american popular music culture (edit)

1. Introduction

“This Is America” by Childish Gambino (2018)

  • celebration of black culture (gospel choir)

  • dancing on top of a car (Michael Jackson reference)

  • the guy with a cloth on his head (during war, Iraqi detainees were abducted, held without trial, and subjected to systemic abuse by U.S. military personnel)

  • dealing with the stereotype of black people chasing money

  • globalisation of American music

  • the music video was posted on YouTube (labels are no longer necessary in order to become succesful)

“When A Cowboy Trades His Spur For Wings (From “The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs” Soundtrack)” by Willie Watson & Tim Blake Nelson (2018)

  • music as a symbol of culture and intelligence (stereotype)

  • the contrast of being a criminal and wearing white

  • cowboys and country music as symbols of America

  • ballad: one of the first genres of American music, borrowed from Europe; tells a story

Three Levels of Experiencing Music

  • listening

  • critical listening (e.g. a song was stolen from another artist, so we compare)

    • background (or elevator) music doesn’t require critical listening; invented to boost workers’ efficiency

  • emotions (e.g. disco polo, funk and swing music in the U.S.)

Formal Analysis of Music

  • musical process: each artist’s style is recognisable

  • riff: a short, catchy, and repeated musical part, usually in rock music

    • e.g. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Metallica (1984)

  • hook: the most memorable, catchy part of a song designed to "hook" the listener's attention and stay stuck in their head

    • e.g. “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen (2012)

  • groove (associated with swing): the rhythmic feel of a song that makes people move or dance

    • e.g. “Give It Away” by Red Hot Chili Pepers (1991)

  • timbre: the unique sound quality of an instrument or voice that sets it apart from others

    • e.g. “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele (2011)

  • lyrics

  • dialect

Music and Identity

Our identity is rooted in music we grew up with and chose at a later stage in our lives.

  • country music: White South

  • hip-hop: black city ghettos

Music and Technology

  • sheet music (bought if one wanted to learn to play it)

  • the phonograph record (physical media)

  • network radio (physical media no longer needed)

  • sound film in the 1920s

  • digital recording in the 1980s

  • sampling

  • internet-based radio and streaming

The Music Business

  • the classical team: lyricist, composer, and arranger

    • nowadays it often blends (e.g. Taylor Swift)

    • rock’n’roll merged these roles

  • A&R (artist and repertoire) personel at record labels: they research what is popular and “create” artists

  • producer: ideally assists the artists to reveal what is the best that they can offer

  • sound engineers

  • publicity department (promotion): touring agents, video producers, etc.

Sources of American Popular Music

  • European tradition (ballads, sheet music, and dance music)

  • dance music (popular until the end of the 19th century)

  • folk music (nationality)

  • religious music:

    • spirituals (hymns)

    • call-and-response (musical dialogue)

    • gospel (Sunday schools)

  • black spirituals: sung by black slaves (plantation songs) in order to make their lives less miserable; later demanded by the owners because music boosted the slaves’ work

    • main character: a guy who takes things into his own hands (revenge)

  • the Latin American influences (colonisation)

“I Lied to You” from “Sinners” (2025)

2.

  1. “Long Tail Blue” by George Washington Dixon

  • refers to a blue coat, a fashionable item worn by the main protagonists of this ballad

  • ballad: a sung poem that tells a story; ordinary themes

  • Jim Crow: refers to systemic racism in the 20th century

  • the n-word

  • a black guy tried to hook up with a white girl, got beaten up by someone white, and had to go to a tailor to repair his coat

  1. “Jim Crow” by Thomas D. Rice (1829)

  • performing an imitation of a dance by African slaves in order to parody their white masters

  • a similiar story to “Long Tail Blue”

  • first international hit produced in America

  • a black guy tried to have fun over the weekend and ended up in jail

  • calaboose (jail)

  1. “Old Folks at Home” by Stephen Foster (1851)

