MUSI 2740 Exam #1

Which legendary French-born superstar of tango was inspired by operatic bel canto singing and the criollo songs of the Argentine gauchos?

Carlos Gardel

Originally an oral tradition passed down in unwritten form, ballads were eventually circulated on large sheets of paper called handbills, the ancestors of today's sheet music.

False

Popular music has been wholly successful in avoiding the perpetuation of stereotypes.

False

Which of the following is true about songwriter Stephen Foster?

He embraced both genteel traditions and less highly regarded but popular traditions such as minstrelsy.

Which of the following is true about the Afro-Cuban rumba?

It accompanies dances featuring sexual role-playing and was originally suppressed by Cuban authorities.

Which of the following is true about the tango?

It developed during the late nineteenth century in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Describe the beginnings of jazz music in New Orleans.

Jazz craze: next stage in the "African Americanization" of ballroom dance. Jazz: sometimes called "jass" or "hot music": emerged in New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1900. New Orleans: gateway between U.S. and Caribbean; had culturally distinct white, Creole, and Black communities; hybrid musical culture-Black jazz musicians who lived "uptown" and were surrounded by genres such as the spirituals and the blues; Creole musicians who lived "downtown" and more likely to have received formal European-style musical training. Origins of jazz: term carried multiple meanings in New Orleans. Music: emerged from confluence of traditions-ragtime, marching bands, Mardi Gras and funeral processions, French and Italian opera, Cuban habanera, Tin Pan Alley songs, spirituals, and the blues. Earliest jazz bands were dance bands. Rowdy contexts for social dancing: addition of drum set, cornet or trumpet, trombone, and clarinet, which could project over the noise of a boisterous crowd.

Which of the following became the conductor of the U.S. Marine Band?

John Philip Sousa

Although jazz originated in the city of _______, the first recordings of the new music were made in New York City and Chicago.

New Orleans

Which group recorded the first jazz record in 1917?

Original Dixieland Jazz Band

Who led the Ambassador Orchestra, the most successful dance band of the 1920s?

Paul Whiteman

Which southern string band did James Gideon (Gid) Tanner lead?

Skillet Lickers

Who was the most influential songwriter of American popular song during the nineteenth century?

Stephen Foster

Which Latin dance style did Irene and Vernon Castle and movie star Rudolph Valentino help popularize in the early twentieth century?

Tango

What role did song pluggers play in the music industry from the nineteenth century until the 1920s?

They promoted songs and convinced big stars to perform them.

Which white actor invented the minstrel character "Jim Crow"?

Thomas Dartmouth Rice

Ballroom dancing focused more on uniformity and restraint than on improvisation or the expression of emotion.

True

During the 1920s unprecedented profit levels in the music business led to a bolstering of the centers of influence established at the end of the nineteenth century, especially the big music publishing firms and record companies in New York City.

True

Other names for jazz were "jass" and "hot music."

True

By the turn of the twentieth century, what form of popular theater became the most important medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs?

Vaudeville

Which couple were arguably the biggest media superstars of the years around World War I?

Vernon and Irene Castle

In rock music, the accenting of the second and fourth beat of a four-beat bar is referred to as the _______.

backbeat

A _______ is a type of song consisting usually of verses set to a repeating melody in which a story-often romantic, historic, or tragic-is sung in narrative fashion.

ballad

Until the early twentieth century, social dancing among white Americans was dominated by offshoots of the _______ dance, or country dance, tradition (in which teams of dancers formed geometric figures such as lines, circles, or squares).

contra

Starting around 1910 the craze for orchestrated versions of ragtime songs gave rise to a succession of fads loosely based on Black styles, including the Texas Tommy, the turkey trot, the bunny hug, the grizzly bear, the Boston dip, the one-step, and-most popular of all-the _______.

foxtrot

In the 1890s the first "nickelodeons"-machines that played the latest hits for a nickel-were set up in public places. (These machines later became known as "_______.")

jukeboxes

From which stream of influence does the "high lonesome sound" commonly heard in country music hail?

Anglo-American Stream

American jazz music got its start in Harlem.

False

Between 1912 and 1918, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did more than anyone to change the course of social dancing in America.

False

By far the most successful dance band of the 1920s was the Ambassador Orchestra, led by James Reese Europe.

False

Louis Armstrong's vocal style, employing nonsense syllables, is known as scat singing.

