United States of America.

USA, §II, 1: Traditional music: European American

1. European American.

(i) Introduction.

(ii) Western.

(iii) Eastern.

(i) Introduction.

The music of European American ethnic groups is very diverse and has a variety more representative of American history and culture than of pre-immigration experience in Europe. Both the musical style and the cultural settings of a repertory are altered, often dramatically, by immigration. Despite this shift of cultural orientation from the many nations of Europe to the single locus of the USA, European American musics have tended to increase in variety and number, and they continue to thrive generations after transplantation to American soil.

This article deals with the music of immigrant groups from Western and Eastern Europe. For convenience, traditions are discussed under geographical headings, although this organization may not always reflect modern political boundaries. Hispanic and Portuguese traditions, because they are the result of immigration from Latin America as well as from Iberia, are treated separately (see Hispanic-American music). See also Folk music.

(a) Historical influences.

The music of European American ethnic groups often reflects patterns of historical change in both the USA and Europe. On arrival in the USA most immigrants sought those areas that afforded the greatest economic opportunity (as well as living conditions akin to those from which they came). Immigrants tended to form groups and build up new ethnic communities, postponing, sometimes indefinitely, assimilation to the supposed Anglo-Saxon national culture. European historical developments shaped the ways in which American ethnic groups were formed. Throughout the centuries of European immigration the boundaries of European nations have been in flux. Many immigrants to the USA had an ethnicity more regional than national, often defined by customs and even languages that are no longer found in Europe. But to acquire a German ethnicity in the American Midwest during the mid-19th century was to do so before a German nation existed in Europe.

Most theories of ethnicity stress either homogeneity (assimilation) or heterogeneity (pluralism). The great variety of European American ethnic musics attests pluralism, the many forms of which bear witness to the complex factors affecting the ethnicity of individual groups: place of origin, language, religion and common history since departure from a homeland, for example. There has been greater mixing of European ethnic groups in the USA than in Europe, producing patterns of consolidation that break down cultural barriers and often yield new groups. These may be unified by geographic proximity, a shared religion or a common – sometimes new – language. Consolidation often produces a new musical repertory drawn from the different constituents of the larger group. It has, moreover, been a major factor in the ethnic regionalism of the USA: certain groups concentrated in specific regions soon after arrival and have continued to attract new immigrants.

(b) Institutions of ethnic culture.

As immigrant groups redefined their ethnicity in terms of the American cultural environment, they found new means and established new institutions (local, national, and international) for organizing their ethnic culture. Music has been one of the most pervasive elements in these institutions, through whose activities it often acquired new functions. Religion, too, has consolidated ethnic groups. Groups from central and northern Europe that settled in the Midwest during the mid-19th century formed denominations along ethnic lines, many of which persist in the early 21st century. Religious music acquired specific ethnic connotations and thereby strengthened the sense of ethnicity.

Music also played a central role in the new secular organizations of European immigrants. The Polish Falcon, the Welsh Eisteddfod and the Czechoslovak Sokol, for example, provided a web of nationwide contact for their respective immigrant groups while supporting activities in the local community through meeting halls or lodges. Some groups, such as eastern European Jews, have maintained their own theatres through several generations. Singing societies have consolidated and disseminated ethnic musical traditions.

The recording industry has been a major influence on folk music. Recordings of ethnic groups were made in the USA long before similar efforts were undertaken in Europe, and they usually drew on many genres, thus presenting a cross-section of the group’s musical culture. Publication of music has also flourished in some groups. Although it ostensibly establishes written traditions, publication of ethnic music also provides a core that bolsters oral traditions. The media of the American environment have stimulated musical professionalism as a response to the new audiences that traditional performers found in the USA.

(c) Genres.

The new institutions of European American culture and the mass media have caused a blurring and shifting of traditional genres and styles of ethnic music. Changes in function have also been caused by acculturation; for example, the distinctions between urban and rural folksongs, quite marked in European cultures, are less obvious in the USA. Some previously rural ethnic groups, such as the Slovaks, settled in industrialized urban centres and thus lacked the context for songs referring to agricultural activity. American cities have, in fact, proved to be among the most important crucibles for the maintenance of European American folk music.

Religious music has also undergone changes of function in ethnic communities. In some cases, it has proved to be one of the most important conservators of language. For those groups whose motivation to emigrate was primarily religious, the music of the church is often bound to other genres and thus serves to strengthen the entire musical culture. This has especially been true of enclaves like the Amish and Mennonite sects, virtually all of whose music is in some respect religious (see §(ii)(g) below).

Certain ethnic groups contributed to art music. In many areas of the USA during the mid-19th century, ‘art music’ meant German music, and it was performed almost exclusively by German American musicians. Operetta and light classical music were also performed by ethnic ensembles; such ensembles further contributed to musical professionalism within the group.

Through the blurring of boundaries between musical genres, some music has come to represent an ethnic group itself, stripped of old-country trappings. The klezmer band, for example, is a symbol of Jewish culture in general in the USA rather than only of eastern European Jewish communities. The meaning of tradition is thus recast according to an ethnic group’s relationship to American culture.

(d) Survival and revival.

Whichever paths of change traditional European American musics may follow, a significant amount of ethnic music has managed to survive the initial immigrant generations. Its diversity is in part a result of the continued pluralism of American ethnic groups: few have entered into a homogeneous relationship with the dominant culture. This pluralism has not, however, prevented change in the musical cultures of ethnic groups, especially by comparison with the repertories of Europe. An ability to adopt a cultural function more appropriate to conditions and circumstances in the USA has often resulted in various forms of preservation. The best example may be the Appalachian traditions, in which songs from the English and Scottish repertory were discovered after they had disappeared from the British Isles; the possible link of Amish traditions to medieval German hymnody may be an even more dramatic case, indeed one of marginal survival (i.e. the preservation in a community detached from its ethnic roots of a repertory or performing tradition that has died out or altered significantly in the parent culture).

The direction of change in the musical culture of most European American groups has been towards the creation and consolidation of new repertories. Since the 1960s increased attention has been focussed on the ethnic backgrounds of American pluralism. Many groups have recognized their music as a valuable symbol of their origins and have provided the impetus for a resurgence of interest. The revival of ethnic music further benefited from the popular folksong revival of the 1950s and 1960s, again reflecting the changing history and culture of the USA.

USA, §II, 1: Traditional music: European American

(ii) Western.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(a) British.

Instrumental. Traditional instrumentalists in the colonies that would become the USA drew on British traditions (initially Scottish and English, later also Irish) for tunes, ways to compose tunes and shape repertories, and playing styles. The young USA then formed its own regional styles: the North drew closely on English models that required musical literacy, while the South used an array of performing styles that were more strongly linked to Scottish repertories, were transmitted both through print and aurally, and had absorbed black American influences. Both imported tunes and those based on imported models but created locally were usually linked with dance genres. Throughout the early 19th century, a fiddler’s repertory probably supplemented these dances with vocal airs, marches and other popular tunes. As decades passed and the solo fiddler, fifer or flautist was replaced in cultivated circles by ensembles or keyboard instruments, fiddle music emerged with a repertory of older rural dance tunes, together with a few descriptive airs and hymn tunes. The British Hornpipe and Reel became the American Hoedown, other duple-time social dance tunes became polkas, and various triple-time dances were reworked as waltzes.

The fiddle (see Violin, §II, 4) was the main instrument used to perform British American folk music from the late 18th century until well into the 20th. Although the instrument, the violin, is the same as that of its art music counterpart, traditional ‘fiddling’ was (and is) quite different. The instrument is held against the chest as well as chin, with short bows, various tunings, little or no vibrato and rarely more than first position used. The music became less British and more American, as different instruments were introduced. The Fife has been closely associated with the fiddle since the Revolutionary War, where it was played by local militia units in fife and drum corps. Many fifers were also fiddlers, and tunes from the military and dance repertories were shared between these instruments. The banjo, a New World conflation of West African survivals, became widespread in the wake of the popularity of blackface minstrelsy from 1843 and significantly more common when late 19th-century mail-order catalogues helped disseminate a wide range of products, including families of instruments that had recently become cheaply available. Although minstrel-style banjo playing included African-derived playing techniques that survive as clawhammer and frailing styles in the upper South, the usual repertory for ensembles (fiddle, banjo and perhaps a few supplementary percussion or string instruments) has always focussed on British American dance tunes.

Other instruments had regional currency. The hammer (hammered) Dulcimer was popular in the North and Midwest (and to a lesser extent the South), and the plucked or strummed dulcimer (unrelated historically to the hammered dulcimer) was a rare but longstanding feature of the music of the central and southern Appalachian region. By the late 19th century, other instruments incorporated in the developing British American dance-music tradition included the organ, piano, guitar, harmonica and mandolin, and wind instruments such as clarinet and trumpet, originally associated with marching and concert bands.

The common-time reel and Breakdown usually consists of two (or, rarely, more) eight-measure strains that contrast in tessitura. A typical performance in older, dance-orientated style follows the structural pattern AABBAABB. While a few Northern contradances preserve a formerly more common connection of specific tunes with specific sets of dance figures, many tunes are used interchangeably for dances. That a considerable number of tunes are irregularly phrased or are otherwise not suitable for dance accompaniment attests the existence of an independent fiddle repertory. Regional styles are characterized by the degree of melodic ornamentation and variation used (Texas style leads in these aspects), affinity with older published models (as in the New England style), and amount of African- and Scottish-derived syncopation (emphasized in the various styles of the South-east), which are in turn differentiated by whether the high or low strain is played first, and other factors.

Although most other dance genres (e.g. quicksteps and quadrilles) have been assimilated into the breakdown, the British hornpipe remains vital in New England, and a few marches, jigs and descriptive pieces have survived. The most widespread alternative to the breakdown remains the waltz, which arrived in the USA during the period 1810–30, received new impetus around the turn of the 20th century from the new pop styles of Tin Pan Alley, and has returned as a standard ingredient in modern fiddle contests in most of the country.

The taste for instrumental folk music continues unabated in the USA. In the South, innovations include the upbeat Bluegrass music of the upper South and the slower, highly ornamented and varied ‘contest’ style, which has spread from Texas throughout the centre of the country. In the North a revival of interest in the country dance in New England has stimulated a parallel revival of instrumental music, and there is pronounced interchange of instrumental folk music along the Canadian border from Maine to Puget Sound. A strong revival of interest in the older repertory of the upper South has spread through both the South and the urban North and West since the 1960s. Among various ethnic groups there appears to be a comparable strength of interest in instrumental traditions, stimulated in part by the general hospitality to instrumental music throughout the USA.

