HIST390

History of Distribution

Origin of Genre – Migrations. Movement of black and white rural people to cities

We started off by watching videos of different music (pushy rhythms). African American music was more pushy and loud, once again race influenced.  Washington DC has a lot of white country folks. There are different guitar styles. White folks who moved to the DC are played distinctive guitar styles. DC also has characteristics of GOGO. The migration also caused Arlington county, VA population to grow; people who moved to Arlington came from places like West Virginia

 

We learned about Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music star. Spoke to a black and white country audience, but it sold more to white audience. Also about Bob Wills- he dressed as a cowboy, his music was faster, but he still used the Hawaiian guitar. Same music just dressed in different clothes. We got to compared Hank Williams, who also had the same music style with the Hawaiian guitar. Although this song is a country song, the lyrics had nothing to do with a farm or crops. It talked about the urban life and cheating.  By listening to this song, I learned that the Hawaii guitar is used in many genres and I also learned that it requires to pay more attention to understand what it is about and not assumed this kind of music is talking about farms.

 

 

Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow

I enjoyed reading this book! It literally explained the process of segregating sound.  As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but to think of how racist it was to listen to music based on race and region. When we hear/learn about the racial segregation in the United States, we or at least I don’t think into further details like the music. As the book stated, the blues were African Americans and the rural white southerners played what came to be called country music. This book explores the power of southern music between 1880s-1920s. Karl  Miller shows that these southerners played all types of music; folk songs, blues, Tin Pan Alley tunes, ragtime, ballads, and popular hits and that black and white collections were similar, reflecting a common musical world/taste. Miller ways of explaining how the folklore was created and where it came from definitely kept me interested throughout the book. Now, I have a new point of view about what it is “black” and “white” music. While reading this book, I also had a better understating of what the minstrel shows were and it also made it a little bit easier to understand the way we learned about the minstrel shows in class. Overall, I found this book to be very educational and interesting!