HISTORY OF ROCK QUIZ - TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
ASCAP
(AKA American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers): founded in 1914 to attempt to force all business establishments that featured live music to pay fees for public use of music
WHAT WERE THE TPA SONGS ABOUT?
-Designed to help escape pressures of daily life -Didn't deal directly with racism, massive unemployment, and rise of fascism -Lyrics linked to prominence of privacy and romance as cultural ideas -Middle-class culture -Romantic lyrics -1st person POV
SOUND FILM
-Intro'd in 1927 □ The Jazz Singer (1927): based on successful Broadway play, starring Al Johnson, a vaudeville superstar. Tells the story of a Jewish cantor's son who becomes a hit as a "blackface" performer -The Broadway Melody (1929): first "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" film musical released by MGM. Won an Oscar in 1930 for best picture of the year -1929: small radios wiped out by Depression, and control consolidated in the hands of major studios.
WHAT WAS THE INFLUENCE OF JAZZ ON YOUTH?
-Jazz associated w/ feeble-mindedness, crime, and immorality and explicitly linked w/ immigration and interracial sex as causes of national degeneration -Primary motivation was really to prevent musical mixing b/t blacks and whites out of fear of intermingling might encourage interracial miscegenation - White audience initially regarded jazz as an updated form of ragtime -Positioned in music business as a kind of novelty music -Jazz as heady, daring, humorous, slightly dangerous: way to experience black culture
DESCRIBE THE GOLDEN AGE OF TPA SONG
-Nature of shows: relatively simple to incorporate TPA songs into them -Revues: skits, songs, dances, and performers; successor to vaudeville -All prominent songwriters of the period wrote songs for many Broadway shows -Song remembered, not shows
WHAT TWO MEDIUMS/TECHNOLOGY ENCOURAGED THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF POPULAR MUSIC?
-Radio -Sound film
SONGSTER
-Tradition of African American secular music-making that predates the emergence of the blues
CROONERS
Singers who mastered the electric microphone after it's introduction in 1925
JAZZ
Sometimes called "jass" or "hot music": emerged in New Orleans, LA around 1900
STANDARDS
Songs that have remained in active circulation for more than seven decades
ARRANGEMENT
The way in which the song is presented in a particular performance
BALLAD
Type of song in which series of verses telling a story, often about a historical event or person tragedy, sung to a repeating melody
BLUES NOTE
"Bent" or "flattened" notes that lie outside of traditional European based scale structures and reflect particular African American melodic characteristics. arrangement of four-beat bars, grouped into fours, each group of four bars correspond to a unit-line or phrase- in the lyrics, and also associated with characteristic chord chances
SYNCOPATION
"Offbeat" pattern where sounds produced by the musicians are played
THOMAS DARTMOUTH RICE
(1808-1860): white actor born into a poor family in New York's Seventh Ward; Song "Jim Crow" (1829): became an international American hit
GEORGE WASHINGTON DIXON
(180?-1861): first white performer to establish a wide reputation as a "blackface" entertainer
STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
(1826-1864): regarded as the first important composer of the American popular song
RALPH PEER
(1826-1960): Missouri-born talent scout for Okeh Records who worked as an assistant on Marmie Smith's first recording units
SCOTT JOPLIN
(1868-1917): best known composer of ragtime - Af. Amer. Composer and pianist - Received instruction in classical music theory from German teacher -1893: attended a World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, started a brass band -Moved to Sedalia, Missouri- wrote most of his famous composition
WC HANDY
(1873-1958): Alabama born, son of conservative pastor, became cornet player after being forbidden to play guitar -1908: co-founded first African American owned music publishing house with Harry Pace -"Memphis Blues" (1912): first sheet music hit "St. Louis Blues" (1914): went on to become one of the most frequently recorded American songs of all time -Regarded by many white Americans as the originator of blues, christened himself the "Father of the Blues" in his autobiography
JAMES REESE EUROPE
(1880-1919): African American musical director hired by V & I Castle -Gained a rep as an accomplished pianist and conductor, playing ragtime piano in cabarets and acting as music director for all-black venues -1910: founded Clef's Club -1913: Castles attended a private society party where they danced to Europe's Clef Club' Orchestra -He was an advocate for black entertainment -Led the "Hell Fighters" band in WWI
CHARLEY PATTON
(1881-1934) one of the earliest known pioneers of the Mississippi Delta blues style -Techniques included rapping on the guitar and throwing it into the air -Powerful, raspy voice; strong danceable rhythm
MARMIE SMITH