True

The real-time playing of media over the internet without the need for users to download the content first is referred to as _______.

streaming

Following on the heels of the ragtime fad, the jazz craze represented the intensification of African American influence on the musical tastes and buying habits of white Americans.

True

Which white banjo virtuoso led the Virginia Minstrels?

Daniel Emmett

"_______," performed by Thomas Dartmouth Rice, became the first international American song hit.

Jim Crow

Who invented the phonograph?

Thomas Alva Edison

Which song recorded by the Paul Whiteman Band sold 2 million copies and featured the Swanee whistle (slide whistle), a novelty that helped sell the record?

"Whispering"

What different individual occupational roles are involved in the production of pop music?

Composer and Lyricist: first creators of a work. Arranger: reworked songs to complement a particular performer's strengths, key, repeats, etc. Rock 'n' roll: performers as songwriters. A&R (artists and repertoire): sought out talent. Producer: convincing board of directors to back a project, shaping development of new talent, intervening directly in the recording process. Engineers: made decisions about the balance between voice and instruments, use of effects, and other factors that shaped the overall sound of a record. Publicity department: advertising campaign. Public relations: handled interactions with the press. Other persons involved: business agents, video producers, graphic artists, copy editors, stagehands, truck drivers, companies that design and produce t-shirts and other merchandise, companies that produce the musical hardware.

What impact did Cuba have on American dance music in the 1930s?

Cuban dance styles from two genres: Son: late 19th-century rural song tradition that migrated to the cities, where it was performed by groups called conjuntos. From sonar, "to sound"-used in many parts of Latin America. Cuban son developed in island's countryside by farmers and workers on sugar plantations. Strophic song form alternating verses with vocal refrain (estribillo). Variety of instruments used to provide a polyrhythmic accompaniment. Combination of African and Iberian elements-complex polyrhythms and call-and-response singing, with style and poetic form from Spanish folk traditions. Danzón: mildly Africanized style of ballroom dance music performed in urban ballrooms by larger, more formal ensembles called orquestas. Justo "Don" Azpiazú (1893-1943): leader of a major Cuban dance band, Don Azpiazú's Havana Casino Orchestra; his group gave American audiences their first taste of authentic Cuban music.

Which film released in 1927 became the first to exploit sound successfully?

The Jazz Singer

What role did Thomas Dartmouth Rice play in the rapid increase in minstrelsy's popularity?

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. Cakewalk: Africanized version of the European quadrille, first developed by enslaved people as a parody of the "refined" dance movements of their white owners. Syncopation: "irregular" rhythms that later influenced ragtime. Explosion of blackface performance: mixed-race audiences, Black and mixed-race performers. Dialect: hybrid dialect somewhere between Black and white to make fun of pretentious politicians and social elites. Toured England in 1830s: first American-born performer to export music that was perceived abroad as quintessentially American in style and content. "Zip Coon" (1834): "Ethiopian" song hit in verse-chorus ballad form, more closely related to Irish or Scottish than African American song; melody adopted by both Black and white country fiddlers, rearranged, and given the title "Turkey in the Straw."

In 1925 electric recording, which used a new device called the _______, replaced the older system of acoustic recording, in which performers had to project into a huge megaphone.

microphone

Explain how the production and consumption of popular music in the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by the creation of sound film.

Sound film introduced in 1927. The Jazz Singer (1927): based on a successful Broadway play, starring Al Jolson, a vaudeville superstar. The film tells the story of a Jewish cantor's son who becomes a success singing jazz songs in blackface. The Broadway Melody (1929): The first "all talking, all singing, all dancing" film musical, released by MGM. It won an Oscar in 1930 for best picture of the year, helping establish musical cinema as a legitimate form. 1929: smaller studios wiped out by Depression, and control consolidated in the hands of the major studios.

The arranger of a song decides which instruments to use as accompaniment and what key the song should be in.

True

The best-known composer of ragtime music was an African American composer and pianist named Scott Joplin.

True

The emergence of ragtime in the 1880s evidenced the growing influence of African American styles on popular music.

True

The job of song pluggers was to promote the sheet music for popular songs produced by their various companies.

True

The minstrel show is the first form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character.

True

The type of music most closely associated with the mid-19th century's "Great Awakening" was a body of sacred songs called spirituals.

True

What was vaudeville and how did it impact the spread of American popular music?

