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As Europeans colonized North America, beginning with the Spanish and French in the 1500s and the British and Dutch in the early 1600s, colonists brought their cultural entertainments along with them. Songs brought to colonial America continued to be sung in their early forms, so that later scholars of songs and ballads, such as the British ethnomusicologist Cecil Sharp and American ballad ...
- War and Conflict
Music and lyrics by George M. Cohan. London: Herman Darewski...
- Songs of Work and Industry
During the 400 years of the settlement, territorial...
- Songs of Social Change
Americans from the colonial period to the present day have...
- Musical Styles
Ritual and Worship Sacred music has been a vibrant part of...
- War and Conflict
Appearance. clarified or removed May 2012. The colonial history of the United States began in 1607 with the colonization of Jamestown, Virginia. Music of all genres and origins emerged as the United States began to form. From the Indigenous spiritual music to the African banjos, music in the United States is as diverse as its people.
- What Was Colonial Or "Early American" Music?
- General Concepts
- Which Instruments Were used?
- Theater Music
- Dance Music
- Music from Africa
- Church Music
- Military Music
Colonial music was not so much music written in America before the Revolution as it was music that was brought here and helped define the people who were to make a new country. Understanding the music that early Americans chose to sing and play gives us a better understanding of the colonists themselves. Their music included ballads, dance tunes, f...
Colonial music involved both written and oral/aural processes. Many people knew a large body of tunes by ear, and we frequently find new sets of words "composed" to fit these older tunes. Single tunes also served a variety of functions—for example, "Over the Hills and Far Away" served as a theater song, a recruiting song, a dance tune, and a milita...
Most instruments that we have today were around by the Revolution (when pianos were just coming into popularity) but certainly, some instruments were more prevalent than others. Violins were by far the most popular instruments. Men of all different classes, from Thomas Jefferson to indentured servants and enslaved people, played violins or fiddles....
Musical theater in the colonies was very popular. Most performed were ballad operas—compilations of familiar folk tunes with new words strung together by spoken dialogue to tell a comic story. The most famous of these was The Beggar's Opera, compiled in 1728 in London as a reaction to the elite Italian opera that was so popular among the wealthy in...
Music was also critical to the favorite pastime of the colonists—dancing. There was a huge repertory of dance tunes, mostly English and Celtic reels, hornpipes, jigs, and minuets. Dancing was usually accompanied by a single violin, but for special occasions, there may have been 4 or 5 musicians. Whatever instruments and players could be gathered wa...
By far the most important single ingredient flavoring colonial music, and also the entire history of music in the US, is that from Africa. So very different from traditional western European music, that from Africa represents an oral, not written tradition, focuses much more on complex, layered rhythms, is critically intertwined with movement and d...
The most varied sort of music in colonial America was related to the several religious denominations active here. The devout Congregationalist churches of New England encouraged the singing of psalms, anthems, and fuging tunes. After 1720, paid singing masters taught church members to read from music, and a large body of unique compositions emerged...
Two general sorts of military music are associated with early America, mostly during the late colonial period and the Revolutionary period. A "Band of Musick" consisted of professional musicians hired by officers to play contrapuntal music at parades, during meals, and for dancing. This ensemble often consisted of oboes, clarinets, (French) horns, ...
Unit 2 – The Colonial Era. Music was limited in the colonial era. The American colonists were few in number and in a strange land, often surrounded by native people who resented the invasion. In the earliest days of colonization, many colonists died of diseases and of ignorance regarding which crops would grow in the new land and how those ...
Texas Monthly magazine's May 2000 Texas music issue included a profile of Mexican-American rapper Carlos Coy, "a product of his environment, Houston's South Side, the same neighborhood that turned out underground mixer DJ Screw, rapper Lil' Keke and Scarface." As Texas evolves, so does its music, and the possibilities seem endless.
Feb 7, 2018 · Because music tends to parallel currents events in society, we see war affecting early American music. Many of the early American musicians wrote about war and war figures like George Washington. Besides war, religion also was relevant in society which therefore means it was relevant in music. The second American composer, James Lyon, wrote ...
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Jan 8, 2019 · Bermúdez, Egberto, ‘ “Gold was Music to their Ears”: Conflicting Sounds in Santafé (Nuevo Reino de Granada), 1540–1570 ’, in Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America, ed. Baker, Geoffrey and Knighton, Tess, Cambridge, 2011, 83 – 101 Google Scholar.
