The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa."Folk Music and Song", American Folklife Center, Library of Congress Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."catalog.youranswerplace.org
American folk music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. This music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed in the United States, out of foreign origins, becoming culturally significant. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Much of this music was created to embody the experiences of working class people during times of hardship.
Early American folk music Most songs of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods originated in England, Scotland and Ireland and were brought over by early settlers. According to ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, American folk music is notable because it "At its roots is an English folk song tradition that has been modified to suit the specific requirements of America." Therefore, many American folk songs, such as those documented by the American folklorist Francis James Child in his catalogue of ballads known as the Child Ballads, can be traced back to their pre-colonial origins in the British Isles. For example, "Barbara Allen" remains a popular traditional ballad originating in England and Scotland, which immigrants introduced to the United States.Raph, Theodore. The American Song Treasury, Dover Publications (1986) The murder ballad "Pretty Polly", indexed by another scholar of American folk music, George Malcolm Laws, is an American version of an earlier British song, "The Gosport Tragedy"."Folk Songs and Ballads", American Roots Music, PBS The oldest surviving folk song of local Anglo-American origin is the ballad "Springfield Mountain" dating back to 1761 in Connecticut.
The typical instruments played in early American folk music were the fiddle, the guitar, the mandolin, the mouth organ, the fife, and the dulcimer, although guitars went through a significant change as the previously popular English guitar was replaced around the 1830s by the Spanish guitar.
In addition to ballads, American colonials also imported numerous English country dance tunes, mainly jigs, reels, and hornpipes, which were played during community dances or contra dances. Some dance tunes as well as dances themselves were also adapted from Irish and Scottish sources. The musical collections Howe's 1000 Jigs and Reels, Ryan's Mammoth Collection, and 1000 Fiddle Tunes contain many of the dance tunes Americans and their colonial predecessors danced to for nearly two centuries. Popular dances that rose to prominence in America in the nineteenth century, which could be set to traditional dance tunes, were quadrilles, mazurkas, barn dances, redowas, marches, and polkas. "Soldier's Joy" is an example of a typical British fiddle tune.
In New England, one of the areas with the earliest history of colonization as well as the highest percentage of settlement by ethnic English people, numerous English ballads survived within American folk music into the twentieth century. These include older popular ballads such as "Lord Randall", "The Golden Vanity", The Elfin Knight, The Gypsy Davy, "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight", "Barbara Allen", Lord Bateman, The House Carpenter, The Farmer's Curst Wife, Lord Lovel, and Henry Martin. Later broadside ballads imported into New England from the British Isles include "The Yorkshire Bite", "The Bold Soldier", "Butcher Boy", "Katie Morey", "The Half Hitch", and "The Boston Burglar". Locally composed, traditional New England folk songs include "Springfield Mountain", "The Jam on Gerry's Rock", "Young Charlotte", "Peter Amberly", "Jack Haggarty, and "The Jealous Lover". The folk music of the rest of Northeastern United States, including Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, was similar to that of New England, aside from a marked influence from the high numbers of non-British immigrants, such as the Germans, Dutch, and Swiss.
In the Southeastern United States, popular local folk songs included "Sourwood Mountain", "Charming Betsy", "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss", "Buffalo Gals", "Arkansas Traveler", "Turkey in the Straw", "Old Joe Clark", "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad", "Shady Grove", "Katy Cline", "Ida Red", and "Cindy". The southern murder ballad "Poor Ellen Smith", which recorded a murder so inflammatory its public performance had to be outlawed, was most likely written in Winston, North Carolina by one of the murderer's cellmates. Unlike the Northeast and New England, the Southeast had significant influence from African-American music and as a result instruments such as the banjo were widely adopted. However, English traditional music was still present in the Southeast with older Child ballads such as "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor", "The Maid Freed from the Gallows", "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", "The Wife of Usher's Well", "The Two Sisters", and "Matty Groves" surviving alongside some English ballads also played in the Northeast like "Barbara Allen". Popular broadside ballads in the Southeast were "Pretty Polly", "Pretty Little Miss in the Garden", "Knoxville Girl", "Jack Monroe", "The Sailor Boy", "Awake, Awake You Drowsy Sleeper", "Rich Irish Lady", "The Nightingale", "The Girl I Left Behind", and "The Miller's Will". Notable songs written in Appalachia include "Little Mohea", "John Hardy", and "Omie Wise". Unlike in the Northeast, Southeastern ballads of English origins tend to be appreciably altered with their lyrics shortened and smoothed out, reducing the number of stresses per stanza.
