History of American Popular Music: From the Gay Nineties to the Birth of Rock and Roll

Historical Nostalgia and the "Gay Nineties"

• The Gay Nineties Concept: The $1890s$ are historically referred to as the "Gay Nineties." This term gained prominence in the $1900s$, $1910s$, and especially the $1920s$ due to intense nostalgia.
• Inaccurate Memory: The decade was remembered retrospectively as an ultra-prosperous and joyful period where "everybody was fine." This illustrates how historical nostalgia often functions through a filter that misunderstands or simplifies the actual complexities of a decade.
• The 30-Year Cycle: There is a common cultural trend where people look back fondly on pop culture from approximately $30\text{ years}$ prior.
  • Example: In the $1990s$ (when the speaker was in high school, born in $1979$), there was a strong nostalgia for the $1960s$.
  • Manifestations in the $90s$: The Beatles re-released material to revive their career/income, the Austin Powers franchise was launched, and musicians like Lenny Kravitz adopted a neo-late-$1960s$ rock style.

Defining American Popular Music

• Textbook Definition (from Star and Water): "Music that is mass produced and disseminated via the mass media that has at various times been listened to by large numbers of Americans and typically draws upon a variety of preexisting musical traditions."
• Key Characteristics:
  • Commercial Logic: It is centered on a music industry that exchanges money for access. This involves mass-market distribution, advertising, and the definition of target demographics.
  • Market Comparison: The music industry operates like other capitalist markets (e.g., the supplement market analyzed by Planet Money), where success is driven by identifying a demographic, determining their demands, and marketing products to fit those needs.
  • Stylistic Family Trees: Every instance of popular music draws from preexisting traditions. For example, Rock, Country, and R&B are all fundamentally rooted in the Blues.
  • The Blues Bedrock: Blues music from the $1910s$, $1920s$, and $1930s$ serves as the bedrock for modern FM radio programming.

The Three Categories of Music Production (William Paulides)

Ethnomusicologist William Paulides categorizes music based on production and consumption rather than sound or style:

• Folk Music:
  • Definition: Music created by amateurs for community consumption.
  • Scale: This is the largest category globally and historically.
  • Examples: A community wedding where friends play instruments as a duty; an $80\text{-year-old}$ piano player performing for free in a small church.
  • Status: It is generally non-commodified and often found in Smithsonian field recordings.
• Art Music:
  • Definition: Music created by professionals for elite consumption.
  • Context: Traditionally supported by the aristocracy, nobility, or a ruling priestly class (e.g., Mozart for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg; Japanese Gagaku for the imperial elite; West African drumming orchestras in Ghana).
  • Function: Often used by elites to communicate their status. It may not be "catchy" but focuses on order and ritual.
  • Legacy: Commonly called "Classical Music" (e.g., Japanese, Persian, or North Indian classical).
• Popular Music:
  • Definition: Music created by professionals for mass consumption.
  • Overlap: Art music can become popular music through recording/dissemination. For instance, a recording of Pavarotti singing Mozart exists as popular music because it is mass-consumed via records.

The Five Themes of Popular Music Study

1. Listening (Style): The study of how music sounds, including pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, form (verse/chorus), and instrumentation (e.g., steel guitar in country). It also encompasses production effects like reverb, phasers, and wah-wah pedals.
2. Music and Identity: People identify viscerally with genres. This influences social dynamics, such as teenagers disagreeing over van music on a mission trip.
3. Music and Technology: Covers the transition to music as a repeatable object via machines.
   • The Microphone: A revolutionary tool that allowed record companies to move from stationary studios to capturing "under the radar" music across the country.
   • The Bristol Sessions ($1927$-$1928$): Ralph Peer of OkRecords recorded talent in a hotel room in Bristol, launching the careers of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Sessions cost approx. $30\text{ cents}$.
4. Music Business: Includes the role of A&R (Artists and Repertoire) personnel looking for human talent and songs, and songwriting teams who historically crafted hits using a piano and pencil.
5. Centers and Peripheries: The music industry focuses on the "mainstream" (The Center, e.g., Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby) to maximize profit but looks to the margins (The Periphery) for new traditions to capitalize on or draw influence from.

Case Study: The Birth of Rock and Roll

• Origin: Rock and Roll emerged as a category for teenagers based on Rhythm and Blues (R&B).
• Social Context: After World War II, a growing urban African American middle class spent money on entertainment, leading to independent labels (e.g., Atlantic) recording R&B.
• The Teenager Demographic: Teenagers stayed up late to hear "objectionable" or "vulgar" R&B songs on AM radio that parents didn't want them hearing.
• Alan Freed: A DJ who began promoting R&B artists through "sock hops."
• Cover Records: Major labels tried to capture the R&B market by signing "young-looking" people to record covers.
  • Example: "Shaboom" by The Chords (original indie R&B) vs. "Shaboom" by The Crew Cuts (slick, major label cover).
• Industry Labeling: "Rock and Roll" became the industry term for marketing R&B-style music to a white teenage demographic that had been previously ignored.

The 19th-Century Sheet Music Industry

• Primary Medium: Before recorded sound, popular music was sold as sheet music for home performance.
• Socioeconomic Factors: Required a middle-class status with money for pianos, furniture, and leisure time for lessons. Pianos were viewed as essential "social legacy" furniture.
• Song Pluggers: Musicians (like a young George Gershwin) employed at music stores to play new sheet music to entice customers, similar to grocery store food samples.
• Stephen Foster: A leading $19\text{th-century}$ songwriter known for "sentimental" songs like "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" ($1854$). His music was characterized by neutral, pleasant imagery designed for ease of digestion.

Minstrel Shows and "After the Ball"

• Minstrel Shows: The dominant form of $19\text{th-century}$ American public entertainment. They featured troops in blackface playing stock characters: Jim Crow, Zip Coon, Butterbones, and Buttertambo.
• Structure: A variety show consisting of musical introductions, comedy sketches, and musical routines.
• Marketing: Sheet music publishers made deals with minstrel troupes to perform their songs, turning the theater lobby into a point-of-sale for sheet music.
• "After the Ball" ($1892$): Written by Charles K. Harris.
  • Sales: Sold $2\text{ million}$ copies in its first year.
  • Breakthrough: It was interpolated into the Broadway musical A Trip to Chinatown ($1891$-$1893$), which held the New York record with over $600$ shows.
  • Band Arrangements: John Philip Sousa played the song at the $1893$ Chicago World's Fair, leading small-town brass bands (like the Altoga Band) to buy arrangements and perform it locally.

Questions & Discussion

• Blues vs. Jazz: The professor clarified that Blues and Jazz are more like "cousins" than brothers, both emerging from a "prehistorical" musical documentation gap.
• TikTok Music: Students discussed "TikTok Music" and "TikTok Funk," specifically mentioning remixes, slowed-down versions of songs, and Bruno Mars' new material.
• Student Discussion on Listening: The "Sixty Minute Man" was mentioned as an example of suggestive R&B lyrics that documented sexual duration with "spiral bound notebook" levels of detail.
• Listening Journal Assignment: Students are tasked with recording every bit of music they experience for one continuous week, noting the time, artist, and why it occurred (e.g., an ice cream truck, a CVS store, or the catchy "Spidey and His Amazing Friends" theme on Disney Plus).