Cowboy Songs
Western music was directly influenced by the folk music traditions of immigrants in the nineteenth century as they moved west. They reflected the realities of the range and ranch houses where the music originated, played a major part in combating the loneliness and boredom that characterised cowboy life and western life in general. Such songs were often accompanied on mobile instruments of guitars, fiddles, concertina and harmonica. In the nineteenth century cowboy bands developed and cowboy songs began to be collected and published from the early twentieth century with books like John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). As cowboys were romanticised in the mid-twentieth century they became extremely popular and played a part in the development of country and western music.
Read more about this topic: Work Song
Famous quotes containing the words cowboy and/or songs:
“I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash,
the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and
Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do
the dirty boogie with scorpions. I make the bulls
keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)