What’s so special about American Music?

America is an immigrant country, and all immigrants brought their instruments and their songs and stories with them. English, Scottish and Irish folk, with guitars, fiddles and whistles. French folk music with accordions; gypsy music with a totally different guitar and fiddle style.

There was yodelling, the harmonica and a particular style of harmony singing from Germany and Austria (I had the pleasure of hearing the original in Austria recently, and it sounds so like Bluegrass harmonies!).

There was of course Blues and Gospel music and the powerfully insisting rhythms from Africa by way of the slaves, immigrants not of their own volition.

There is (to my knowledge) no place in the world that has this sort of musical history. And the traditional musicians were not academy trained, but learned their music by word of mouth, by being shown it and by playing it with their elders. Much of this can be considered a long, uninterrupted and traceable (if geographically displaced) line of musical history, which does not exist like this elsewhere.

As the musicians were originally amateurs, the songs were meant to be simple, but tell a compelling tale (“Three Chords and the Truth!”), they provided entertainment after work and could be played on portable acoustic instruments, they were for everyone. Even I could try my hand at playing them.

There was commercial country music, but mainstream country was all white and very conservative. In the 1960s folk music and protest songs were very big in America, and Bob Dylan was considered “The Voice of his Generation” until he started playing electric in 1965, famously being called “Judas!” for abandoning his folk roots.

Thereafter Rock music obliterated everything else in its path. But a contingent of folkies and some cross-over artists from the Rock world had kept the folk flame burning, like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Neil Young and others. In a parallel development in country music, and partly influenced by Punk Rock, there was the “Outlaw Country” movement with people like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and others daring to break the mould, widen their musical influences, have mixed-race bands and tackle difficult subjects like divorce, social injustice and protest against the Vietnam war.

This music is now referred to as Americana “…formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the musical ethos of the United States of America, with particular emphasis on music historically developed in the American South” (Wikipedia), or Alternative Country (a slightly narrower term). And since roughly the early 2000s the fashion has turned again and there are wonderful young virtuoso Bluegrass musicians, a musical style that is defiantly old school, acoustic and tells stories.

I don’t lean towards Bluegrass (my playing is much simpler), but I admire this music a lot. I would locate my musical style and my musical interests somewhere between Americana, Alternative Country and Folk music.

So there!