Vaudeville: popular theatrical form descended from music hall shows and minstrelsy. Important medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs. Consisted of a series of performances by singers, acrobats, comedians, jugglers, dancers, animal handlers, etc. Performers promoted songs in performance, with sheet music sold at local music stores. Performers: had to provide their own transportation, lodging, costumes, songs, and arrangements, and were dependent on the whims of booking agents, to whom they paid substantial fees. Racially segregated: separate chain of theaters for Black performers and audiences.

Which of the following is NOT true about James Reese Europe?

He was a cornet player and leader of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Which of the following became the first nationwide commercial radio network in 1926?

National Broadcasting Company (NBC)

Until the mid-1990s, the stylistic mainstream of American popular music was largely oriented toward the tastes of white, middle- or upper-class, Protestant, urban people.

False

What role did Vernon and Irene Castle play in the development of social dancing in the 1910s?

1912-1918: did more than anyone to change the course of social dancing in America. Attracted millions of middle-class Americans into ballroom classes. Expanded the stylistic range of popular dance. Established image of mastery, charisma, and romance later seen in teams such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Vernon: responsible for the couple's choreography and breaking complex dance movements into manageable sequences (figures) that could be easily learned by nonprofessionals; asserted that knowledge of six basic movements was sufficient for the "average ballroom tango." Elizabeth Marbury: New York City socialite wrote the introduction for the Castles' dance instruction manual, Modern Dancing, also introduced Castles to New York society, franchised their name and photo images, and made sure that they took advantage of mass media. Castle Park: Coney Island; Castles-by-the-Sea: Long Beach; Castles-in-the-Air: Manhattan.

Describe the relationship between dance and American popular music from its early days to the beginning of the twentieth century.

American popular music tied closely to dance and social functions of dancing. Earliest examples of published dance music: modeled on styles popular in England. Grand ball: modeled on the aristocratic gatherings of European royalty; public venue for Americans who desired to demonstrate their refinement and knowledge of high culture; ballroom dancing focused more on uniformity and restraint than improvisation or the expression of emotion. Shift to couple dancing, waltz: rose to popularity in the U.S. 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. Nineteenth century: continual feedback between "high-class" and "low-class" dance styles. Diversity of American popular dance: waves of European immigrants who brought distinctive dance styles; influence of African American dance beginning in the 1830s, becoming the dominant force in American popular dance in the 20th century.

What role has the musical "margins" in shaping mainstream popular taste and the workings of the music industry, one typically defined by centers and peripheries?

Center: geographical centers have included New York, Los Angeles, Nashville. Power, capital, and control over mass media are concentrated. Up to 1950s: mainstream American popular music: oriented to white, middle- or upper-class, Protestant, urban people. Periphery: smaller institutions and those historically excluded from the political and economic mainstream. African Americans, poor southern whites, working-class people, Jewish and Latin American immigrants, adolescents, gays, people "different" from the mainstream. Supposedly marginal music repeatedly invigorated the center of popular taste and the music industry. The people most responsible for creating the music: less equitable share of profits.

Stephen Foster was the first person in the United States to make a living off the money he earned at concert performances.

False

The Cuban conjunto developed in the island's countryside around 1880 and was initially performed by farmers and workers who toiled in the island's sugar plantation economy.

False

The contra dance, which first rose to popularity in the United States in the 1820s, was initially regarded as an "indecorous exhibition" of intimacy between men and women, and as a threat to public morality.

False

The first Latin American style to have a major international impact was the Cuban tango, an African-influenced variant of the French country dance tradition.

False

The onset of quarantining in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 led to a dramatic decline in creativity and an accompanying decline in the purchase of music creation software such as Apple's GarageBand, as well as musical instrument sales by online vendors such as Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Reverb, and other retailers.

False

The saloon-a term that by the mid-1910s had come to signify any establishment offering food, drinks, floor shows, and dancing-became both a laboratory for new dance steps and a major source of employment for musicians.

False

The year 1919 saw "Dardanella" become the first hit song to be popularized in recorded form before it was released as sheet music.

False

Thomas Alva Edison invented the flat gramophone disc in 1887.

False

Thomas Dartmouth Rice was the first white performer to establish a wide reputation as a "blackface" entertainer.

False

Tin Pan Alley was the center of the commercial songwriting and publishing business in Chicago from approximately the 1880s through the mid-twentieth century.

False

Explore the contributions of Stephen Collins Foster to American popular song.

