MUSIC OF THE PRAIRIES Part II – Multiethnic Culture

The Multiplicity of Musics in the Midwest & Mississippi River Region

Music of ETHNIC NORTH AMERICA

--Has historical origins elsewhere—influx of populations from somewhere else in the world (except Native Americans).

Preservation, survival, isolation—are all concepts that have surrounded N. American ideas—laden with notions of idealizing the past to valorize differences. May drive folk scholars to collect only those pieces that survive to prove that isolation has been good for a community.

--Can find preservation in every group—defining its cultural core and articulating the values it wants to survive. May be more a reality for some than others.

--An example is the Amish music, largely in German, but remotely comparable to other German American genres. They have deemed it of special value—associating preservation with religious identity—characteristic of German Protestantism in the 16 th-17 th centuries—although no way of proving (in written tradition), but oral.

A common idea that music functions to recall another time and place: the old country in the age of our ancestors, etc. Thus, the earlier use of hyphens to separate one geographic location from another –Chinese-American, etc.—symbolized that link.

--Pluralism. Folk festivals are examples of a microcosm of ethnic North America: a venue that brings together many different cultures and fits them into a single performing frame. They offer examples of multiethnic settings in which communities emphasize differences. Stimulate diversity. But as in life, there are compromises; festival/event participants may have to make musical concessions in order to comply with festival conditions in same way that immigrant traditions change and adapt to the conditions of a new nation.

Interaction between imported and indigenous music stimulate change within the music? May reaffirm identity—But an exception in contacts among ethnic groups with Native Americans-- less likely to create hybrid styles. Compatability theory may prevail.

Question: Ethnic Identity- What exactly is it? How do we all manipulate our many identities (ethnic and other?)

Oral Tradition and Ethnic history:

ETHNICITY is a set of cultural practices spread over many parts of society.

1). ETHNICITY is a construct—that endeavors to maintain the generations and provides a framework for the history of an ethnic community.

--becomes connected to the group even more so after immigration to express identity and experiences in North America

2) Music can be a banner of ethnicity, a marker of difference, a way of presenting boundaries and of separating “us” from “them” --the music reveals the ways in which the group understands and maintains its identity.

--Is Ethnic music really folk music that has been relocated to another setting? (In 1950’s -60’s “truly American” folk music thought to be ballads found in Appalachia)

Need complex answers to straightforward questions—Differences between ethnic N. America and concepts of folk music are associated with a sense of place.

3) Place, musical practice and venues are linked:

--May center in the home and family life (song may be a means of preserving language. Preservation occurs without conscious effort for 1-2 generations after immigration).

--As contact outside home develops, social clubs and religious organizations provide venues where communities work out and reconcile differences. Without organizations/events undergirding ethnic culture music may disappear.

--At the broadest interactive level, inter-community contacts recast symbols of ethnicity, giving them a new North American context.

Songs passed from generation to generation are valued—they establish a claim for the tenacity of oral tradition and reflect the family’s integrity. They restore oral tradition –not a frozen tradition of the past.

3) Regional musics develop—often a product of mixture and change

4) Mass mediated ethnicity and the commodification of musical styles –

--Exemplified in POLKA

POLKA and MASS-MEDIATED ETHNICITY

Polka illustrates PROCESSES OF CHANGE–transforming local traits in folk music that thrives because of the mass media.—lends itself to commodification. Yet asserts ethnicity.

Polka has become big business. Successful polka musicians can earn fame and fortune, even a Grammy Award (Brave Combo)

--has become an ethnic music for all North Americans. Why?

--Adaptability. Expands stylistically into new Regional marketplaces.

--Has largely developed in the industrialized North (especially regions of the Midwest and Middle Atlantic states

--large numbers of immigrants from Central & Eastern Europe settled

--also smaller pockets where there are established communities (Czech and German towns of Texas’s hill country). --Now polka base to Native American”chicken scratch” music and Tex-Mex conjunto music

--crossed from genteel social dance of mid 19 th C. to become widespread in repertories of national folk musics

Polka Musical features a dance style (short heel-and toe half steps) performed by couples. Cultivated in urban ballrooms.

--DUPLE polka meter

--ACCENTED 2nd beat of each measure

History of Polka:

First appeared in Prague – 1837. Originated among Czech-speaking people of Bohemia.

--Czech word for “half” or from “polska” (Polish girl)

Often newly-composed or adapted. Became popular throughout Europe then spread as far as India, U.S., Caribbean

From 1844 – flooded the U.S along with mass European immigration until WWI. Took forms related to each group

--Czechs had full brass component;

--German American/Dutchman had heavy bass line with tuba;

--Polish used piano accordions,

--Slovenian Americans used button box accordion

--Roman Catholic Polka Masses in Detroit (1970’s)

Polkas made popular through recordings

--As Dance music, polka recordings CROSSED BOUNDARIES and proliferated in public and private settings. Dances and music also crossed ETHNIC and CULTURAL BOUNDARIES.

INTERACTION OF MEXICAN AND GERMAN DANCES reinforced popularity of polka.

Ex: --Beer Barrel Polka – Composed in1902 (Now in Tex-Mex conjunto style – Ex.)

--Button Accordion replaces violin as principle instrument in northern Mexico

THE FIDDLE & THE BANJO

--Few instruments are as ubiquitous in North American ethnic communities as the fiddle and the banjo.

--Two instruments underwent quite different transformations.

The Fiddle is one of the most malleable instruments in ethnic music—adaptable for almost any system. Fulfilled the need of musicians to represent difference and ethnic diversity.

--can adopt the sound of any ensemble (Lebanese, Mexican, etc.)

--possibly an explanation for the currency of the term “fiddle” (as if to distinguish its ethnic varieties from the violin of Western art music).

Yet the ways the fiddle enters ethnic musical traditions and comes to function in them are quite distinctive.

--it’s the most Jewish of all instruments in a klezmer band

--the most French Canadian insrument in Cajun music

--the most symbolic instrument of Norwegian American music, etc.

FIDDLE LECTURE-DEMO: Al Murphy and Aleta Murphy

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The Banjo:

The Banjo came to North America with African slaves.

--Ironically, for the first 100 years was only played by Africans, and now has almost no place among African American musical traditions. Banjo has been abandoned by one ethnic group to be adopted by others.—ability to belong to many styles, with various functions.
-- Banjo music crossed between genres. Achieved popularity in the urban north by white society through blackface minstrelsy as a stereotypic instrument.

--Then became instrument of rural South again by rural whites.

--Crossed boundaries again into Dixieland jazz and early country.

--Then was dropped for newer Chicago jazz styles.

--Then proliferated toward the core of white bluegrass music.

--Pete Seeger exploited its rural connections during the folk-song revival of the 50’s-60’s.

Demonstration by Michael Flynn included 3 instruments:

l) Banjo – a plucked, fretted lute with a long neck, predominantly metal strings, and a shallow, single-headed membranophone as its body. Technique includes flat picking style, clawhammer (open style) played close to the bridge, with push and pull-ups, drone, etc.

(Example of contemporary style, Bela Fleck)

2) Dobro – guitar with either square neck or round and metal plate on guitar body for resonance. Played with 2 metal finger picks and l plastic. Technique includes use of steel slide.

3) Mandolin – smaller long-necked lute played with tremolo picking style (fast), fills, etc.