Music in America (1967)

Classical Music. Until the end of the 19^th century, there really was no distinctive classical music in America. As late as 1895, the composer Antony Dvorak felt the need to urge American composers to look to their native sources for inspiration and material. He offered his "New World" Symphony as an example of what could be achieved.

With the beginning of the 20^th century, American composers started to create a great variety of distinctively American classical music. Composers such as George Gershwin and Aaron Copland incorporated home-grown melodies and rhythms into forms borrowed from Europe.

Some modern composers, like Edgar Varese, completely rejected traditional melody and harmony while others, like John Cage experimented with electronic music and natural sounds from real life.

Blues is a Native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. The blues was mostly sung in the South and only spread northward in the 1930s and 1940s with the migration of many blacks from the South. The mixture of blues and spirituals gave birth to soul music, the founder of which was the legendary blind black composer and singer Ray Charles

Jazz originated in New Orleans in the 20^th century, bringing together elements from ragtime, slave songs, and brass bands. One of the distinguishing elements of jazz was its fluidity: the musicians would never play a song the same way twice but would improvise variations on its notes and words.In the late 1940s, a new form of instrumental jazz, called be-bop began to attract audiences. Rhythm and blues was a combination of jazz and other "race" music with the lyrical content, sonic gestures and format of the blues. The melding of rhythm and blues with country and western music in the mid-1950s gave birth to rock and roll. In the 1970s many jazz musicians experimented with electronic instruments and created a blend of rock and jazz called fusion.

Folk music was based largely on ballads brought over from Scotland, England, and Ireland. This music, mixed with the blues was called country music. Country songs are sad stories of love and broken hearts. Workers expressed their troubles in the folk music. Folk songs are like country songs but they are more traditional and more serious. They continued to be the most political of all music in America.

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