Music History of The United States - Beginnings of Popular Music

Beginnings of Popular Music

The first field of American music that could be viewed as popular, rather than classical or folk, was the singing of the colonial New England choirs, and travelling singing masters like William Billings. It was here that techniques and traditions like shape note, lined-out hymnody and Sacred Harp were created, gradually spreading south and becoming an integral part of the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was a period of religious fervor, among whites and blacks (both slave and free), that saw passionate, evangelical "Negro spirituals" grow in popularity (Ferris, 98).

During the 19th century, it was not spirituals that gained truly widespread acclaim, but rather peppy comic songs performed by minstrels in blackface, and written by legendary songwriters like Stephen Foster and Daniel Emmett. During the Civil War, popular ballads were common, some used liberally by both the North and the South as patriotic songs. Finally, late in the century, the African American cakewalk evolved into ragtime, which became a North American and European sensation, while mainstream America was enthralled by the brass band marches of John Philips Sousa.

Tin Pan Alley was the biggest source of popular music early in the 20th century (Garofolo, 17). Tin Pan Alley was a place in New York City which published sheet music for dance songs like "After the Ball Is Over". The first few decades of the 20th century also saw the rise of popular, comic musical theater, such as the vaudeville tradition and composers and writers like Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. At the same time, jazz and blues, two distinct but related genres, began flourishing in cities like Chicago and New Orleans and began to attract some mainstream audiences.

Blues and jazz were the foundation of what became American popular music. The ability to sell recorded music through phonographs changed the music industry into one that relied on the charisma of star performers rather than songwriters. There was increased pressure to record bigger hits, meaning that even minor trends and fads like Hawaiian steel guitar left a permanent influence (the steel guitar is still very common in country music). Dominican merengue and Argentinian tango also left their mark, especially on jazz, which has long been a part of the music scene in Latin America. During the 1920s, classic female blues singers like Mamie Smith became the first musical celebrities of national renown. Gospel, blues and jazz were also diversifying during this period, with new subgenres evolving in different cities like New York, New Orleans and Chicago.

Jazz quickly replaced the blues as American popular music, in the form of big band swing, a kind of dance music from the early 1930s. Swing used large ensembles, and was not generally improvised, in contrast with the free-flowing form of other kinds of jazz. With swing spreading across the nation, other genres continued to evolve towards popular traditions. In Louisiana, Cajun and Creole music was adding influences from blues and generating some regional hit records, while Appalachian folk music was spawning jug bands, honky tonk bars and close harmony duets, which were to evolve into the pop-folk of the 1940s, bluegrass and country.