Vocal. American traditional singers, or folk-singers, have inherited from successive waves of Anglo-Celtic immigrants a basic tune stock that has been used almost indiscriminately for secular and sacred, lyric and narrative texts, and is identifiable regardless of style (mode, range, rhythm, phrase order, embellishment and the like). The age of the tune stock is largely unknown. A few tunes can be traced to medieval records, and some have continental analogues, but little is known about this body of music in the British Isles before the 18th century. One cannot judge whether some characteristics of American forms are New World developments or preservations of earlier British forms that have been altered or lost.

Early American traditional vocal forms are monophonic and were performed unaccompanied. The melodies correspond to the strophic (stanzaic) textual form, the melody being repeated (sometimes with variations) for each textual unit. Tunes are composed of strains (usually eight bars long) and phrases usually organized bisymmetrically (A + B). Scales are diatonic and related to the medieval modes. Many tune variants are not in the full heptatonic scales but in ‘gapped’ forms (pentatonic and hexatonic), though more than half the tune variants are in a major tonality. ‘Neutral’ 3rds and 7ths (between tempered major and minor) occur. An apparently older style, which has been termed ‘parlando-rubato’, involves irregular metre, sometimes combined with melodic ornamentation.

The tune stock is composed of a relatively limited number of melodic ideas, called ‘tune families’; a tune family is defined by Bayard (1950) as ‘a group of melodies showing basic interrelation by means of constant melodic correspondence and presumably owing their mutual likeness to a descent from a single air which has assumed multiple forms through processes of variation, imitation, and assimilation’. Members of a family may vary in style – mode, range, rhythm, phrase order – but are related by melodic contour and order of stressed tones within phrases. There are over 40 of these families, seven of which are dominant throughout the older tradition. They have been named somewhat arbitrarily after their textual associations. (Bayard named them for secular texts, e.g. The Bailiff's Daughter (Child 105); G.P. Jackson for religious texts, e.g. I Will Arise.) A musical idea, though associated with a particular family of texts, can furnish the vehicle for a variety of textual groups. Members of the Bailiff's Daughter family are found with such diverse texts as Geordie (Child 299), Amazing Grace, How Firm a Foundation, One More River to Cross, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, The Titanic I (Laws, 1950, D24) and Delta Dawn (a country song). Members of the Todlen Hame family (On Top of Old Smoky) occur with the texts The Cuckoo Bird, Little Mohea (Laws H8), Ten Broeck and Molly (Laws H27), Moonlight and Skies, and many others from different textual groups. On the other hand, members of one textual group may be associated with different melodic families.

The textual traditions inherited by American folk-singers were both narrative and lyric. Most scholarly attention has been devoted to narrative songs or ‘ballads’. The line between ballad and lyric is blurred, since most American traditional songs tend to be story-orientated in that there is at least implicit narrative content. But one can recognize a number of narrative ideas (i.e. ways of telling a story in song) that have been inherited and developed by American singers. Manifestations of these ballad ideas have been in the past too often seen as mutually exclusive, and scholars have established canons devoted to types instead of recognizing that different ideas may inform different members of the same textual family or even a single variant text.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(b) French.

North-eastern. French Americans in the north-eastern USA, descendants of mid-18th-century Acadian exiles and 19th-century Québécois immigrants, have retained a rich musical heritage. Their folk-songs may be divided into four groups according to the themes of their texts. Some songs recall France, the land of the people's origins three to four centuries ago: for example, A St.-Malo beau port de mer, M'en revenant de la jolie Rochelle, En passant par la Lorraine and C'était Anne de Bretagne. These and other songs of old France were sung by successive generations of explorers as they journeyed across the North American continent and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Songs particularly associated with the voyageurs as well as with the habitants (French Canadian farmers) include Alouette, En roulant ma boule, Dans les prisons de Nantes and A la claire fontaine. Still others had their origins in new France; they reflect a simpler way of life on the farm or at sea, nostalgically remembered by the New World factory worker: Mon Merle, Youppe! Youppe! sur la rivière, Mon père n'avait fille que moi and the Acadian Partons, la mer est belle. Finally, other songs of the French American tradition were born in the USA; they are less well known and have remained more localized.

French Americans also brought with them from Canada their dance-music, notably quadrilles with two-step melodies, played on traditional instruments – harmonica (musique à bouche), jew's harp (bombarde), accordion, spoons and fiddle – to the rhythm of the clogger (tapper du pied). The diverse origins of so-called French Canadian dance-music and fiddle music are reflected in the repertory of the fiddler Omer Marcoux (d Concord, New Hampshire, 1982). Marcoux learnt fiddle from his father on a Quebec farm and from fellow loggers in camps in both the USA and Canada. The best-known dance tunes in his repertory included Le reel de Sherbrooke, Rouyn Reel, Labrador and Fisher's Hornpipe.

Another aspect of French American folk music is the gaulois and bawdy tradition, as in the drinking song Prends donc ton verre and the anticlerical ditty La bonnefemme Robert. Among Acadians there also remains an oral tradition of the sad complainte (e.g. La complainte du Juif errant).

The Catholic Church and its liturgy have played an important role in the development of French American musical traditions. In years past the Kyrie and Gloria were sometimes sung by men and women at work, but the demise of the Latin liturgy has caused a decline in this tradition. There remain some Gregorian melodies with tongue-in-cheek secular verses, for example, the folk-song Mon père, j' voudrais m' marier, sung to the vespers Psalm cix. French-language hymns, particularly those for Christmas, such as Il est né, le Divin Enfant and Dans cette étable, are widely known.

During the period 1890–1930 original composition of songs, operas and instrumental pieces flourished, and French American choirs were organized. Some of the new pieces found their way from the concert hall into the home and marketplace, and gradually into musical folklore, for example, L'amour, c'est comme d' la salade, composed in 1916 by Philias Champagne of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Cajun. The traditional folk music of the French-speaking Acadians (i.e. ‘Cajuns’) of south-western Louisiana, whose ancestors migrated to Louisiana after 1755 from what is now Nova Scotia, was originally French, but has interacted with and often absorbed the music of southern whites and blacks. In the 1920s and 30s the discovery of oil in the region attracted new people and cultures, and young Cajuns left to work elsewhere. Cajun culture, always powerfully absorptive, now extends from Louisiana into Texas and is particularly strong in such cities as Beaumont and Port Arthur, where communities of Cajuns have maintained a continuous tradition, preserving, though in modified form, the music of their forebears.

Early Cajun music was vocal and included French traditional unaccompanied ballads and drinking songs that soon took on imagery from the American frontier. The experience of exile was expressed in songs of frustrated courtship, lost love and broken families. Many foreign elements blended to create the new music that came to be called Cajun. The Cajuns adopted ‘terraced’ singing styles from the Amerindians. From Black American music they adopted syncopation, percussion idioms, improvisational singing and blues style. The most popular instrument was the fiddle, for which Cajuns developed idiosyncratic techniques, such as a self-accompanying drone. From British Americans they adopted new tunes for reels, hoedowns and square dances. Spanish influences include the guitar and a few folk tunes. Immigrants from Saint-Domingue at the turn of the 19th century brought with them a syncopated Caribbean beat. Jewish German merchants began importing diatonic accordions not long after its invention in Vienna in 1828; the accordion was popularized by Cajun and Creole musicians such as Joseph Falcon and Amédé Ardoin.

The first commercial recordings of Cajun music, produced in 1928, tended to standardize this highly innovative tradition, popularizing favourite artists and styles. Accordions displaced fiddles as the lead instrument for both domestic and public bands, and complex fiddle tunes faded from the active repertory. Fiddlers were often relegated to a duet accompaniment or simple percussive line below the melodic lead of the accordion. The duo of the Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee and the Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin brought a strong rural blues element to Cajun music. Allons à Lafayette (a tribute to one of the principal Cajun cities), the first Cajun record by Falcon and his wife Cleoma, was typical of the new style, featuring an accordion lead with percussive guitar accompaniment and high-pitched, emotionally intense vocals reminiscent of the noisy dance halls before electric amplification. Outstanding Cajun fiddlers include Leo Soileau (1930s), Harry Choates (1940s), and Dewey Balfa and Rufus Thibodeaux (after World War II), who have preserved the instrument and Louisiana French styles.

By the 1930s, changes in Cajun music reflected the Americanization of the repertory. Cajun bands abandoned the accordion in favour of string instruments that could imitate the sounds of western swing and country music. Amplification allowed fiddlers to lighten their bow strokes producing an airy, lilting style. By the 1940s, commercial recordings of Cajun music combined American styles with remnants of traditional French influence as English lyrics came to displace the traditional French lyrics. A revival of traditional Cajun music began with the music of Iry Le Jeune in 1948 and continued with Austin Pitre, Lawrence Walker and Nathan Abshire. In the 1950s, young Cajun musicians blended elements of rock and roll and country music in a new style called ‘swamp pop’. In the 1960s at the Newport Folk Festival, Cajun bands performed traditional styles reflecting traits of the American folk music revival. In the 1970s and 80s, Cajun music was featured at the Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife and the National Folk Festival, helping to inspire a Cajun renaissance in southern Louisiana. The Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa and his Balfa Brothers Band promoted this revival, reintroducing Cajun music in school programmes, local festivals, and on local radio and television programmes. The new generation of Cajun musicians includes Beausoleil, the Mamou Playboys and Ossun Express, who are replacing their elders on the southern Louisiana dance-hall circuit. The style of these younger musicians reflects contemporary influences, as the blending process at the heart of this tradition continues. (See also Zydeco).

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(c) German.

In the 1990 US census the ethnic category ‘German American’ was chosen more often than any other ethnic designation. Although German American ethnicity from evidence such as census reports and from immigration statistics at various historical moments would suggest a dominant group presence, German American music and music history are difficult to define. The Germanness of German American music must be questioned, because many German-speaking ethnic communities do not trace their cultural origins to Germany; moreover, many non- or mixed-ethnic musical domains (e.g. American art music, Lutheran church music and the liturgy of Reform Judaism) are inseparable from German ethnic experiences.

German American music includes distinctive music histories, diverse genres and cultural practices, and various neighbouring ethnic communities such as Austrian Americans, Jewish Americans with central European origins, and German-speaking immigrants from non-German regions (e.g. the Baltic countries or Romania) where they constituted minority or even occasionally majority groups. German Americans from these diverse backgrounds have maintained cultural activities since colonial times, to which successive groups of immigrants have made unique but related contributions. Music has served to maintain community identity and expand the nation's cultural horizons.

History. Germans immigrated to the American colonies sporadically throughout the 17th century, establishing their first permanent settlement at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683. Colonial German religious groups were bound to the German language and liturgy, and early in the 18th century they began publishing German hymnbooks, chorale books and sacred instrumental music. Large groups of German immigrants arrived in the 1850s, the early 1870s and the 1880s; immigration continued at reduced levels into the 20th century. By the late 20th century German American cultural expressions had largely subsided or were preserved in revived and hybrid forms; some communities, especially in rural areas or in urban neighbourhoods formed from residents of formerly German-speaking areas of pre-World War II eastern Europe (e.g. the Danube-Swabians and Banat Germans from Romania and former Yugoslavia), remain rooted in immigrant ethnicity.