  • musically no structure: the same melody all the time, an instrumental outro towards the end

  • Foster was really good at hooks and creating a specific feeling (e.g. this one is nostalgic)

  • Americans perceived music education as part of overall education (kids were learning how to play piano)

  • parlor: a room in which music was being played, included a piano

  1. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Sousa (1896)

  • arrangement is important

  1. “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away” by Paul Dresser (1897)

  1. “Maple Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin (1899)

  1. “Young And Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey (2013)

  • transition between culture from before and after the Great War

  • written in first person

3. Dance Craze and Jazz Age

Popular Music in 1917-1935: Dance Craze and Jazz Age

  • establishing the rule of the music industry, popular taste, production and consumption of music

  • widespread use of modern inventions: cars, telephones, phonographs, radio, Hollywood films, tabloid newspapers → unified popular culture

  • organised crime during the Prohibition, racism and economic crisis

  • rising profits of recording companies

  • the rise of theatres in NYC, big musicals

  • sound films (introduced in 1927)

Technology and the Music Business

  • radio and sound film

  • the Great Depression hit the phonograph and film industry but helped to boost the radio; people cut on unnecessary expenses like records

  • phonograph records eclipsed sheet music

  • microphone (1925): crooning (a new, intimate style of singing)

  • the radio network (1920): disc jockeys promoted songs on the radio and sponsored paid hefty honoraria to the stars of the moment

  • licensing and copyright agencies

Dance Craze

  • freak dances (Turkey trot and tango), orchestrated versions of ragtime songs, popularity of African-American dances

  • dance orchestra: popular songs and not their own original music

  • these dances were deemed a threat to public morality

  • Vernon and Irene Castles: the biggest media superstars, catered to the middle class; simplified dances for non-professionals

Jazz as Popular Music

  • jazz (also jass or hot music): invented in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1900

    • hybrid music culture (white, black, and Creole culture, influences of French culture)

    • meant ‘speeding up’ or ‘intensifying’ but also had sexual connotations

    • merged ragtime, marching bands, music for Mardi Gras and funerary processions, French and Italian opera, the Cuban habanera, Tin Pan Alley songs, and African-American spirituals and blues

    • improvisation, scat singing

“Ain’t Misbehavin’” by Louis Armstrong (1929)

  • the title means ‘be sure I’m not cheating on you’

  • uses precomposed material and improvisation

Dance Music in Jazz Age

  • jazz embraced in high culture (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Eugene O’Neill)

  • promotion of Jazz Age by mass media and Hollywood

  • black musicians became stars

  • educated white musicians had to pretend that they were playing by the ear (black musicians didn’t have formal music education)

  • the most successful bands were led by white musicians (e.g. Paul Whiteman, self-titled the ‘King of Jazz’)

  • popularizing jazz to masses was based on watering it down and presenting as a form of corruption of the youth

  • white people could get acquainted with this African-American music without actually meeting members of this community

  • cover of Armstrong’s last hit (‘What a Wonderful World) by The Ramones (sharing a feeling)

4. Tin Pan Alley

The Golden Age of Tin Pan Alley

  • professional songwriters, conventions of 19th century popular music, ragtime and jazz

  • Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gerschwin

  • standards i.e. compositions performed by different artists until now

  • the influence of Jewish immigrants on the scene; the desire to Americanize themselves

  • financial success of music was tied to its popularity

  • “How Deep is the Ocean?” by Bing Crosby (1932)

  • the AABA song form:

    • borrowed from the 19th century artists and call-and-response form

    • the verse: gives dramatic context or sets the tone; now they’re not performed

    • the refrain: now considered the song; four sections of equal length in the AABA pattern

      • the A section presents the main melody, the basic pattern of lyrics, and a set of chord changes; the music of the A section is repeated with new lyrics (e.g. with slight melodic changes (A’))

      • the B section (bridge): new material (a new melody, chord changes, and lyrics)

