Roots of music

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Bibliography Historical Background To appreciate the diversity of ideas and experiences that have shaped our history, we need to be sensitive to the complexities and varieties of cultural documentation, to the enormous possibilities these documents afford us to get at the interior of American lives, to get at peoples long excluded from the American experience, many of them losers in their own time, outlaws, rebels who - individually or collectively - tried to flesh out and give meaning to abstract notions of liberty, equality and freedom.

The term "American roots music" may not be a familiar one, and requires some explanation. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the term "folk music" was used by scholars to describe music made by whites of European ancestry, often in the relatively isolated rural South.

As the century progressed, the definition of folk music expanded to include the song styles - particularly the blues - of Southern blacks as well.

In general, folk music was viewed as a window into the cultural life of these groups. Folk songs communicated the hopes, sorrows and convictions of ordinary people's everyday lives. Increasingly, music made by other groups of Americans such as Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Cajuns came under the umbrella of "folk music.

The melodies and words were passed down from parent to child, though songs - and their meanings - often changed to reflect changing times.

Home - The Roots of Music | New Orleans, LA	History[ edit ] After Hurricane Katrinafunding for public school music programs, specifically middle schools, was reduced or cut. Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer, Derrick Tabb and Allison Reinhardt developed a plan to establish a youth organization for music that would be citywide with the primary objective being to keep young children off the streets and provide a safe haven during peak times of gun violence - 3pm to 7pm.
Home - The Roots of Music | New Orleans, LA	For example, in a tonal piece of music, the notes C, E, G, A, sounded as a chord, could be analyzed as a C major sixth chord in root position a major triad — C, E, G — with an added sixth — A — above the root or as a first inversion A minor seventh chord the A minor seventh chord contains the notes A, C, E and G, but in this example, the C note, the third of the A minor chord, is in the bass. Deciding which note is the root of this chord could be determined by considering context.
What You Can Do	We believe music has the power to transform lives. The Roots of Music empowers the youth of New Orleans through music education, academic support, and mentorship, while preserving and promoting the unique musical and cultural heritage of our city.
Stay Up To Date	History[ edit ] After Hurricane Katrinafunding for public school music programs, specifically middle schools, was reduced or cut.

In the Roots of music, awareness of folk songs and musicians grew, and popular musicians began to draw on folk music as an artistic source as never before. Music writers, scholars and fans began to look for new ways to describe the diverse array of musical styles still being sung and played in communities across America, though most often not heard on radios.

The term "roots music" is now used to refer to this broad range of musical genres, which include blues, gospel, traditional country, zydeco, tejano, and native American pow-wow. What can roots music teach us about cultural identity in the U. Songs are an important cultural form through which people assert and preserve their own histories in the face of changing social conditions.

Spirituals sung by African-American slaves; protest songs sung by s youth; Texas-Mexicans singing the corrido; and "union songs" sung by labor organizers all suggest how music has been both an intrinsic response to historical and cultural conflict and an expressive vehicle that encouraged collective action.

As ethnomusicologist Manuel Pena notes, "the corrido functioned as a powerful symbolic response by the Texas-Mexicans to their oppression under the new system installed by the Anglos throughout the Southwest.

Roots music has long been a vehicle for offering the disenfranchised a voice. American roots music draws on the lived experience of ordinary men and women, who were and often still are defined and limited by cultural constructions of race, class and gender.

Just as music reflects how Americans have struggled against oppressive social and economic conditions, music is also a means of celebrating and giving dignity to identity. Music performance was often a place whites and blacks could come together and transcend the social limits imposed by segregation.

Historian Pete Daniel of the Smithsonian Institution points out that travelling black and white musicians often came into contact and influenced each others' musical repertoires and playing styles. However, particularly in the South, racial segregation continued to keep musicians and audiences apart according to an entrenched racial logic.

With the advent of radio, a broad range of Americans were exposed to a diversity of musical styles, as there was no way to "segregate" the airwaves. Responses to racism and racial segregation were reflected in American roots music.

Among all of America's diverse peoples, there has long been reciprocal connections between religion, song, and the reproduction of "community.

All night "sings" were events that drew members of a community together to hear Spiritual music in the South; black male members of Gospel quartets formed bonds of reciprocity that continued throughout their life cycles. As Bernice Johnson Reagon notes, "the quartet provided one more community-based structure where people could gather and create out of their own experience.

As historian Bill Malone has pointed out, "Country music has been subject to no greater influence than Southern religious life, evolving in a society where religion was pervasive.

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Songs such as "Amazing Grace" and "Farther Along" were common to both groups. Particularly in the first half of the 20th century, poor rural whites were "objectified" by scholars and collectors as embodying a pure, authentic American culture linked to "Anglo," northern European sources.

While African American folk song collections had been published as early asthe notion of African Americans as authors of part of America's folk heritage did not gain widespread acceptance until later. Due, in part, to the efforts of John Lomax, blacks - particularly rural Bluesmen - came to be viewed as folk "heroes" and white folk scholars began in earnest to collect songs from African American communities as well as Anglo.

For example, John Lomax was interested in the hypothetical conjunction between African American music and the origins of our national folk tradition, which he imagined was preserved among black convicts who had been isolated for many years from mainstream culture inside Southern prisons. Unequal power relationships, shaped by differences in race and class and often gender, have characterized the development of "folk" music from its roots in local communities to its spread to wide and diverse audiences.

Middle-class and elite, most often white, urban musicians, scholars and fans have been drawn to music made by relatively disenfranchised African Americans, whites and Latinos. This relationship has brought rural and "ethnic" music and the musicians themselves to the city, where they reached wide audiences, but were not always fairly compensated or credited by the promoters who helped popularize their music.

How is roots music related to historical events? During the 20th century, the United States experienced monumental changes wrought by developments such as Industrialization, integration and globalization.

As the American Roots Music series illustrates, roots music was linked to and reflected many dynamic movements for change, including the war on poverty, the New Deal, the labor movement, the Civil Rights movement and the peace, environmental, Native American, Chicano and women's movements.The Roots of Music, New Orleans, Louisiana.

11K likes. Empowering the youth of New Orleans through Music and Mentorship. RC and the Moonpie Band is an “American roots band” that incorporates blues, R ‘n B, soul, rock ‘n roll and even a few Latin flavorings.

Based in Green Swamp, North Carolina, the group emphasizes original material on their second album, “All This.”. The Roots of Music empowers the youth of New Orleans through music education, academic support, and mentorship, while preserving and promoting the unique musical and cultural heritage of our city.

We believe music has the power to transform lives. FOLK Festival on the Dock has brought together the city's rich music and maritime heritage in a celebration of live acoustic folk, sea shanty and roots music.

Folk at the Dock Also highly recommended is the Haitian roots music album "Wa Di Yo" ($ We believe music has the power to transform lives. The Roots of Music empowers the youth of New Orleans through music education, academic support, and mentorship, while preserving and promoting the unique musical and cultural heritage of our city.

ROOTS Music Academy offers private music lessons on piano, voice, guitar, bass, drums, violin, ukulele, and more!

ROOTS Dance Academy offers a full array of dance classes and private lessons in ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical and hip .