German American ethnicity was often characterized by the co-existence of several languages within the same community, usually High German, a German dialect and English. This linguistic distinctiveness in German traditional music reflected the variety of functions that music served. High German was used in the church and other religious institutions, and these also provided centres for religious, educational, social and musical activities. German was tenaciously maintained by several denominations; the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which claimed two-thirds of all German American Protestants as members, still used German in half of its parishes in 1925. Musical literacy was highly valued by almost all German religious groups and was taught in German American schools. Several denominations maintained large publishing houses for German music at the end of the 20th century.

Distribution. German American musical styles vary according to the area in which they arose. Eastern Pennsylvania, the first area of intensive settlement, has a number of styles reflecting the diverse influences affecting the Pennsylvania Germans during 300 years. Folksongs with old German origins are sung, as well as a genre of German spiritual influenced by the American Protestant religious awakenings of the late 18th century and early 19th. In the 20th century, the intensive settlement of Burgenland Austrians stimulated the formation of new popular musics in eastern Pennsylvania.

Most Germans settled in the Midwest, where they are the dominant ethnic group in several states. Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St Louis, Louisville and Chicago all have large German populations. Most Midwestern Germans immigrated during the 19th century, when the major waves of immigration coincided with the initial years of statehood in the Midwest. Often groups of immigrants from the same German region settled together in American communities, for example the Pomeranians in Wisconsin and the Saxons in Missouri, such patterns tending to strengthen ethnic ties. The music of the ethnic church was particularly important in the Midwest, and the liturgy of Reform Judaism underpinned the cultural life of Midwestern Jewish communities of German origin, especially in Cincinnati and Chicago. The largest church organizations created their own musical styles and repertories soon after settlement in an attempt to revive the music of the Reformation (see Lutheran church music; for a discussion of metrical psalms of the German Reformed Church see Psalms, metrical, §V, 1(vi)).

Several German-speaking sects survive, of which the Old Order Amish, the Mennonites and the Hutterites are the best known. These groups usually live in relative isolation, and their music is probably the best example of marginal survival in the USA. In their music the Old Order Amish preserves elements of style and language from the early 16th-century tradition of their precedecessors, the Anabaptists (see Amish and Mennonite music; see also § (g) below). German-speaking immigrants from other countries, such as the Moravians (see Moravians, music of the; see also §3(iii)(e) below) have also contributed to American music. The labours of German Jewish musicians often raised the standards of American music to the highest levels (see Jewish music §§IV, 2(iii), IV, 2(iv)(b); IV, 3.

Musical organizations. The musical traditions of the ethnic church are characterized by two practices: one that draws upon non-German religious music in the USA and one that is rooted in German music long since abandoned in European churches. The dominance of religious music may account for the paucity of instrumental folk music. The social importance of the ethnic church is demonstrated by its support of parish instrumental ensembles. German instrumentalists are often members of mixed-ethnic bands, and German instrumental styles (e.g. dominant low brass parts, especially tuba and trombone) are conspicuous in ethnic popular musics, such as those of the ‘polka belt’ from New York to the Dakotas.

The most institutionalized form of German American secular music is the choral society. Known by a variety of names, such as Liederkranz (fig.9) or Männerchor, it cuts across economic, class and occupational boundaries. Male choruses predominated at first, but by the beginning of the 20th century mixed choruses were also common. Choral societies are organized on local, state, national and even international levels, and the participating societies of Sängerbünde (‘singing leagues’) gather for competitions and festivals (Sängerfeste). In cities choral societies serve as the basis for dramatic or instrumental groups or for a German opera company. Since World War II, North American singing societies have formed partnerships with European singing societies and make occasional European tours.

German influence is felt in American orchestral, choral and chamber organizations, as well as in music academies and university schools of music. Germans dominated classical music by the mid-19th century (and still do to some extent). Most orchestras had German performers (in 1890, 89 of the 94 players in the New York PO were German), and many organizations were founded by German-born conductors, such as Theodore Thomas of the Chicago SO.

German American music in multicultural and post-ethnic America. The last major influx of German-speaking immigrants to North America took place during and after World War II, until around 1960. With few exceptions, such as the Burgenland Austrians who immigrated mainly to Chicago, Toronto and the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, postwar immigrants settled throughout North America, and older institutional structures in German American music culture declined, especially as fluency in German diminished. New forms of German American music developed, responding to new patterns of American multiculturalism. The music of previously isolated German-speaking communities was integrated with that of other communities. German Lutheran repertories, after World War II almost entirely in English, were consolidated with Lutheran musics. Popular ethnic dance-music such as the polka burgeoned with the advent of inexpensive long-playing records from the late 1940s until the early 1970s, and German American repertories were enriched by the musics of other groups to form an ‘ethnic mainstream’ of popular music. German American Dutchman polka bands, such as that of ‘Whoopee John’ Hans Wilfahrt in New Ulm, Minnesota, expanded their repertories and audiences by drawing extensively from this mainstream.

In the late 20th century German American music continued to contribute to the expression of ethnicity in popular culture. German festivals, such as Oktoberfest and Steuben Day, honouring German participation in the American War of Independence, were occasions for reviving German American repertories and inventing new music. North American festival culture stimulated the revival of certain genres, especially choral music, and tours of musical ensembles from central Europe. German American music enjoyed a new presence in the public sphere of late 20th-century North America but was largely separated from the social and community functions that supported community cohesion before World War II.

Few ethnic musics have influenced American musical traditions in so many ways. Indeed, the German American recognition of this influence has consistently produced creative ways of weaving German culture into the larger fabric of American culture and history for over three centuries.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(d) Irish.

Irish traditional music comprises dance pieces including jigs, reels, hornpipes, polkas, mazurkas, flings, barn dances and waltzes, and other instrumental forms such as slow airs, marches and planxties. It is characteristically played on such instruments as the fiddle, uilleann pipes, harp, wooden flute, tin whistle, accordion, concertina, tenor banjo and mandolin, often accompanied by guitar, piano, bouzouki, bodhran or bones. Some pieces date from as early as the 16th century and were brought to North America by Irish immigrants in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, little is known about Irish music in America before 1700. Throughout the 18th century hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants, many from the north of Ireland, settled in the Appalachian region. Their music helped shape the development of ‘old-time’ or hillbilly music, and in the 20th century this music in turn contributed to the evolution of Country music and Bluegrass music. In the 19th century most immigrant Irish musicians gravitated towards the towns and cities of the USA, creating an urban-based tradition that was revitalized by successive generations of immigrants until the early 1970s. In the latter half of the 1800s many came from the western countries of Ireland, the home of much traditional Irish music.

In large American cities such as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, there was a rich cross-fertilization of styles and repertories. Virtuoso soloists such as uilleann pipers Patsy Tuohey and Tom Ennis, flautist John McKenna and Sligo fiddlers Paddy Sweeney, Paddy Killoran, James Morrison and Michael Coleman made recordings of such brilliance and sophistication in the 1920s and 30s that they continue to serve as exemplars in Irish music on both sides of the Atlantic; they also helped create a kind of national repertory of traditional tunes. Another important figure was Francis O'Neill, the police chief of Chicago, who wrote extensively on Irish traditional music in the USA in the early 20th century. He published several collections of traditional tunes, many of which he heard played in Chicago. These collections, notably O'Neill's Music of Ireland, became veritable bibles for Irish traditional musicians.

Urban dance bands, many of which were made up of Irish musicians, provided further outlets for traditional Irish music in the years between the world wars. In hundreds of ethnic dance halls throughout the USA, these bands forged a hybrid Irish American idiom in which traditional instruments were combined with the piccolo, saxophone and piano. Notable groups included the Four Provinces Orchestra in Philadelphia, Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band in Boston, the Harp and Shamrock Orchestra in Chicago and the Flanagan Brothers in New York. All recorded extensively for Victor, Columbia, Decca and other companies that specialized in ethnic recordings.

Vocal traditions have also been an important part of Irish American culture. The oldest styles of Irish traditional singing are solo and a cappella; the finest singers apply elaborate embellishments to skeletal melodic lines. This style of singing, called sean nòs (‘old style’), has always been associated with rural Ireland. Generally performed in private contexts such as intimate house parties, it did not readily lend itself in the USA to public performance. However, other varieties of Irish vocal music have achieved popularity in America, including stage skits and comic songs, vaudeville routines and the sentimental, nostalgic creations of Tin Pan Alley songwriters. The commercial success of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the early 1960s sparked a resurgence of interest in Irish songs and singing in both the USA and Ireland. Their style, strongly influenced by the American folk revival, was characterized by song arrangements that were rhythmic rather than free style, the introduction of harmonies new to the Irish singing tradition and guitar and five-string banjo accompaniments. A profusion of Irish groups can now be heard performing in a similar style in Irish bars across the USA.

By the 1960s traditional music (which had been an almost exclusively male preserve) had declined as a force in Irish American social and cultural life; it was displaced by commercial Irish American music popularized by such performers as Bing Crosby and Dennis Day. In the mid-1970s, however, young American-born Irish of both genders took up traditional music and quickly excelled. As a result of their efforts, the older music has made a successful transition from the home to the concert stage, and social music-making in small quasi-public sessions has become increasingly central to the ongoing evolution of the traditional style and repertory. Musical links between Ireland and the USA are closer than ever before. Irish American musicians such as Ed Reavy in Philadelphia have composed hundreds of tunes that have passed into the traditional repertory, which now ranges from old-style music to rock. Other factors contributing to the renaissance of Irish traditional music in the USA are the many festivals and concerts sponsored by folk-music societies, arts organizations, colleges, museums and historical societies; performance on public radio and television; and commercial dance extravaganzas such as Riverdance and Lord of the Dance.

Irish music has frequently been used by American composers of classical music in their symphonic, chamber and solo compositions. Both the folk and stage idioms of Irish music served as inspiration for composers such as Victor Herbert, Henry Cowell and Samuel Barber. However, the work of these and other composers using Irish and Irish American musical motifs has had little reciprocal impact on traditional music.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(e) Italian.

Of the many Italian American communities scattered across the USA, the largest are in major urban centres such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Other enclaves are in agricultural or mining towns, including Tontitown, Arkansas; Asti, California; Clinton, Indiana; and Roseto, Pennsylvania.