      • the A melody is repeated with new lyrics (A’’)

  • “Deed I Do” by Ruth Etting (1926)

  • “My Blue Heaven” by Gene Austin (1927)

  • “I Got Rhythm” by Ethel Merman (1937)

  • “Swanee” by Al Jolson (1920)

Topics of Tin Pan Alley Songs

  • typically avoiding social criticism of the societal ills of the 1920s and 1930s: references to racism, massive unemployment, the rise of Fascism, and the Great Depression are rare (Bing Crosby)

  • culture of privacy and romance (mimicked by the emergent American middle class after European aristocracy

  • a change in the form of love songs (first instead of a third person narrative)

  • romantic love became a new goal, attainable to anybody regardless of their social class

  • crooning: reinforced the personal qualities of songs and made their performers relatable to large audiences across the country

What Makes a Song a Standard?

  • nostalgia is a powerful emotion in popular culture

  • until 1920s and 1930s few songs achieved the status of a standard

  • Tin Pan Alley and Broadway (in close proximity geographically): a cooperation between TPA and theatres (songs were performed on stage and their popularity was then translated into the sales of sheet music and records)

  • songs were an integral part of a performance (successful ones had new songs written for them)

  • revue form (Show Boat, 1927) and the invention of a musical (1940s)

Popular Songs and American Culture

  • intermixing of high and low cultures, new technologies and corporate capitalism, contacts between whites and blacks at the time of virulent racism, the birth of truly national culture

  • TPA songs were a dominant music form and influenced later genres such as rhythm&blues and rock’n’roll in the 1950s and 1960s

  • many songs were unisex (and thus could be performed by male and female artists), their form was highly elaborate (and could be dubbed ‘popular modernism’)

  • songs were predominantly about love (85% between 1920 and 1940)

  • until 1925 lyrics were considered unimportant but later they defined parameters for romantic love

5. Hillbilly, Race Music, and Blues

Race and Hillbilly Music

  • in the 1920s and 1930s music labels valued profits over musical diversity and experimentation

  • large migration from the South to the cities: new audiences

  • rural music and urban styles based on folklore

  • race music recorded by African-Americans for black audiences

  • hillbilly music performed by and intended for white audiences in the South

  • both styles referred to folk music traditions and paved the way for postwar music (rhythm&blues, country and western, and rock’n’roll)

Race Music

  • Mamie Smith: black vaudeville singer

  • the term ‘race’ had positive connotations and was linked to black nationalism

  • genres: blues, jazz, gospel choirs, string bands, and jug-and-washboard bands

  • verbal performances such as sermons, stories, and comic routines

  • listed as mainstream pop when marketed to white audiences

  • music labels didn’t create this type of music but scouted for talents

Classic Blues

  • originated in the Deep South (between the Mississippi Delta and East Texas) in the end of the 19th century

  • Americans learned about this music through Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville; therefore, the earliest hits were performed by trained musicians rather than sharecroppers in the South

  • two styles of performance: more refined (African-American middle class in the cities) and rough (the lower classes)

“St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith (1925), written by W.C. Handy

  • folk influences with Tin Pan Alley structure

Blues

  • twelve bar blues: an arrangement of four-beat bars, typical for blues music

  • blue notes: notes outside of the European tradition, typical for African-American music, easy to hear

  • the country blues: a high level of freedom for performers (they could add or subtract bars from the sequence)

  • the popularity of Bessie Smith made musicians in the South add blues to their repertoire (recorded music influencing folk music)

  • Charlie Patton (one of the earliest country blues pioneers; “Tom Rushen Blues”), Blind Lemon Jefferson (“Black Snake Moan”), and Robert Johnson (“Cross Road Blues”)

Hillbilly Records

  • early songs influenced by British ballads, popular culture in the South and fleeting popular styles

  • its popularity soared with the advent of the radio (farmers and working class people bought radio sets)

