Modern Popular Music Study Guide Popular music p 2 Music that is mass reproduced and disseminated via the mass media What are the five themes introduced in chapter one Critical Listening Music Industry Music Technology Music Business Periphery Critical listening p 2 Listening that is consciously seeks out meaning in music drawing on some knowledge of how music is put together its cultural significance and its historical development Formal analysis p 3 Listening for musical structure its building blocks and the ways in which they are combined can tell us a lot about popular music Musical process p 3 We must complement formal analysis with the analysis of musical process Riff p 3 A repeated pattern designated to generate rhythmic momentum Timbre p 3 The quality of sound sometimes called the tone color In order to understand the cultural significance of popular music we must p 5 6 We must excite both the music its tones and textures rhythms and forms and the broader patterns of social identity that have shaped Americans tastes and values What are some examples of how technology has shaped music p 6 Music boxes player pianos phonographs sheet music radio sound film digital recording computerized sampling and Internet based radio Sheet music p 9 Printed music A R personnel p 9 Part of a record company that seeks out talent often visiting nightclubs and rehearsals to hear new groups Producer p 9 Convincing the board of directors of a record company to back a particular project shaping the development of new talent The music industry promotes the illusion that p 9 Illusion that we are all highly independent individuals defined by our personal tastes Majors and Indies p 10 Majors large record companies with lots of capital and power Indies small independent labels operating in marginal markets Center and Periphery p 10 11 Center actually several geographically distinct centers including New York Los Angeles and Nashville is where power capital and control over mass media is concentrated Periphery is inhabited by smaller institutions and by people who have historically been excluded from the political and economic mainstream What are the three streams p 11 19 The African American Stream The Latin American Stream The European American Stream Strophic form p 12 A song form that employs the same music for each poetic unit in the lyrics Syncretism p 15 The selective blending of traditions derived from Africa and Europe Call and response form p 15 In which a lead singer and chorus alternate are a hallmark of African American musical traditions Polyrhythmic texture p 16 Textures in which many rhythms are going on at the same time This technique is evident in African American styles such as funk music particularly the work of James Brown and the instrumental accompaniments for contemporary rap recordings African American stream Salsa p 18 A rumba based dance style pioneered by Cuban and Puerto Rican migrants in New York City Minstrel show p 20 The first form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character featured mainly white performers who blackened their skin and carried out parodies of African American music dance dress and dialect Jim Crow song p 21 Writer Singer Thomas Dartmouth Rice Significance the first international American song hit Dance the cakewalk Cakewalk p 21 An Africanized version of the European quadrille a kind of square dance Thomas Dartmouth Rice sang Jim Crow in blackface while imitating the dance cakewalk Zip Coon song p 24 Big Ethiopian song hit published in New York in 1834 the song was in the familiar verse chorus ballad form its verses sprinkled with images of banjo playing wild dancing and barnyard animals Good example of continually evolving relationship between popular and folk music in the nineteenth century Mr Interlocutor Bones and Tambo p 24 Mr Interlocutor a lead performer who sang and provided patter between acts and Bones and Tambo who sat at either end of the line of producers Authentic negroes p 25 In a practice that shows the arbitrariness of social distinctions based on race light skinned African American minstrels had to apply blackface in order to prepare themselves for their stage roles as authentic negroes minstrel troupes p 25 Minstrel groups of entertainers musicians etc that toured the U S constantly from the 1840s to 1870s helping to create an embryonic national popular culture Stephen C Foster p 26 Composed around 200 songs regarded as the first important composer of American popular song AABA form p 27 The A sections all begin identically although their ends vary slightly The B section introduces a new melody and acts as a musical bridge that leads us to the final A section One of the most important popular song forms of the early twentieth century Stephen C Foster s songs p 26 29 Oh Susanna Old Folks at Home My Old Kentucky Home Good Night Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and Beautiful Dreamer Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair used the AABA form John Philip Sousa p 32 The most popular band leader from the 1890s through WW1 Known as America s March King Conductor of the U S Marine Band Later formed a commercial concert band often regarded as the first American pop supergroup Songs include El Capitan The Washington Post The Stars and Stripes Forever and In the Good Old Summer Time business bands p 32 touring bands not connected to government institutions Tin Pan Alley p 32 publishing firms many of them founded by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe had offices in a section of lower Manhattan This dense hive of small rooms with pianos where composers and song pluggers produced and promoted popular songs started as periphery became a center song pluggers p 32 33 job was to promote a given company s product Typically visited big department stores to deliver bundles of sheet music or would play in the back of saloons to get big singers to adopt the song Vaudeville p 33 a popular theatrical form descended from music hall shows and minstrelsy became the most important medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs Typically consisted of a series of performances singers acrobats dancers etc TOBA p 33 Theatre Owners Booking Agency a separate booking agency for black performers and audiences After the Ball form p 35 AABA then Chorus After the Ball by Charles K Harris also performed by John Phillips Sousa Ragtime p 36 1880s a time represented by the intensification of African American
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