The Italian American repertory is large and varied, reflecting the diversity of Italian styles. Songs of Lombardy and Piedmont belong to the European mainstream, while those of Calabria and Sicily share many traits with the music of Islamic Africa. The traditions of northern and southern Italy are so distinct that in the American context they have not influenced each other to any noticeable degree. Regional repertories, in so far as they are still remembered, remain as distinct as they were in Italy. However, since most of the immigrants came from the impoverished central and southern regions of Italy, it is the traditional music of these areas that is most frequently heard in the Italian American communities of, for example, New York, Chicago, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Often their repertory illustrates marginal survival, whereby traditions are maintained longer (and subjected to less change) among immigrant communities than in their home environment. This conservative attitude stems in part from the desire to maintain a strong ethnic identity. Therefore, music that is valued as a symbol of identity is less likely to undergo development than it would in the home country, where such a symbolic role is much less important.

Although the southern Italian repertory is prevalent in the USA, northern Italian styles and practices have also been documented. Ballads (canti epico-lirici) are still sung by the older immigrants from northern Italy. The narrative content of many of these correspond to songs of the British American tradition: L’eroina corresponds to Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Donna Lombarda to Dame lombarde and La mia mamma l’è vecchiarella to The Sleeping Potion. Some of these narrative songs, as well as other song forms, are at times sung chorally in the Alpine style. Such choral singing survives in the USA in a simpler, more straightforward form than in modern Italy, where more complex harmonies have been adopted from choral practice. Among immigrants from the south, songs (canti lirico monostrofici) predominate, including stornelli and strambotti.

Italian American traditional music has been much influenced by Italian popular songs of the 1920s and 30s. In Italy some of this repertory is associated with the fascist regime and is recalled with mixed feelings; it is remembered by older Italian Americans with nostalgia. Americans of Italian origin, especially those who still speak Italian, enjoy contemporary Italian popular music, widely available through Italian-speaking radio stations in the USA and Canada, record shops in Italian neighbourhoods, satellite television and concert tours of Italian pop stars such as Lucio Dalla and Gianni Morandi, whose concerts are attended almost entirely by Italian Americans.

Mass Italian immigration to the USA took place between 1880 and 1920; more recent immigrants, generally from urban areas, rarely join the established Italian American communities. Most Italian traditional music recorded in America was documented in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1990s, Italian contemporary recordings, along with radio and television programmes, helped maintain contact with the current popular culture in Italy. At the other end of the spectrum, such organizations as the Italian Folk Arts Federation of American helped to preserve the older traditional music and customs.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(f) Scandinavian.

Although Scandinavians began to immigrate to the Americas in the 1600s, the principal influx was in the decades spanning the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, the US census of 1910 indicated about 815,000 Norwegian-born and American-born of Norwegian-born parents – a number roughly equal to one third of Norways's population at the time. Most Scandinavian immigrants settled in the upper Midwest, especially in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, areas also popular with immigrants from Germany and eastern Europe. Patterns of culture in Scandinavia had emphasized local identity to a degree difficult to maintain in the USA. When villages relocated nearly intact, village-specific musical repertories could be and were briefly retained. Much more frequently, however, national, pan-Scandinavian, pan-immigrant, or more generally assimilated patterns prevailed soon after resettling.

A variety of long-lived and vital secular and religious ballad traditions from each Scandinavian country were soon widely circulated in the USA. The boundary between oral and written traditions was never clear – that is, handwritten or published texts were often used as memory aids, though supplementing texts with musical notation remained much less common. New emigrant ballads, many distributed as broadsides at the same time that they were transmitted orally, recorded personal and group experiences vividly. Some of these ballads offered encouragement to the prospective immigrant, while bleaker texts may have had the opposite effect. Transplanted ballad traditions naturally experienced change in both content and meaning in their new homes. On the broadest level, the connotations of all tunes and repertories tended to de-emphasize specific inherited meanings in favour of a more general evocation of rosy memories of their singers' original homes. During the course of the 20th century, balladry gradually declined, partly as a result of the growth of mass media but also as a consequence of the gradual abandonment of the Scandinavian languages.

Hymns and various types of religious songs were very important in the lives of Scandinavian immigrants. This was due both to the strength in the Old and New Worlds of Scandinavian Lutheranism and to the waves of Pietism that had swept parts of Scandinavia during the second half of the 19th century (many immigrants came from areas where Pietism had been especially influential). While many Scandinavian communities in the Old World possessed distinctive repertories of older secular music, church hymnody was more standard, and therefore apt for the mixed Scandinavian communities of the New World. At the same time, religious tunes whose main life was in oral tradition (these came to be called folketonar in Norway) were initially healthy transplants to the Midwestern USA, although institutional hymnody persisted more vigorously, since the church became central to the generalized Scandinavian immigrant experience.

Scandinavian instrumental music was initially a weaker transplant than religious music. The weight of religion that had discouraged the nurturing of dance and dance-tunes late in the 19th century in much of Scandinavia lifted more slowly in immigrant communities than in Scandinavia itself, but the conservative pressure did gradually subside.

Most Scandinavian instrumental music falls into two broad historical layers (both centred on dancing), which have fared differently in the New World. The older set of repertories centres on a family of dances in a metre freely mixing 9/8 and 3/4, including the Swedish polska and, in Norway, the pols, springar, springleik and so on, with each of these names actually an umbrella term for regionally defined arrays of music and dance dialects. These dance-tunes were traditionally performed on fiddles, generally the standard violin but in western Norway on the Hardanger fiddle, a highly ornamented instrument with four bowed and four sympathetic strings. More than a few fiddlers (on either type of fiddle) who emigrated to the USA either visited or moved back to Scandinavia, so that musical influence flowed in both directions.

In Scandinavia, fiddle music has been revived with an emphasis on local tradition: most fiddlers publicly perform only tunes and versions of tunes inherited within their own town's tradition. In the Midwest, fading memories and marriages between individuals whose parents came from different locations in Scandinavia have blurred such specific Old World affiliations. Many young instrumentalists whose ancestors came from areas of Norway where the standard fiddle was played have taken up the Hardanger fiddle, since the latter instrument is more distinctively Norwegian. Thus national identity is gaining precedence over the local loyalties that were more important before emigration. Other fiddle-playing descendants of Scandinavian immigrants participate in the American fiddle revival and, in many cases, play repertories and use styles that are either compromises between Scandinavian and American fiddling or that largely abandon any distinctively Scandinavian element.

A younger layer of Scandinavian instrumental music met a different fate in the Midwest. The Scandinavian versions of pan-European 19th-century social dances, collectively known as gammaldans (with minor re-spellings in different Scandinavian dialects), inspired the formation of New World Scandinavian bands (often including violins, but centring on accordions) to play these polkas, waltzes, schottisches etc. Over time, the polka has become the most important dance among these, and bands led and dominated by eastern Europeans are pre-eminent in the polka band market. When young American descendants of Scandinavians dance polkas and waltzes to these bands, their pan-immigrant Midwest identity comes to the fore.

Other instruments, including the Swedish keyed fiddle (nyckelharpa) and plucked zithers such as the Norwegian langeleik, Swedish hommel and Finnish kantele, are more common in revival than they ever had been previously, both in Scandinavia and in the USA.

Scandinavian American social organizations generally include music as an integral part of most activities. Throughout the 1880s, such organizations tended to be pan-Scandinavian. Later, increasing populations of immigrants allowed specialization by national group. Some organizations remain specialized – at least one large organization per national group – while others have reverted to being pan-Scandinavian, either because of intermarriage between later-generation immigrant descendants or because a given organization is located where there are few interested immigrant descendants. The larger nation-specific organizations often support choral societies with traditional repertories. These societies may sponsor annual festivals, with both society and festival following German models. Smaller, pan-Scandinavian groups often restrict their singing to broadsides that join texts celebrating lutefisk – a widespread, somewhat humorous cod-based cultural icon – to tunes widespread in the USA, such as Christmas carols.

Scandinavian American music publishers and recording companies were once busy disseminating traditional music by both Scandinavian and Scandinavian American composers and performers. This echoed similar endeavours involving nearly every ethnic group in the USA large enough to support in-group commercial activity. The Scandinavian American synods of the Lutheran Church were central to this effort, and local newspapers helped too. An important Midwestern Danish music publisher was Askov American of Askov, Minnesota, which issued F.L. Grundtvig's Sangbog for det danske folk i Amerika, first published in 1889 (fig.12). Sparsely populated areas such as the Finnish communities of northern Minnesota and Michigan received traditional music by radio.

The 1970s to 90s witnessed a Scandinavian American ethnic revival with music at its core. Refreshed interest in both the collection of older traditions and performance of reshaped ones can be witnessed in the activities of well-known figures such as Leroy Larsen of Minneapolis and by hosts of younger musicians. Most of this activity concerns secular dance music. Some of these individuals are seeking links with their own heritages, while others – not all with Scandinavian backgrounds – are simply looking for interesting and attractive alternatives to the modern mass media. A young national society nurturing the Hardanger fiddle, numerous folk-dance clubs, and older ethnic-specific groups continue to find pleasure and meaning through cultivating Scandinavian song and dance.

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western

(g) Swiss.

Since 1700, Swiss immigrants have arrived in the USA steadily, and they numbered approximately 400,000 at the end of the 20th century. This group is characterized by diversity, reflecting the many cultural, linguistic, regional and religious groups of Switzerland. Diversity was initially apparent in the music of Swiss Americans, but few regional genres have survived the tendency towards a consolidation of styles. Hybrid musics have developed particularly in those regions where Swiss American culture has been consciously maintained; they reflect influences from other European ethnic and popular musics, as well as the impact of tourism.

During the colonial era the dominant groups were the religiously motivated Swiss Brethren, who settled in eastern Pennsylvania. There they constitute the majority of two groups, the Amish and the Mennonites (the distinction between these two disappeared long ago in Switzerland), whose musical cultures have been among the most dramatic examples of preservation and marginal survival in the USA. Their hymnody, sung in High German rather than Swiss dialects, consists primarily of psalm texts and of martyrdom narratives that recount the genealogy and history of the churches, often with well over 100 verses. This repertory is sung in a style that uses lining-out, in which a lead singer states the initial melody, followed by a group of worshippers. Because these hymns have been transmitted orally for approximately five centuries, some scholars believe that many melodies might be similar to the chorale melodies of the Reformation in central Europe (see Amish and Mennonite music). Other Swiss American religious groups, such as the Swiss Reformed Church, have also made significant contributions to American church music.

Secular Swiss American vocal music often comprises songs that reflect on the experience of immigration; these were historically complemented by repertories of emigrant songs, which circulated orally or in printed versions in Switzerland. The development of Swiss American choral repertories continued to use the themes in immigrant songs but transformed these to diverse and nuanced commentaries on the homeland from a New World perspective. Swiss American traditional instrumental music emphasizes a distinctive group of instruments, among them the zither and the piano accordion. Dance bands draw upon central European ethnic repertories but adapt and embellish them to make them distinctively Swiss American. Swiss Americans have made considerable contributions to American art music; Ernest Bloch, for example, integrated Swiss, Jewish and American themes into works at once cosmopolitan and diverse.