  • radio stations were owned by whites who promoted music according to their tastes

  • most musicians weren’t professionals and held regular jobs

  • sources of influence were similar to country blues: a crossover of traditional blues and TPA

  • this music was nostalgic as new technologies of farming changed the South

  • The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers (“Blue Yodel no.2”)

Popular Music and the Great Depression

  • disappearance of many small labels

  • reorganisation and consolidation of big labels

  • radio took over the role of the medium of disseminating music

  • hillbilly music fared much better in comparison to race music but big labels preferred to stick to what was selling well

  • the end of an important era in the history of American music business, older styles were performed by new generations of musicians

  • in the future, southern and northern music, white and black musical traditions and urban and rural cultures were to converge

  • Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, “Do Re Mi”

6. Swing Era

Swing Era

Swing – a fluid, ‘rocking’ momentum of

well-played music and an emotional style (a

sense of freedom, vitality and enjoyment)

Big bands playing on the radio, sold on records,

and played on jukeboxes

Urban culture influencing dance styles, modes

of dress, and architecture

It saved music industry from bankruptcy

Politics of Swing

Born from the spirit of the New Deal – optimistic in spirit and full of joy

Booking agencies (based in NYC) represented professional musicians and promoted their music

The role of the radio and concerts broadcast live

New forms of dancing (jitterbugging and lindy hop) originated from Harlem (Harlem Renaissance)

Clubs playing black music were owned by Italian and Jewish mafia and were frequented by white audiences

The audience consisted of college students and teenagers

Lindy Hop, Music Styles

Lindy hop (the music structure was borrowed from the twelve-bar blues or 32-bar Tin Pan Alley)

Benny Goodman – professional approach to music, large orchestra, created swing by incorporating black music

into dance music and promoting it with the mass media

White bands offered recognition for some black musicians

The bandleader was the biggest star and not the singer

Duke Ellington (Jazz is music, swing is business) – more creative approach to music, less popular with mass

audiences craving dance music

Benny Goodman: “Taking a Chance on Love”

(music Vernon Duke, lyrics John Latouche and Ted Fetter,

arranged by Fletcher Henderson, vocals Helen Forrest)

Other prominent swing artists

Count Basie – pianist, closer links to blues

tradition and less refined than other bands,

based on boogie-woogie piano tradition

Glenn Miller – trombonist, a master of

arrangement

Jazz singers – The Boswell Sisters, Billie

Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald

The Boswell Sisters: It don't mean a thing, if it ain't

got that swing

(lyrics Irving Mills, music Duke Ellington, 1931)

Billie Holliday: “God Bless the Child”

(Lyrics Arthur Herzog Jr., Billie Holiday, music Arthur

Herzog Jr., Billie Holiday)

Ella Fitzgerald: „Too Darn Hot” (1956)

(Cole Porter, lyrics and music)

Country music in the Swing Era

Roy Acuff, Singing Cowboys and Western Swing

With time hillbilly music started to be called ‘country and

western’ and eventually ‘country’

Urban audiences who migrated from rural America to cities

Independent record labels (indies) responsible for their success

Sentimentality, morality and patriotism + war propaganda

Gene Autry – singing cowboy

Roy Acuff: “Great Speckled Bird”

(lyrics Guy Martin Smith)

Sons Of The Pioneers: "Cool Water"

(lyrics Bob Nolan)

swing era

It lasted almost a decade, big bands later broke into smaller ones for economic reasons

Changes in music tastes and music business

During the war touring was limited, musicians went to fight, limitations in the supply of shellac

for pressing records

The peak of jazz as popular music – after the war more ambitious music was played (be-pop),

in small ensembles and meant to be listened to rather than danced to

Jazz became elitist

Rhythm&blues became the new dance music and country was also on the rise

7. Postwar Decade

The postwar decade

A boom in the sales of music, record companies target young

people

The majority of music was still marketed to adults

Easy listening (Muzak) meant to boost workers’ productivity

Top 40 radio programming

Payola

Record companies pressed a lot of records as they had no

way of predicting their success

Technology in the postwar era

Magnetic tape (fuller sound, the possibility of re-recording

less successful parts, overdubbing

8-track recording

Stereo recording

Sellac replaced with vinyl (33 1/3 rpm, 20 mins of music

per side)