Foster is regarded as the first important composer of American popular song, he produced around 200 songs. Likely the first person in the United States to make his living as a full-time professional songwriter. Livelihood from fees and royalties from sheet music sales: "Oh! Susanna," "Old Folks at Home," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," etc. Influenced by ballads, Italian light opera, Irish and German songs, minstrel songs. Foster's compositions: heard in saloons, theater productions, variety shows, band concerts. Success from social and technological factors: songs performed by minstrel troupes on tours; expansion of sheet-music publishing business; rapid growth of public music education, trend encouraged by the domestic production of cheap pianos. Copyright law: Foster sold "Oh! Susanna" to a music publisher but never saw any money from the subsequent sales. Law covered the rights of music firms but not those of the composers of songs bought by the firms.

What role did John Philip Sousa play in the surge in popularity of American brass bands?

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). Most popular bandleader from 1890s to World War I. Known as America's "March King." Son of a trombonist in the U.S. Marine band. Became conductor of U.S. Marine band and later formed a "commercial" concert band that toured widely in America and Europe. Made two dozen hit phonograph records. Toured constantly with band: more than 50 members, created a sensation across the country. One of the first musicians to negotiate royalty payments with publishers, insisting on a percentage of total sales of his compositions. Advocate of copyright reform. "Business bands": important part of American music business.

What is formal analysis of music and what are the basic building blocks of music that should be considered in such an analysis?

Listening for musical structure, its basic building blocks, and the ways in which these blocks are combined; much popular music draws on a limited number of basic formal structures. Musical process: analysis of how popular music actually sounds, including the interpretation by performers. Riff: repeated pattern designed to generate rhythmic momentum. Hook: memorable musical phrase or riff. Groove: evokes the channeled flow of "swinging," "funky," or "phat" rhythms. Timbre: quality of a sound, sometimes called "tone color"; listeners are able to identify the singer by the "grain" of his or her voice, and instrumental performers have memorable soundprints. Recording engineers, producers, arrangers and record labels: develop unique soundprints. Lyrics: words of a song. Dialect: musical genres strongly associated with particular dialects.

Which is the best definition of "strophe"?

One repetition of verse-and-chorus within a song's structure

Which of the following was an influential ragtime pianist and composer?

Scott Joplin

What is tango and what was its connection to Broadway, film, and ballroom dancing?

Tango developed in late nineteenth-century Buenos Aires; blend of European ballroom dance music, Cuban habanera, Italian light opera, and ballads of the Argentine gauchos (cowboys). Introduced to New York City by Maurice Mouvet in 1910. Appeared in a Broadway revue The Sunshine Girl (1913) with Irene and Vernon Castle. Performances of the turkey trot and the tango created a sensation. Tango tea: afternoon event at which society women took dance lessons with young male instructors. Rudolph Valentino: dance teacher and gigolo who became a star of silent film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Main feature of the tango: bent-knee posture common to many African-influenced dance traditions in the Americas, freed up the dancers' hips and upper body. Americanized tango by the Castles was antiseptic version. Passionate associations evoked by insistent four-beat pulse, dramatic changes in volume, and sudden starts/stops. Typical instrumentation included a bandoneón, violin, bass, and piano.

To what degree has technology affected our relationship to music and, more importantly, to other people?

Technology shaped popular music. Mass media: gap between musicians and their audiences, decline in personal music-making, encouragement of passive listening. Sales figures for musical instruments: suggest that millions of people are making music. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant quarantining sparked a marked increase in the purchase of music creation software and musical instruments from online vendors. Dated technologies: collectors and subcultures. Technologies that encourage active involvement—advent of digital audio workstations (DAWs). Evolving relationship between human musicality and technology. Significant increase in streaming services.

What was the first form of musical and theatrical entertainment regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character?

The Minstrel Show

Consider the following statement and choose the best response: Many dance bands in the 1920s specialized in one of three main categories: "hot," "sweet," and "Latin."

The statement is true.

_______ was the center of the commercial songwriting and publishing business in New York from approximately the 1880s through the mid-twentieth century.

Tin Pan Alley

Critical listening is listening that consciously seeks out meaning in music by drawing on knowledge of how music is put together, its cultural significance, and its historical development.

True

Initially played by musicians in Argentina's capital city of Buenos Aires, the _______ was influenced by the Cuban habanera rhythm, the African-influenced milonga, Italian and Spanish popular songs, and the songs of the guitar-playing Argentine gauchos.

tango

The _______ is a dance in triple-time with a strong emphasis on every third beat.

waltz