Small areas of Wisconsin, Ohio, Oregon and California attracted Swiss settlement from the mid-19th century onwards. Swiss traditional music often influenced other ethnic musics in these regions, often more extensively than the relatively small Swiss populations when compared to the larger ethnic cultural mainstream. For example, the Scandinavian repertory in Minnesota and the German in Wisconsin have many dances and instrumental tunes arranged or composed by Otto Rindlisbacher (1895–1975) and Rudy Burkhalter (b 1911), both prominent figures in the ethnic popular music of the upper Midwest. During the 20th century Swiss American cultural organizations, such as the Grütli-Bund (or North American Alliance), have promoted revivals of Swiss music. These revivals usually combine the cultural traditions of diverse Swiss ethnic groups; they project a picture of Swiss culture that is far more representative of the consolidation inherent in the American ethnic experience and the response to mass culture and popular multiculturalism than of the different cultural backgrounds that existed in Switzerland before emigration.

USA, §II, 1: Traditional music: European American

(iii) Eastern.

(a) Albanian.

(b) Armenian.

(d) Bulgarian and Macedonian.

(e) Czech and Slovak.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(a) Albanian.

Traditional music may be heard in numerous forms and on many occasions in the communities of ethnic Albanian Americans in Boston and nearby, where numerous immigrants have settled since the early 20th century. The music of this ethnic minority shows striking differences in style according to the immigrants’ origins. Most immigrants came from central Albania and speak the Tosk dialect; others came from the northern Geg-speaking region and the southern Lab-speaking region. Each of these groups has, in addition to its own dialect, a distinct musical style, features of which have been retained in the New World setting.

Albanian traditional music and dancing are performed at picnics, community events, calendrical day celebrations, weddings and private entertainments. Dance tunes consist of short phrases, often with a pentatonic melody of narrow range; some are derived from the bagpipe repertory, others from vocal forms. The musicians usually accompany a singer in unison, adding rhythmic variations. The use of augmented 2nds in some of these tunes suggests Turkish and Balkan influence, while the 5/8, 7/8 and 10/8 metre of others shows Greek influence. The instrumentation of dance ensembles differs from groups in Albania; the melody is usually played by a reed aerophone, often a clarinet, the rhythmic texture is supplied by long gourds and side drums (without snares), and the sound is augmented by lutes that double the melody or rhythmic accompaniment. Some Albanian American dance music is borrowed from other Balkan traditions. According to Ramadan Sokoli, a leading Albanian folklorist, instrumental music was not widely practised in Albania. Musicians from Greece, Macedonia and Hercegovina often performed for dances, and from them the Albanians acquired many foreign genres. Likewise, Albanian Americans tend to invite Greek, South Slavic and Armenian groups to perform at their social functions. The dances at these functions are usually chain dances, in which the participants enjoy considerable freedom in the choice of steps.

The older generation of Albanian Americans sing polyphonic iso songs (the term refers to a drone note) from central and southern Albania. They are performed by groups of five to twelve singers, two of whom are soloists and share the melody. The others sustain a drone, vocalized on the vowel e. The iso melodies have a variety of forms. Among the Tosk immigrants from central Albania, iso songs are performed in free parlando style; the two soloists complement each other with canonic entrances, the second voice paraphrasing the text and melody of the first or repeating the melody in ostinato fashion. At the end of each section the harmonic 2nds and 4ths created against the drone are resolved. In the Lab singing style the rhythm of the song is determined by the rhythm of the text, which all the voices pronounce together. The effect of Lab iso melodies is homophonic rather than polyphonic. In contrast to the Tosk style, the second melody part is sung by several voices and is always lower in range than the first. The iso tone is either sustained or articulated with the same text as the upper parts. A characteristic of Lab tunes is the abrupt stopping of all voices at section endings. In both regions, men and women have separate repertories of iso tunes. However, mixed groups do occur in the USA, where the aging immigrant generation is attempting to keep this musical heritage alive.

Albanian religious music, particularly hymn tunes, has also been preserved in the USA. These hymns belong to a large family of tunes diffused along the Adriatic coast and through central and eastern Europe. The melodies are usually in a major mode and are sung in parallel 3rds, ending with a dominant–tonic cadence.

At the end of the 20th century Albanian communities in the USA underwent considerable change, with the passing of an older generation of expert musicians, including the iso singers, and the rise of a new generation who left their traditional communities. Older repertory from rural Albania was abandoned in favour of pop music, and the younger generation showed more interest in cultural events in Albania itself than in neighbourhood culture.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(b) Armenian.

Armenians have contributed greatly to the enrichment of American musical culture, and a large number participate in the artistic life of the USA. According to the records of the Virginia Company of London, ‘Martin the Armenian’, a member of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, reached the USA in 1618 to serve as an aid to Governor George Yeardley. A small group of Armenians began arriving in the USA in the 1830s, principally to get an education, learn trades and engage in commerce, with the intention of returning to their country within a short time. It is estimated that by 1894 there were about 3000 Armenians in the USA. The first significant wave of immigration began immediately after the 1894 massacres of Armenians in the town of Sassoun, Turkey. Many more came after the 1915 Ottoman Turkish genocide of Armenians, World War II, political upheavals in the 1970s in the Middle East, and as a result of the economic uncertainties in the Caucasus in the late 20th century. Armenians in the USA now number more than one million. The majority reside in the metropolitan regions of New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Fresno, California. Significant numbers of recent arrivals, however, have settled in small towns.

Soon after the early Armenian communities were established, a church was built in each town; the first Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church in America was built in 1891 in Worcester, Massachusetts. During the religious service a deacon would intone traditional liturgical chants, which were grouped according to a system of eight melody modes identified by such characteristics as tonal progressions, ornamentation and rhythmic patterns. On occasion a group of choristers would join the deacon and sustain a drone or sing the melody in unison. In 1896, following a trend to adopt Western ways, a polyphonic version of the liturgy was composed by Makar Ekmalian in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and was printed by Breitkopf & Härtel. This arrangement was gradually accepted in many Armenian churches, including those in the USA. A different setting of the liturgy for a cappella male chorus by Komitas was introduced to the USA in 1948. Most Armenian churches now maintain a permanent choir.

The singing of folksongs was also an integral part of the cultural life in many communities. However, because such melodies were handed down orally they were subject to continuous change. In addition, when Armenians from urban centres immigrated to the USA, they injected musical elements and mannerisms such as unidiomatic melismas, embellishments and melodic idiosyncrasies into their folklore, further blurring its character. In the 1960s traditional melodies were reintroduced to the Armenian Americans, largely owing to improved relations with the former Armenian SSR. Occasionally singing groups made a public appearance, highlighting a hantes (social-cultural event).

By the 1920s Armenian music stores included the Sohag [Nightingale] Record Company of New York City and the Yaghubian Royal Piano Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, as well as the instrument maker Pakrad Mahjoubian of New York City and the music editor and agent Prof. James Moscofian of Astoria, New York.

Armenian music has a strong foothold in American culture. As early as the 1890s, Alexia Bassian (‘the Armenian Nightingale’) majored in music at the Mills College, Oakland, California, and later settled in London to pursue a musical career. A semi-professional group of musicians, the Armenian Instrumental Ensemble of Rhode Island, performed for 14 years until about 1910. During the early 1920s, two Armenian singers – the tenor Arman Tokatyan and bass Paolo Ananian – joined the Metropolitan Opera. Following World War II, the Armenian National Chorus of Boston and the New York Armenian National Chorus were among the prominent vocal groups to disseminate Armenian vocal music. Philanthropic and educational organizations, such as the AGBU Alex Manoogian Cultural Fund, Tekeyan Cultural Association and Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural Association, have encouraged many to pursue their interest in Armenian culture. From 1971 to 1991 the Aram Khachaturian Music Competition, restricted to musicians of Armenian parentage, was a source of encouragement for young musicians. Radio programmes of Armenian music, some produced by the Heritage of Armenian Culture, are made available weekly on National Public Radio, though not all station affiliates broadcast them. The Armenian Allied Arts Association of Los Angeles and the Friends of Armenian Culture Society of Boston promote talented students, performers and composers. The Zohrab Information Center of New York and the music library at the University of Southern California serve as extensive resource centres for Armenian music.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(c) Baltic.

Immigration to the USA from the Baltic States began in the late 19th century, and by World War I had reached large proportions, particularly among Lithuanians, who remain the largest Baltic ethnic group. Amid Catholic and socialist factionalism and hard economic conditions, the early immigrants could not afford the reconstruction of Baltic culture in the USA as their primary interest. After World War II the necessary organizational base for cultural revitalization was broadened by middle-class nationalists who arrived as political exiles (from 1948 to 1950 approximately 10,000 Estonians and 45,000 Latvians).

The early Lithuanian immigrants retained from their rural background a repertory of traditional songs. A large sample of these, characterized by a narrow melodic range and variable metre, was recorded in 1949–50 by the folklorist Jonas Balys, who recognized their value in the light of encroaching harmonized styles. In Pennsylvanian mining towns of the 1880s, Lithuanian singing and fiddle and accordion music resounded in meeting halls and taverns. At this time brass bands and parish choirs were formed and soon afterwards the first secular choral groups. This activity led to the first Lithuanian American song festival in 1916, which preceded the mother country's first festival (1924).

Although they date back to the 19th century, Estonian and Latvian song festivals were transplanted to America only in 1953, as a result of postwar immigration. The later immigrants brought with them the traditions of urban cultural organizations, as well as the experience of a period of intense concert activity in displaced persons’ camps (1944–50). Cleveland’s prominent folksong and folkdance ensemble, Čiurlionis, was started in Lithuania’s capital, and Dainava, based in Chicago, was created in the camps. Because of its prominence in camp functions, the Latvian choir Dziesmu Vairogs received sponsorship to immigrate in its entirety to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The native Baltic zithers, revived and modernized in the early part of the century, were carried to the USA with the Lithuanian ensembles and became a distinctive feature of Baltic American music-making. An orchestra of kanklės supports Čiurlionis, and there is an academy in Cleveland for its instruction. Family traditions also make for continuity. Balys Pakštas, the leader of a folk instrument orchestra in Vilnius, founded an ensemble in the large Chicago Lithuanian community that was later led by his daughter. An initiator of the still-modest movement in Estonian kannel playing, Lilian Esop, was taught by her father, using the instrument he had brought out of Estonia after World War II.

While some Estonian and Lithuanian players employ zithers (with up to 37 strings) that were adapted to the performance needs of larger urban ensembles, amateur ethnologists and craftsmen have turned instead to indigenous rural models. The Latvian kokle, with 13 strings and wooden tuning pegs, began to be built in the 1960s; smaller Estonian kannels, with five to twelve strings, have appeared since 1975. A playing method and manual were soon developed by Andrejs Jansons, and this new idiom was popularized by the Latvian Folk Ensemble of New York under his direction. Annual kokle festivals have brought together a growing number of ensembles since 1965.