FM radio was added to AM (stereophonic sound)

TV played the role of earlier variety shows

New stars

Celebrity band leaders replaced by singers (some of them became movie stars: Frank

Sinatra and Doris Day)

Sinatra (bel canto technique, the microphone as an extension of his voice)

Nat “King” Cole (the most successful recording black artist of the postwar era)

Urban folk music (performed by urban intellectuals and inspired by Woody Guthrie) – The

Weavers

The Mambo craze – (1949-1955) Afro-Cuban music simplified to appeal to the American

audience

Frank Sinatra: Nancy (With the Laughing Face)

Lyrics: Phil Silvers, music Jimmy Van Heusen

Nat “King” Cole: Nature Boy

Lyrics and music: Eden Ahbez

The Weavers: Goodnight Irene

Lyrics and music: Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter

Southern music in the postwar era

The “western and race” name dropped in favour of “American folk records”

In 1949 rhythm&blues replaced “race” and “country and western” replaced

“hillbilly”

New record labels created after the war to promote this type of music

Rhythm&blues – played by black performers for predominantly black

audiences (a mixture of swing influenced “jump bands,” Tin Pan Alley-style

love songs performed by crooners, urban blues, and gospel influenced vocal

harmony groups)

Southern Music

Jump blues - hard-swinging, boogie-woogie-based party

music, with humorous lyrics and wild stage performances

Blues crooners - a blend of blues and pop singing

Electric blues – Chicago electric blues (old blues from the

Delta played on electrical instruments)

Country music (honky-tonk music – music played in in loud

bars in the South)


Louis Jordan: Choo-choo, choo-choo, ch'boogie

Lyrics and music: Denver Darling, Milt Gabler, Vaughn Horton

Charles Brown: Black Night

Lyrics and music: John Martyn

Muddy Waters: Hoochie Coochie Man

Lyrics and music: Willie Dixon

Hank Williams: Hey Good Looking

Lyrics and music: Hank Williams Sr.

Postwar decade

Mainstreaming of country music – adopted by pop singers, with a

variety of styles such as crooning, bluegrass musicians playing

the music of the moment, honky-tonk musicians

Changes in the music business (new technologies – magnetic

tape, mainstream pop artists covering rhythm&blues and country

and western, marketing strategies aimed at youth audiences)

Preparation for the rock’n’roll boom of the 1950s

8. Rock’n’Roll

Rock’n’roll

Myths and misconceptions: not a “new” style, not a single style, historically not

the first genre to appeal to young people, and not the first style to blend black

and white music

“Rock’n’roll” – a marketing term introduced to create an audience

Baby boom generation influenced by television

The term was coined by a DJ Alan Freed and was used in relation to

rhythm&blues

Music became a defining experience for the baby boom generation

The invention of “teenagers” as an age group

Rock’n’roll business

In the 1950s white artists covered songs written by white

performers and big labels recorded songs introduced by the

independent ones

Booming sales of records, diversification of popular music

taste, reemergence of independent labels

Elvis Presley was signed to RCA as a rockabilly singer

(fusion of rock’n’roll and hillbilly), Bill Haley started as a

western singer

Haley didn’t invent rock’n’roll but popularised it

Joe Turner Shake Rattle and Roll

Bill Haley Shake Rattle and Roll

Billy Haley Rock around the Clock

(lyrics: Max Freedman, music James E. Myers (ps. Jimmy DeKnight)