(1883-1946): black vaudeville performer
AL JOLSON
(1886-1950): billed himself as the "World's Greatest Entertainer". Most popular performer of the generation, and his career overlapped the era of vaudeville stager performance and the rise of new media in the 1920s - Energetic stage performances: source of popularity - 1927: stared in The Jazz Singer -Aspects of style derived from 19th century traditions of minstrelsy and vaudeville
IRVING BERLIN
(1888-1989): grew up poor in the Jewish ghetto of NYC, began his career as a singing waiter, achieved his first success writing ragtime-influenced popular songs, generally recognized as the most productive, varied, and creative of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters
PAUL WHITEMAN
(1890- 1967): leader of the Ambassador Orchestra, fine musician and astute businessman, assumed title "King of Jazz" -Widened the market for jazz-based dance music (paving the way for the Swing Era) -Hired brilliant young jazz players and arrangers -Established level of professionalism widely imitated by dance bands on both sizes of the color line -Defended jazz against moral critics
COLE PORTER
(1891-1964): born into a wealthy family in Indiana and studied classical music at elite institutions such as Yale, Harvard, and the Scuola Cantorum in Paris
BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
(1897-1929): first country blues star -Born blind, adopted life of traveling street musician -926-first records -Clear nasal voice
GEORGE GERSHWIN
(1898-1938): became the songwriter who the most to bridge the gulf b/t art music and pop music; son of an immigrant leather worker, he studied European classical music but also spent a great deal of time listening to jazz music in NYC
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
(1901-1971): built a six-decade musical career that challenges the distinction between artistic and commercial sides of jazz -Established certain core feats of jazz; rhythmic drive, swing, and emphasis on solo instrumental virtuosity -Profoundly influenced the development of mainstream popular singing during the 1920s and 1930s -Armstrong often spoke of the importance of maintaining a balance b/t improv and straightforward treatment of the melody
BING CROSBY
(1904-1997): was a crooner and became by far the most popular representative of the style
ROBERT JOHNSON
(1911-1938): great influence on later generations of blues and rock -Posthumous reputation: reissue of recordings in 1990 sold well -Brief life shrouded in legend and mystery -Guitar playing remarkable and idiosyncratic: stories that Johnson sold his soul to the devil -Turned to conceal his hands from the audience so they couldn't see what he was doing
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA
1854-1932) -Most popular bandleader from 1890s to WWI -Known as America's "March King" -Became conductor of US Marine band and later formed a "commercial" concert band that toured widely in America and Europe -One of the first musicians to negotiate royalty payments w/ publishers, insisting on a percentage of total sales of his compositions -Advocate for copyright reform
VERSE-REFRAIN FORM (AABA)
19th century song form -Verse: sets up the dramatic context or emotional tone -Refrain: usually considered "the song" today; made up of four sections of equal length, in the pattern AABA
WHAT MUSICAL FORM WAS COMMON IN MARCHES?
AABBACCDD
A&R
AKA artists and repertoire; sought out talent
BACKBEAT
Accenting of 2nd and 4th beats of steady four-beat pulse
SONG PLUGGERS
Actual musicians who would promote music publishers' content
MUSICAL PROCESS
Analysis of how popular music actually sounds, including the interpretation by performers.
VERNON AND IRENE CASTLE
Biggest media superstarS of the years around WWI, 1912-1918; did more than anyone to change the course of social dancing in America -Attracted millions of middle-class Americans into ballroom dances -Expanded stylistic range of popular dance
WHAT GENRE BECAME POPULAR IN THE 1840S-1880S IN AMERICA?
Blackface minstrelsy
SPIRITUALS
Body of sacred songs which originated in breakaway movements
CARTER FAMILY
Born in isolated foothills of Clinch Mts. Of VA; most important groups in history of country
OLD TIME MUSIC
Category comprising string band music, ballad songs, sacred songs, and church hymns, variety of functionally specialized music genres including lullabies and work songs
CANTILLATION
Chanting of scripture in sacred Jewish tradition
JIMMIE RODGERS
Most versatile influential country performer
PRODUCER
Convincing board of directors to back a project, shaping development of new talent, intervening directly in the recording process
HILLBILLY MUSIC
Country or western music; developed out of folk songs, ballads, and dance music of immigrants from British Isles -Race record market led to first country music recordings -1st commercially successful hillbilly record: Fiddlin' Joe Carson, Okeh Records 1923 - Radio: crucial to rapid growth of hillbilly music
WHAT DOES JEFF CONSIDER AS THE FIRST JAZZ BAND?