After a period of stability during which the familiar choral repertory dominated musical performance, the zither revival indicated a search for new forms. The first seminar dealing with the kannel (1981) also included demonstrations of Estonian runic singing and shepherd’s calls. Groups of singers and instrumentalists, including the Latvian Kolibri (formed in Boston in 1979), recreated traditional styles from printed collections. The Boston-based group Sodauto specializes in simple unaccompanied songs learnt from an older member of the Lithuanian community. It has also revived the art of the sutartinė, two-part singing characterized by distinctive hocketting rhythms and intervals of a 2nd.

A contrast to the nationalistic basis of most of the song festivals is found in the Latvian celebration of St John’s Day, the summer solstice. Members of each community gather at a nearby rural site and, draped in garlands of oak leaves, sing the traditional līgo songs. The Dievturi, a non-Christian Latvian sect that has been in the forefront of the ethnographic revival, has assiduously reconstructed the ritual and bases its religious services on folksong texts.

Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national song festivals take place every four to five years and are supplemented by numerous offshoots: festivals for Estonian male choruses, young Latvians and Lithuanian dance troupes, and regional Midwest and West Coast festivals. Throughout the year local community centres stage traditional music performances to commemorate anniversaries of political and cultural significance. Estonian and Lithuanian international festivals attended by Baltic émigrés from all over the western world have also been held in the USA.

The ethnic identity of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians was heightened in the late 1980s by appeals to restore the Baltic nations as autonomous states and by the protests emanating from folklore ensembles in Latvia, a movement known as the Singing Revolution. Connections to the homeland were strengthened by Baltic Americans who repatriated and by the large number who participated in song festivals, notably the dramatic 1990 song festival in Riga, which took place in the violent year preceding the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a result of glasnost in the 1980s, newly immigrated ethnic Lithuanians who arrived in North America included folk musicians who found a sense of belonging by joining folk music groups.

The popular ‘post-folklore’ movement in the Baltic – an innovative fusion of ‘new wave’, jazz, minimalist, Celtic and other styles – has also influenced American groups both old and new. The founders of Kolibri, Martins Aldins and Peteris Aldins, apply expertise in early music to Latvian source materials and develop the content of folk music in ‘high art’ fashion. Jūrmalnieki, from Denver, formed by brothers who are half Amerindian, is a lauku kapelle (country band) consisting of violin, autoharp, accordion, drums and trideksnis (a sistrum). This group reacted against standardized Latvian dance music on recordings and drew instead on tunes from the eastern province of Latgale and on their experience in playing rock and Irish music. Begun in 1992 by Zinta Pone, formerly of Teiksma, the female group Lini (‘flax’, a symbol of womanhood) prefers a larger variety of instruments than the earlier kokle and voice ensembles – fiddle, recorder (stabule), clarinet, kokle and g’iga or bowed monochord – developing the Latvian material in non-traditional ways. Similar Estonian groups have also appeared: in Seattle a folk band accompanies the Murakaruo (‘rowdy bears’) folk-dance group on the kannel, violin, guitar, accordion, and bass. These recent offshoots of traditional Baltic folk-music performance, directly inspired by the cultural events of a newly independent homeland, signify the vital creative growth of this genre among second- and third-generation Baltic Americans.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(d) Bulgarian and Macedonian.

The Macedonian and Bulgarian American population in the USA is small, probably at no time exceeding 70–80,000. Approximately 50,000 of these are Slavic-speaking Macedonians from the former Yugoslavia and northern Greece. Macedonian Slavs and Bulgarians are closely related in language, customs and music and dance traditions, and as a result have formed mixed communities in North America. A number of churches and cultural organizations in the USA, especially those formed before World War II, begin their names with ‘Macedonian-Bulgarian’ or ‘Bulgarian-Macedonian’. The first significant waves of immigration occurred around 1907–13 and after World War I, with another wave after World War II. Communities were established during the 1920s in the industrial centres of the Midwest, especially in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

After the fall of the socialist state in 1989, a number of professional musicians from Bulgaria emigrated temporarily or permanently to the USA. Some were trained in the state-sponsored folk music schools established in Bulgaria during the postwar socialist period, where they learnt a state-sanctioned version of Bulgarian folk music, which they brought to the USA. Others were specialists in the contemporary ‘wedding music’ popularized by amplified bands in Bulgaria in the 1970s and 80s.

The musical repertory of Bulgarian Americans in North America is not as prominent in social contexts as that of other south-east European immigrants such as Greeks, Serbs or Macedonian Slavs. First, the small numbers of Bulgarian Americans, their internal political factionalism, wide geographical dispersion and frequent relocation in the USA have discouraged the establishment of concentrated communities. Second, because Bulgarian Americans come from many regions, they have very little shared vocal, instrumental or dance repertory. Third, when most Bulgarians emigrated during the early decades of the 20th century, there was no established tradition of Bulgarian instrumental or vocal ensemble music that could be adapted to communal music-making in the USA. Fourth, unlike the situation among Yugoslav and Greek immigrants, there has been relatively little contact with the homeland (until the 1990s), and little exchange of musicians or recordings.

Conditions among Macedonian Americans, however, have been more conducive to a prolific musical life. Their numbers are greater, and immigrants from particular regions have tended to settle together in communities. Most trace their background to a few regions along the former Yugoslav-Greek border (‘Aegian Macedonia’) that share a common music and dance style and repertory. There is considerable contact between the USA and Macedonia (after 1991, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), and American musicians are constantly exposed to trends in popular urban folk music from their homeland. As a result, public music-making in Bulgarian and Macedonian American communities is largely dominated by Macedonians.

Contexts for music and dance in Macedonian-Bulgarian communities in the USA in the late 20th century include weddings, evening social gatherings (vecherinki or igranki), picnics, meetings of cultural and political organizations and holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Events such as saints’ days in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar are observed, along with American holidays such as Thanksgiving and Independence Day. (Music and dance are not performed during Lent.) Formal concerts may be held with the participation of community music and dance groups. Costumed dance groups tend to perform choreographed versions of folkdances for a seated audience and are generally composed of elementary and high school children. Informal singing may occur in homes, especially on name days and during the period immediately before a wedding.

Macedonian and Bulgarian immigrants generally do not perform older ritual, calendrical or occupational songs, possibly because in North America this music has lost its original function and meaning. This repertory has been preserved as nostalgic reminders of the homeland by older first-generation immigrants with rural origins, who recall these songs at social gatherings such as christenings, engagement parties, weddings, picnics, name days and organized church-sponsored cultural gatherings, where they serve an entertainment function and reinforce group identity.

The only songs that are commonly shared by Bulgarian immigrants from diverse regional backgrounds are the gradski pesni (urban songs) that were popular in Bulgaria in the early 20th century. This genre binds and stabilizes an ethnic group that is socially and politically fragmented. Most are composed urban songs with texts by European-educated 19th-century Bulgarian or foreign poets, and melodies usually based on Western, Turkish or Greek models. Texts were published in small songbooks known as pesnopoiki and popularized through gramophone recordings during the early 20th century. These songs were enormously popular during the period when many Bulgarians emigrated to the USA. They are enjoyed in North America primarily for their patriotic and nationalistic significance rather than regional character. They are easily memorized and tend to be in central and western European metric patterns and modes, with harmony in parallel 3rds; as opposed to the monophonic or drone-based texture, asymmetric additive metric patterns and melodic modes with augmented second and lowered seventh degrees prevalent in Macedonian and Bulgarian rural music.

Post-World War II urban songs from former Yugoslav Macedonia, such as Liliana platno beleshe and Shto mi e milo, are well known among Macedonians and Bulgarians in North America, including the younger generation. Because they are not highly ornamented and have a very straightforward tonic-dominant harmonic structure, such songs are conducive to communal singing. Polyphonic arrangements of folksongs are performed by church-affiliated choirs, which are usually directed by classically trained musicians.

The most common music-making context is the dance event at a church, community hall, picnic or wedding banquet. The American Canadian Macedonian Orthodox Diocese sponsors an annual music and dance festival attended by thousands of Macedonian Americans from the USA and Canada, held at various locations in Ontario and the north-eastern USA. Music at community events is generally provided by a four- or five-piece band of instruments such as clarinet, accordion, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, electric guitar, electric bass, electric keyboard and drum set – instruments that were also popular in the Balkans in the late 20th century. Indigenous Macedonian Bulgarian instruments such as the gaida (bagpipe), kaval (end-blown flute) and gadulka or kemene (vertically held fiddles) are rarely played, although the tapan (double-headed cylindrical drum) or tarambuka (goblet-shaped hand drum) may be used if a drum set is unavailable. Bands are almost always dominated by Macedonian musicians.

The style of music performed by musicians who settled in the USA before World War II is known in the community as the ‘old style’. This repertory consists of traditional Macedonian, Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian dances, and includes little vocal music. Bands in this prewar style play Greek dances such as kalamatianos (3+2+2), sirtos (4+2+2 or 3+3+2) and tsamikos (3/4 or 6/4); Macedonian dances such as kasapsko (2/4), shareni chorapi or nishka banya (2+2+2+3), gaida (2/4) and nesho or beranche (3+2+2+3+2); Bulgarian-Macedonian dances such as pravo (2/4 or 3+3), paydushko (2+3), daychovo (2+2+2+3), eleno mome (2+2+1+2) and rachenitsa or kichitsa (2+2+3); and Serbian kolos such as u šest (moravac), seljančica, žikino and kukunješ. Bands performing in the post-World War II ‘new style’ focussed on the more urban pieces, often composing dance-songs for the Macedonian lesno (3+2+2), featuring an amplified solo singer. Bands composed of Canadian- or American-born younger musicians tend to have a pan-Balkan repertory, learnt from recordings and published collections.

In general, the style of a band is determined by the leader, often the clarinettist. Repertories are expanded through intermarriage and contacts with Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish and other Balkan and east European communities; some bands include musicans from these ethnic groups. Many musicians learn new tunes from recordings or notated sources. A few bands have made recordings in North America.

An interesting phenomenon at some Macedonian-Bulgarian community events of the 1970s, 80s and 90s was the active participation of American musicians who are not of South Slavic ancestry. These individuals generally became acquainted with South Slavic folk music through the international folkdance movement that was extremely active and widespread on American college campuses during the late 1960s and early 70s. They gained their musical expertise through extended stays in the Balkans, as well as studies with Balkan American musicians in North America. These musicians often focussed on pre-World War II rural instruments and genres that Macedonian and Bulgarian Americans in the late 20th century did not. While ethnic community members generally prefer more modern postwar styles, there has been some revived interest recently in these older genres as well. (See also §(k) below.)

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(e) Czech and Slovak.

