cheat
sheet passed out at
many Sacred Harp
singings
Today
18th
Century

19th
Century
“Now, as a century ago, “fasola” singing, as it has come
to be called, is a way of life for thousands of rural
Southerners. Independent and thoroughly democratic,
the Sacred Harp remains today a vigorous tradition of
time-honored song, a living vestige of the past.”

—Buell Cobb, The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and its Music (1978), pg. 5
 Documentary: Awake, My Soul:
The Story of the Sacred Harp
(2006)
“These singers are surprisingly articulate, deeply thoughtful and
often very funny individuals who are passionate about Sacred Harp
singing.”

—www.awakemysoul.com
 Popular Images of
Sacred Harp Today
• Unchanged and ancient
• Preserved in rural areas
• A Southern tradition
 Popular Images of
Sacred Harp Today
• Unchanged and ancient
• Preserved in rural areas
• A Southern tradition
 But:
• Has actual origins in New England
• Practiced all over the US, especially in
the North and in urban areas
 And…

What’s at stake?

Why would urban Northerners claim

allegiance to a tradition, and assert that
it is Southern, ancient, and unchanged?

Can something really remain

unchanged?
• Ballad = song in which a series of verses
telling a story, often about a historical event
or personal tragedy, are sung to a repeating
melody
 Musical features of the ballad

• Narrative - tell a story

• Strophic form (AAA)

• Dispassionate delivery - about story not the

singer

• Oral tradition main form of transmission

– Much variation between singers, region, etc.
“Barbara Allen” Texas Gladden (1895-1967)
Away down yonder in London town
That’s where I got my learnin’
I fell in love with a nice young girl
Her name was Barbry Allen

I courted her for seven long years

She said she would not marry
Sweet Willy went home and taken sick
And sent for Barbry Allen

She dressed so slow for she hated to go

“Go tell him I am coming”
As she went walking through the room
She heard some bells a-ringing
She walked up to sweet Willy’s bedside
“Young man I think you’re dying”
He turned his face to the cold, cold wall
And bursted out to crying

“Do you remember the other day

Down at the tavern a-drinking
You drank your health to the ladies all around
And slighted Barbry Allen?”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” said he

“I think you are mistaking
I drank my health to the ladies all around
My love to Barbry Allen”
As she went walking up the road
She heard some birds a-singing
And everyone it seemed to say
“Hard-hearted Barbry Allen”

She looked to the east, she looked to the west

And spied the corpse a-coming
“Oh bring him on, now let him down
That I might look upon him”

The more she looked the more she wept

She bursted out to crying
“I might’ve saved this young man’s life
And kept him from hard [heart?] dying”
“Oh mother, mother, go make my bed
Go make it long and narrow
For Willy’s died for the love of me
And I shall die for sorrow”

They buried sweet Willy in the new church yard

And Barbry in the tower [?]
On Willy’s grave sprang a bright red rose
On Barbry Allen’s a green briar

They grew as tall as the new church top

They could not grow any higher
They wrapped and tied in a true-bow knot
And the rose ran down the briar
Name of Song “Barbara Allen”
Singer(s) Texas Gladden
Song Type Ballad
Form Strophic (AAA)
Instrument(s) Voice (female), a cappella
Meter / Rhythm Duple, irregular
Tempo Moderate
Performance Style Strong voice, nasal, emotion
same throughout
Lyrics / POV 1st person
 Ballad collectors
• Frances Child (1825-1896)

• Cecil Sharpe (1859-1924)

– Promoted canonization of Anglo (British,

Scottish, Irish, Welsh) and other Wester
European as sole American folk history
 Ballads transform in U.S.
• Broadsides - songs sold on large sheets
– Start to incorporate current and local
references and more urban content

• Ballad operas also performed here

– Originally British tradition drawing from
ballad repertoire

• Take on regional character

• Europeans brought numerous traditions
with them to U.S.

• Religious and secular

• Transform in new setting

• Interact with each other forming new

cultural material that reflects social,
political, and physical environment