Creole Jazz Band, led by King Joe Oliver
UP-TEMPO
Doesn't differ from slow ballads in form musical style different b/c of African American influences are more obvious
RAGTIME
Emerges in the 1880s, popularity peaking in the decade after the turn of the century; represented a more intimate engagement with African American musical techniques and values due to the largely increasing involvement of black songwriters and performers in the music industry
GROOVE
Evokes the channeled flow of "swinging," "funky," or "phat" rhythms
MINSTREL SHOW
First form of musical& theatrical entertainment to be regarded by European audiences as distinctly American; mainly white performers who blackfaced and enacted parodies of African American culture
FOLK MUSIC
Folk and popular styles from immigrants from other parts of Europe
TWELVE BAR BLUES
Formal concept referring to a particular sequence of chords heard within a rhythmic pattern of 12 four-beat measures -Three line poetic stanza; second line repetition of the first -Harmony: progression of chords not systematic or consistent but marked by specific chord changes at particular points in the pattern -Tonic: "home chord" -I (4x) IV (2x) I (2x) V (1x) IV (1x) I (1x) V (1x)
COMPOSER
Initial creator of the music, typically the instrumental part
LYRICIST
Initial creator of the music, typically the words
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
Invented the phonograph in 1877
GOSPEL MUSIC
Large body of sacred songs with texts that reflect the personal religious experience of Protestant evangelical groups
BROADSIDES
Large sheets of paper that were the ancestors of sheet music
FORMAL ANALYSIS
Listening for musical structure, its basic building blocks, and the ways in which these blocks are combined
CRITICAL LISTENING
Listening that consciously seeks out meaning in music by drawing on knowledge of how music is put together, its cultural significance, and it historical development
HOOK
Memorable musical phrase or riff
BRASS BAND CONCERTS
Military bands spread rapidly during and after the Civil Wa; drew energy from interaction of patriotism and popular culture, as well as growing force of American nationalism
GRAND BALL
Modeled on the aristocratic gathering of European royalty
DANCE MUSIC
Music closely modeled on styles imported from English and the Continent
POPULAR MUSIC
Music that is mass reproduced and disseminated via mass media, that has at various times been listened to by large numbers of Americans, and that typically draws upon a variety of preexisting musical traditions.
STROPHIC FORM
Musical form with verses and chorus
WHAT IS THE CORE OF THE BALLAD TRADITION IN AMERICA?
Musical forms of storytelling techniques carried on in contemporary country and western music; songs reworked to suit the life circumstances of new immigrants
BLUES
Musical genre that emerged in black communities of the deep South around the end of the 19th century
DIALECT
Musical genres strongly associated with particular dialects
RADIO NETWORK
New medium -1906: first radio program in US broadcast -After WWI, military restrictions on broadcasting encouraged the growth of the industry -192-: first three commercial radio stations established -Network radio developed - 1926: NBC Followed by: CBS, ABC, and Mutual Broadcasting System
CLASSIC BLUES
Performed by night club singers -12 bars blues -Basic 3 chord pattern -3 line AAB text -Much wider forms: 8 bar and 16 bar -Distinctive regional styles
COUNTRY BLUES
Performed by sharecroppers and laborers in the Mississippi Delta and East Texas Rural musicians played a style closer to the roots of the tradition not recorded until the mid-1920s
LICENSING AND COPYRIGHT AGENCIES
Set up to control the flow of profits from the sale and broadcast of pop music
VAUDEVILLE
Popular theatrical form descended from music hall shows and minstrelsy -Important medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs -Consisted of series of performances by singers, acrobats, comedians, jugglers, dancers, etc.
CALL-AND-RESPONSE SINGING
Preacher "lining out" or singing each line of a given song and the congregation repeating it in turn
TIMBRE
Quality of sound, sometimes the "tone color"
RACE RECORDS
Recorded performances by African American artists in the first two decades of the 20th century were basically TPA mold ragtime and jazz-tinged dance music, "coo songs" aimed at the white market
CHORUS
Repeated melody with fixed text inserted between verses
RIFF
Repeated pattern designed to generate rhythmic momentum
MICROPHONE
Replaced older system of acoustic recording, where performers had to project into a huge megaphone; "high fidelity" tech that allowed recording engineers greater latitude in manipulating musical sounds to produce certain effects
ARRANGER
Reworks songs to compliment a particular performer's strengths
WALTZ
Rose to popularity in the US in the 1820s, initially regarded as "indecorous exhibition" and a threat to public morality but by the end of the century was the ultimate symbol of sophistication and romance
GOSPEL GROUPS
Separate from white religious traditions and fr. Other musical traditions in the black community itself
VERSES
Series telling a story alternating with chorus
TIN PAN ALLEY
Stretch of 28th street in lower Manhattan where composers and "song pluggers" produced and promoted popular songs -End of 19th century: music publishing business centered in NYC -Established publishers challenged by smaller companies specializing in more exciting popular songs performed in dance halls, beer gardens, and theaters
POLYRHYTHMIC TEXTURES
Textures produced by many rhythms going on at the same time
WHAT WAS INFLUENTIAL IN REGARDS TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STREAM OF POPULAR MUSIC?
The slave trade
STROPHES
Three main sections, each made up of a verse and chorus
LYRICS
Words of a song