The history of Czech American and Slovak American music is as diversified as the many ethnic groups that have occupied former Czechoslovakia. Inherent in the changing ethno-national identity was ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity, which renders the identification of a national ‘Czechoslovak’ music almost impossible. Moreover, the nation and sense of nationhood that emerged only in the 20th century was quite unknown to many immigrant Czechs and Slovaks, who left their homelands when they were under the political, and often cultural, domination of foreign powers. As the culture of Czechoslovakia underwent patterns of consolidation during the 20th century, so too did the musical traditions of Czech and Slovak Americans, but to a lesser degree. By the late 20th century, public performances of mixed ‘Czechoslovak’ traditional music were rarely encountered, whereas individual Slovak and, to a lesser degree, Czech traditional performing arts collectives are still active, particularly in urban areas.

Czech and Slovak immigration to the USA falls into four periods. During the colonial era small religiously motivated groups, largely from German-speaking areas, established settlements in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. During the second period, from the late 19th century until World War I, the most significant numbers of Czechs and Slovaks came to the USA. Immigration for political reasons occurred during the mid-20th century, and following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia during the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968. Further immigration and travel outside the homeland has occurred since the so-called Velvet Revolution of November 1989 and the subsequent emergence of independent Czech and Slovak republics in January 1993.

During the 19th century both Czech and Slovak immigrants came primarily from agricultural backgrounds. The first Czech settlements were in the agricultural states of the Midwest and in Texas; urban Czech settlements also sprang up in Midwestern cities, although New York, the port of entry, retained many immigrants. The plentiful land of the Midwest offered both economic and linguistic advantages, for it allowed Czechs to settle near the dominant German groups, whose language most of them knew better than English. Slovak immigrants settled predominantly in Pennsylvania and Ohio in industrial cities and rural coal-mining areas. High concentrations of Slovak Americans are found in industrial centres such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit. Many Carpatho-Rusyns, or ‘Rusnaks’ from eastern Slovakia and subcarpathian Rus, which was annexed from Czechoslovakia and incorporated into the former Soviet Union after World War II, immigrated to the USA, mixing with and frequently identifying themselves as Slovaks. Rusyn influence on Slovak culture, song and music in the USA is quite significant.

The community structures of both Czech and Slovak immigrants were extremely strong. Family and religion provided the foundations for this structure, and a variety of social organizations provided the superstructure, which further served to link communities to each other. The traditional music of Czech and Slovak communities reflects this tightly organized structure, for those musical genres that have been retained the longest are the ones deriving from family and community participation: music associated with specific holidays and festivals, songs celebrating life-cycle events, and music related to religious celebrations. Ethnic radio programming, a tradition still supported by Slovak Americans, has played a prominent role in preserving ethnic awareness and disseminating musical culture, particularly to the newer generations born in the USA.

The Moravians were the earliest immigrants from the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia). Settling in closely knit communities as early as 1741, the German-speaking Moravians brought a rich musical culture to colonial America. Not only did they maintain rich choral traditions, but they combined these with instrumental traditions, making theirs the first American concert music. The Moravians were also among the first instrument makers in the colonies. The importance of instrumental music to the Moravians is a distinguishing characteristic of Czech and Slovak immigrant musics as well (See Moravian’s, music of the.)

Although Czech and Slovak folksongs form different repertories, they share certain characteristics that distinguish them from the songs of other eastern-central European cultures. Transposition (the repetition of an entire phrase or section at a higher or lower pitch) is used extensively in Czech and Slovak folk music. For Slovak songs the predominant interval of transposition is a 5th (the interval also common in Hungarian melodic transposition); Czech songs more frequently transpose by 2nds or 3rds, reflecting their more customary diatonic scales. Related to transposition is the frequent use of sequence, which is also shared by Czech and Slovak songs. Both Czech and Slovak folksong and instrumental genres depend heavily on prosody, another unifying characteristic in the two repertories. Czech and Slovak folksongs are heavily accented, and Slovac melodic phrases, as well as those Czech ones that predate Germanic influence, rarely begin on an anacrusis; most are lyrical.

Folksong texts make both regional and local references, and love songs, soldier and conscription songs, songs of social commentary, life cycle events and religious holiday songs, ballads, agricultural and shepherd’s songs, children’s songs and songs of immigration are included in the repertory. References to the homeland have in some cases been replaced by references to the USA, rendering the songs more pertinent to immigrants.

Czech and Slovak traditions of instrumental music are tenaciously maintained in the USA. Both rural and urban communities have supported folk ensembles that play favoured dances such as polkas, čardašes, karičkas and waltzes, and perform at weddings and traditional music festivals such as the Pittsburgh Folk Festival. These bands have become a part of social institutions such as ethnic clubs and churches. Eastern European instruments, such as the bagpipe, have largely been replaced by more common American instruments, but the interrelationship between folksong and instrumental music has caused the fairly conservative retention of traditional repertory. Instrumental ensembles serve as a symbol of Czech and Slovak community solidarity, and with song are a principal means of preserving and possibly reviving their musical culture.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(f) Greek.

Before 1890 no more than 3000 Greeks had immigrated to the USA. These few Greek Americans were widely dispersed over the country, and the only Greek community was a small enclave in the area of New Smyrna and St Augustine in Florida. From 1891 to 1910 Greek immigration increased dramatically. In the first decade of the 20th century 167,519 Greeks were recorded as entering the USA. These people quickly formed communities throughout the country; in New England, New York, San Francisco and the urban areas of the upper Mississippi Valley, particularly Chicago. Although most American cities now have sizeable Greek communities, the largest are in Boston, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Most Greek American musicians are semi-professional or professional and are supported by several forms of patronage within the community. More than 95% of Greek Americans are raised in the Greek Orthodox faith, and the churches sponsor social functions of which music is an integral part. The most common are the glendi (party), the paniyiri (festival), dinner dances and picnics. Various Greek American social and political organizations, such as the Order of Ahepa, and regional fraternities, such as the Pan-Macedonian Society and Pontian Society, sponsor similar activities. Musicians are regularly engaged to perform in Greek supper clubs and for Greek nights in restaurants. In addition, family occasions in the Greek American communities (weddings, baptisms and reunions) usually include music by local performers.

Nearly all musical performances in Greek American communities (as in Greece itself) are by ensembles; solo presentations are rare. Some groups perform only the music of specific regions or provinces of Greece, using the instrumentation of those regions (the repertory and instrumentation varies greatly from region to region). The pan-Hellenic folk ensemble, or kompania, performs rural music from various regions of Greece and traditionally includes clarinet, violin, santouri (trapezoidal hammered dulcimer), and laouto (long-necked plucked lute). These may be supplemented or replaced by one or more vocalists, accordion, mandolin, guitar, percussion or any of a number of other instruments.

The bouzouki ensemble, which developed in urban Greece, performs both rural and urban Greek music. It has thrived in the USA and has become by far the most popular type of ensemble among Greek Americans. The main instrument is the Bouzouki, a long-necked plucked lute. The ensemble often includes the baylamas (small lute), guitar, bass guitar, drum set and accordion, organ or piano; in the USA a clarinet may be added. The repertory consists primarily of pan-Hellenic dance-songs, which may be purely instrumental but are usually instrumentally accompanied vocal pieces. These pieces include compositions by village musicians, which may date from the 19th century or earlier, as well as contemporary pieces by urban composers. In general they are isometric and strophic. Most melodies are based on pentatonic and heptatonic modes (see Greece, §IV). The more prominent heptatonic modes are often non-diatonic and commonly include an augmented 2nd. The older dance-songs were originally monophonic or heterophonic and were often accompanied by a drone; as performed by contemporary Greek American bouzouki ensembles, they are often set to Western harmonic progressions.

Dance-songs may be categorized by metric and rhythmic type according to the dances they accompany. The most popular types include the kalamatianos, in 7/8 (3 + 2 + 2 or 2 + 2 + 3); the tsamikos, in 3/4 or 6/4; the hasapikos or sirtaki, in 4/4; the hasaposervikos, in 2/4; the sirtos, in 8/8 (4 + 2 + 2 or 3 + 3 + 2); and the haniotikos sirtos, more commonly known in the USA as the ‘Never on Sunday’ or ‘Misirlou’ dance, in 4/4. Other important parts of the bouzouki repertory are rebetika (an urban genre) and popular pieces from Greek cities. These compositions are also classified according to the dances they accompany: the zeimbekikos, in 9/4; the karsilamas, in 9/8 (2 + 2 + 2 + 3); and the tsifteteli, in 2/4 or 4/4. Like their rural counterparts, these urban pieces are strophic and isometric and combine modal and tonal elements in their melodies and textures.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(g) Hungarian.

The music of Hungarian Americans has been studied since the early 1960s, and some 1000 songs, choral works and instrumental pieces have been recorded among urban groups in Cleveland and northern Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana and various parts of Canada. Historical, sociological and ethnological studies of Hungarian immigrants living in the Calumet region (Lake County), Indiana and Springfield, Louisiana, offer additional information.

Two great tides of immigration from Europe, in 1890–1920 and 1946–57, brought Hungarian immigrants to the USA. Most people of the first wave were from rural backgrounds: landowners, shopkeepers, artisans, household workers and agricultural labourers. Their culture was formed by the values, customs and traditions of the village. The jobs they found in the USA were in the mines, mills, car and steel industries. The ‘newcomers’ after World War II were urban people with technical skills and professional training. Except for language and national history, the two groups differed in their culture, including their understanding of Hungarian music.

In the Cleveland and Passaic communities, Hungarian Americans of the World War I era built churches and formed cultural organizations. Singing societies, principally urban glee clubs, were centres of musical activity, some autonomous, others affiliated with dramatic groups, fraternal organizations or church. Hungarian choruses primarily performed adaptations of traditional and popular tunes. The Hungarian American Singing Society (established in Cleveland in 1908) staged an annual operetta, folk play or musical comedy and maintained a repertory of popular art and traditional songs. The aim of the society (as with other organizations of this kind) was to preserve the Hungarian native language, music and culture.

The programmes and practices of singing societies show the influence of the Liedertafel, a choral movement that originated in Germany and spread throughout Europe towards the end of the 19th century. In Hungary the movement took hold at a time when prevailing notions about traditional music were changing; its programmes included a conglomeration of indigenous as well as foreign genres, such as popular art songs, patriotic songs and tunes of the urban and upper classes, reflecting the Biedermeier aesthetic. The Hungarian American Singing Society performed all these genres. The tunes grouped together in medleys were generally known from oral tradition and sung from memory, in unison and with piano accompaniment.