Folk songs in the Midwest largely reflected the tastes of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. However, there were some ballads uniquely popular to the Midwest such as the broadside ballad "Mary of the Wild Moor" and the locally produced ballads namely "The Little Brown Bulls", "Fuller and Warren", "Charles Guiteau", "Canady-I-O", and "Paul Jones". Many folk songs were also produced that were unique specifically to the Great Lakes region, evoking the area's nautical culture. These include "It's me for the Inland Lakes", "Loss of the Persian", and "The Buffalo Whore". Farther west in states like Iowa, Kansas, the Dakotas, and Nebraska regional songs included "The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim", "The Lane County Bachelor", "Comin' Back to Kansas", "The Dreary Black Hills", and "Dakota Land". The famous "Ballad of Jesse James", which celebrated the titular bank robber's life, first appeared in Springfield, Missouri.
Few Child or broadside ballads have been found in the Northwestern United States as the documented folk songs in the area are usually work songs connected to relatively recent folk experiences within the mining, lumber, and other industries of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Similar to the Northwest, older traditional ballads were far less common in the Southwest, with only "Barbara Allen" and "Lord Randal" being regional favorites. Popular local songs and ballads were, among others, "Texas Rangers", "The Yellow Rose of Texas", "Joe Bowers", "Sweet Betsy from Pike", "Ho for California!", and "Buffalo Skinners".
Some songs entered the folk tradition through the flourishing American popular music industry. One such popular song that became a folk tune was "Old Dan Tucker" written by Dan Emmett.
Spirituals
Spirituals have their origins in white American ministers appropriating European folk melodies and setting them to religious lyrics, creating uniquely American folk hymns. African Americans adopted this religious folk music, adding their own style and themes such as slavery and emancipation. "Sacred music, both a Capella and instrumentally accompanied, is at the heart of the tradition. Early spirituals framed Christian beliefs within native practices and were heavily influenced by the music and rhythms of Africa." Spirituals are prominent, and often use a call and response pattern. "Gospel developed after the Civil War (1861-65). It relied on biblical text for much of its direction, and the use of metaphors and imagery was common. Gospel is a "joyful noise," sometimes accompanied by instrumentation and almost always punctuated by hand clapping, toe tapping, and body movement."
African-American folk music
When African slaves were brought to the Americas, husbands were separated from wives and parents from their children. Also the many tribes that the slaves were from were broken up and the ensuing slave communities that were set up were constituted by every possible mixture. What the slaves had in common was the desire to dance, sing and play what musical instruments could be assembled.Southern, Eileen and Josephine Wright, Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture, 1770s-1920s, Garland Publishing Inc., New York, 2000, pp. 3-5 Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans: A History lists about a dozen and a half African-American "folksong types". These are "boat songs, corn songs, cowboy songs, dance songs, freedom songs, harvest songs, parodies of spirituals, pattyroller songs, prison songs, railroad songs, satirical songs, shout songs, spirituals, stevedore songs, story songs, war songs, woodcutter songs, and work songs."
Because slaves were forbidden to perform African ceremonies or use African languages, "the slaves filled this cultural vacuum by acquiring the rudiments of Anglo-American folk song, British country dancing and European harmony, and adapting them to West African patterns." Alan Lomax in The Folk Songs of North America states, "The slaves, brought to the United States from many parts of Africa, continued to dance and make music as their ancestors had done…. In the United States tribes were mixed and African languages and ceremonies were forbidden, and the slaves filled the cultural vacuum by acquiring the rudiments of Anglo-American folk song, British country dancing, and European harmony, and adapting them to West African patterns." Lomax, after maintaining that "whatever they sang was intensely functional," catalogs these songs as "spirituals, reels, work songs, ballads and blues."
Work songs
Sea shanties
Sea shanties functioned to lighten the burden of routine tasks and provide a rhythm that helped workers perform as a team. One of the oldest sea shanties sung in America may have been "Haul in the Bowline" which possibly dates back to the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century. Other popular shanties include "Blow the Man Down", "Blow, Boys, Blow", "Reuben Ranzo", "Shenandoah" and "The Greenland Whale" as well as African-American shanties such as "Mobile Bay" and "I'm Goin' up the River".
Cowboy songs