Early rock’n’roll stars

Chuck Berry – a combination of country, blues

and r&b, fast tempo

Little Richard – the importance of live

performances to distinguish one band from

another, a real breakthrough artist

Fats Domino – he played the same music

throughout his career initially it was called

rhythm&blues and rock’n’roll later

Chuck Berry Maybellene

Little Richard Tutti Frutti

Fats Domino Ain't That a Shame

Early stars on the country side

Elvis Presley – formed on white gospel music he heard at

church, radio broadcasts of country music and r&b, and

the popular postwar crooners

Buddy Holly – a complete opposite to Elvis Presley,

started as a western musician but changed his direction

under the influence of Elvis

Wanda Jackson – a female performer deemed too

provocative to achieve popular success

Elvis Presley Mystery train

(music and lyrics Herman Parker)

Elvis Presley Don't Be Cruel

(Music and lyrics Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley)

Buddy Holly That'll Be The Day

Wanda Jackson: Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad

(music and lyrics: Danny Barker and Don Raye)

Selling music

Singles vs. albums. Sinatra was the first artist to explore the commercial potential of LPs, Elvis

sold millions of singles but his albums weren’t featured on charts

Teenagers bought singles, older fans were buying LPs

LPs were discovered by rock musicians only in the mid-1960s (the Beatles, the Beach Boys)

Rock’n’roll elevated Southern music to cult status

Teenagers were created as a new audience

In the following decade rock’n’roll was replaced with rock

9. Music Business in the 1980s

Music industry in the 1980s

New technologies competing with the music industry: home video, cable tv, video

games. The decline of disco, illegal copying easy for users (cassettes)

The industry relies on a few superstars (Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince,

Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Phil Collins, Janet Jackson)

In 1984 the sales of cassettes was larger than LPs (walkman and boomboxes)

Digitisation of music (CD-R discs)

Home

studios of hip-hop and techno artists

MTV is created

Digital technology and popular music

Digital technology - digital tape recorders, compact discs, synthesisers,

samplers, and sequencers

Analog recording vs. digital recording

Synthesizers – creation of music sounds

Digital samplers – storing prerecorded and synthesized sounds

Digital sequencers and drum machines

Creation of new genres and reusing sounds from the 1960s and 1970s


Synthesizer

Music hits sold on 45rpm singles

Country-tinged pop ballads, rock and R&B

fusions, synth pop and heavy metal

Kenny Rogers (country-pop crossover)

Tina Turner (rock r&b fusion)

Eurhythmics (synth pop)

Van Halen (mainstream metal)

Peter Gabriel (innovative video)

Kenny Rogers: “Lady”

Tina Turner: What's Love Got To

Do With It

Eurhythmics: Sweet Dreams

Van Halen: Jump

Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer

Three most popular albums of the 1980s

Michael Jackson Thriller (1983) – crossing over

genres, age and race groups, appealing to a

wide fan base, embracing the music video and

the MTV

Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA (1984) –

combining rock rebellion and folk tradition

Paul Simon Graceland (1986) – recorded in

South Africa, world music in which different

music cultures converge

Michael Jackson: Beat It

Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA

Paul Simon: You can call me Al

Music celebrities

Since achieving success was harder than ever music companies had to invest in their biggest stars (music

videos, tv talk show appearances, Hollywood films, and newspaper, magazine, and radio interviews)

Limited number of scenarios: “bad boy/bad girl,” “good hearted/ generous,” “from humble begginings to the top,

and then addiction and return to form.”

Madonna – initially a dancer and a photo model, a singer almost by accident

Prince – a well-educated jazz musician

Both manipulated the media and shocked mainstream society with their openness about their sexuality

Madonna: Like a Virgin

Prince: When Doves Cry

Music business in the 1980s

Music business in the 1980s relied on the

profits generated by a few superstars whose

careers were made possible by the embrace of

new technology and new channels for music

promotion (cable tv and video clips) as well as a

new understanding of the role of the artist.