Individual singing reflected a more traditional layer of national heritage. Hungarian Americans came from different areas of their homeland, and this regional and social diversity is manifest in their repertories. The three distinctive classes of songs are the ‘old style’, the ‘new style’ and a popular 19th-century art music style. Characteristic features of old-style songs are pentatonic melopoeia, descending melodies and the parlando tempo (ex. 1). In the repertories of older Hungarians only a handful of tunes revealed such features. These characteristics can also be found in the repertories of the linguistically and ethnically related Finno-Ugric Cheremis and Turco-Bulgar Chuvash people. The lyrics of ex.1 can be translated as

The wind of Mátra blows and howls
My shirt and trousers are fluttering with it
It got my hat also
Thrown in to the river Tisza by the tartar.

New-style songs (which constitute about 35% of the Hungarian American material recorded in Cleveland) developed under the influence of Western musical trends from the 17th century onwards (ex.2). Their tonalities are heptatonic, with arched melodies and the most common forms being AA5BA (where A5 is transposed a 5th higher), ABBA and ABCA. Old-style tunes are characterized by ornamentation and free narrative, whereas new-style songs lend themselves to group singing. The lyrics in ex.2 can be translated as

It is evening, the clock has struck 8,
Who is singing in the village so late?
I am singing, for I cannot sleep,
My heart is tormented by love.

Many 19th-century popular art songs were composed by dilettante musicians, who intended to imitate traditional songs and to create a repertory of tunes in ‘Hungarian style’ for a new urban population (ex.3). This corpus was popularized by Gypsy musicians and theatrical groups and was widely diffused by oral circulation. The popular art songs reflect an urban middle-class mentality: the lyrics are sentimental and at times gloomy. The lyrics in ex.3 read

Forest, forest, deep forest, oh, how difficult it is to walk!
How difficult to wait for the girl’s love,
Her love is hidden like the flower of the forest,
Leaving the boy in love sighing after her.

Long stanzas with lines of up to 25 syllables are set to melodies in minor keys spiced with augmented 2nds; frequent chromatic notes and large leaps indicate their instrumental origin.

Older Hungarian Americans of the World War I era cultivated forms of music that dominated the Hungarian musical scene at the turn of the 19th century. Unlike the old immigrants in Cleveland, whose society was homogeneous, more recent immigrants in the Passaic and neighbouring communities included several social groups: the ‘old timers’, the first American-born generation, together with immigrants of the 1930s; ‘displaced persons’ who left Hungary after World War II and came to the USA after years of detention in Austrian and German camps; refugees after the 1956 uprising; children of displaced persons, raised in camps outside Hungary; and children of immigrants born in America. Members of these groups had different personal histories, experiences of immigration, education and exposure to Hungarian music.

Community musical activities include church and civic choirs; the latter, coached by professional musicians, sing traditional songs in arrangements by Ádám, Kodály, Bartók and others. Community events feature one or more singing groups. Picnics held on holidays such as Independence Day and St Stephen's Day (20 August), banquets honouring community leaders and church fairs provide opportunities for music. Choirs have exchange programmes with other choruses; they also appear at national traditional music festivals, state and county fairs, spring festivals and museum presentations.

The various Hungarian American social groups have different concepts of what constitutes Hungarian music. The oldest generation prefers to sing the so-called ‘Magyar songs’, a mixed category of pseudo-traditional song, popular art songs and Gypsy tunes; men sing mostly new-style traditional songs and soldiers' songs, and the women sing mostly songs learnt in choir practices. Although the descendants of immigrants have never heard the songs in their native setting, there is a wish to revive their heritage and learn the repertory of their forebears from recordings and published collections.

Children of Hungarian immigrants learn game songs, holiday songs, marching songs and other songs in Sunday school and Boy and Girl Scout groups. During the Christmas season they perform a nativity play that begins with magical incantations, the so-called regös-songs, which confer good luck on the house where they are sung.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(h) Polish.

While there have been periodic small waves of political immigrants from Poland to the USA since the Revolutionary War, it was the economic conditions in Poland in the late 19th century and early 20th that brought most Poles to the USA. Immigrants came from all regions of Poland, which was at that time partitioned into areas of Prussian, Austro-Hungarian and Russian occupation. Poland gained independence in 1918, and until World War II, cultural exchange between Poland and Polish Americans flourished. After World War II, the communist party in Poland and restrictive USA immigration laws curtailed cultural exchange, but the situation improved in the 1960s, and especially since 1989 when the Solidarity party gained power in Poland.

The imported folksong tradition, which includes songs of love and courtship, rural life, war and military life, and some ballads of the pan-European tradition, survives in the memories of the bilingual first generation of Polish Americans but has not been passed on to the second, American-born generation. The exceptions are wedding songs, especially those connected with the bridal capping ceremony (oczepiny), the Christmas and Easter carols (kolędy; the texts of both types of song are provided with English translations to wedding guests or church-goers), and folksongs from the Podhale region.

The songs of immigrant folk composers are stylistically indistinguishable from the old-country songs and are firmly entrenched in the folksong repertory. These composed folksongs speak of the separation from loved ones in Poland and the difficult adjustment to urban factory life. The tradition of composing new songs in folksong style has been fostered from the 1920s by music publishers and promoters such as Alvin Sajewski, Louis Vitak, Joseph Elsnic and Walter Dana.

The persistence and development of instrumental folk music owes much to the American recording industry. Between 1915 and 1933 Victor and Columbia Records tapped the burgeoning market for Polish folk music. All the major folkdances of turn-of-the-century Poland are represented in the catalogues and recordings of this era. From these recordings something of the process of change in the Polish American repertory can be learnt. Some dance genres disappeared as their musical characteristics blended with those of more popular dances; for example, the kujawiak and the mazurka eventually vanished as the walc (waltz) and the oberek gained precedence. The music of the krakowiak folkdance became indistinguishable from that of the Bohemian polka, another folkdance in 2/4.

The Polka is a symbol of Polish American identity, especially among pre-World War II immigrants and their descendants. Originating in what is now the Czech Republic, the polka quickly became a popular ballroom and salon dance throughout Europe and the USA in the mid-19th century. Polish immigrants brought two styles of polka that were popular in Poland at the end of the 19th century: urban polka played by schooled musicians, and rural folk polka played by small string ensembles, often with a clarinet doubling the violin in unison or heterophony. The first urban polkas were recorded in New York in 1915; rural polka styles were recorded about ten years later. Between 1935 and 1965 the urban polka became an acculturated form, incorporating elements of jazz (1930s), American popular song (1940s) and Latin American music (1950s). Urban-style polka bands were often modelled after big bands. Popular in Chicago from the 1920s, the folk style was revitalized in the late 1940s by composer Walter ‘Li'l Wally’ Jagiello, who combined the asymmetrical phrasing and melodic characteristics of Polish folksong, krakowiak syncopation and an improvisational performing style. By the 1960s the ‘Chicago style’ usurped the popularity of the eastern urban style. In postwar Poland the polka lost much of its popularity, making polka increasingly a distinctive Polish American phenomenon. This development is reflected in the shift from predominantly Polish-language texts in the 1950s recordings to at least half English-language recordings by the 1980s.

The tradition of Polish choral groups was brought to the USA in the late 19th century by immigrants from the Prussian-governed area of western Poland known as Poznania, where choral groups were a response to Bismarck's political suppression of Polish culture. With the goals of preserving and promoting Polish culture, identity and patriotism in the USA, immigrants established the Polish Singers Alliance of America in 1888. A few choirs in the Alliance are associated with Polish American parishes, though most are independent; one, the Lira Singers of Chicago, has achieved professional status. The repertory, including Polish art music, patriotic songs, kolędy, sacred music and arrangements of Polish folksongs, is almost entirely from Polish sources and sung in Polish, with the exception of religious works in Latin. There is no large movement towards new Polish American compositions. In addition to choir conventions, the ensembles perform in churches and concert halls, at Polish community events, to commemorate significant dates in Polish history and to represent the Polish community at ethnic festivals.

Polish dance troupes in the USA also strive to promote Polish culture and patriotism, but they differ from Polish choirs in their focus on folk culture instead of classical and religious works. Like the choral groups, many dance troupes are sponsored by Polish American fraternal organizations, parishes and Saturday schools. Dance troupes emerged in cities with large Polish populations between the wars and increased in number after World War II. Most troupes are informal and serve the purpose of teaching Polish heritage and culture, but some imitate amateur and professional troupes promoted in Poland by the postwar communist government, when many original contexts for folkdance were being lost as the country became industrialized. Post-Stalinist reforms in Poland created greater opportunities for cultural exchange with the USA in the 1960s, including the possibility for dance troupes to travel to Poland for festivals. The Polish Folk Dancers Association of America was created in 1983. Most troupes use recorded music for rehearsals and performances, though some manage to maintain small instrumental ensembles.

Regional character is waning in most Polish American music, with the dramatic exception of góralska (mountain) music from the rugged Podhale (piedmont) region of the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland (see also Poland, §II, 8). With the aid of a strong social and cultural organization called Związek Podhalan (Podhale Association), established in Poland in 1904 and with branches in the USA from 1929, immigrants from Podhale remain closely linked with their region of origin in Poland. The first commercial recordings of góralska music were made in 1927 in Chicago and featured the violin playing of Karol Stoch, a recent immigrant from Podhale and future leader in Związek Podhalan. Music from Podhale features unaccompanied polyphonic free-rhythm singing, and duple-metre singing and dancing accompanied by small ensembles of fiddles (see fig.14). The repertory, characterized by predominantly descending melodic shapes frequently emphasizing the augmented fourth scale degree, is distinct from the rest of Poland and is linked melodically with music from south and east in what is now Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. The dance includes two primary categories: po góralsku (in the mountaineer manner) danced by a single male/female couple, and zbónicki (robbers) danced in a circle by men. The largest concentration of immigrants from Podhale reside in and around Chicago, where numerous ensembles provide music for weddings, christenings, festivals and other events.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(i) Romanian.

Romanians came to the USA in the late 19th century and early 20th, mainly from villages in the Romanian linguistic and cultural regions of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire: Banat, Bukovina and Transylvania (the provinces of present-day Romania north and west of the Carpathian Mountains). There was little immigration from the old Kingdom of Romania (the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia), so there is limited influence on Romanian American music from these areas, except through Romani (Gypsy) sources. After World War I, immigration was more restricted and included more educated as well as urban Romanians.

Romanian American communities are based increasingly on formal religious and cultural organizations; the ethnic neighbourhood context of performance that preserved Old World regional styles and repertories in the early decades of the 20th century is rapidly vanishing. After 1930 and especially after World War II, the regional distinctions in Romanian American music declined in favour of tunes and styles shared by groups in various American cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Gary and East Chicago (Indiana), New York and Philadelphia.

Songs about immigration to the USA were composed by the earliest immigrants (c1890–1910). These followed the formulaic traditions of the doină, a quintessentially Romanian lyric vocal genre that epitomizes profound feelings of longing and melancholy. Adapted to the experience of immigration, these songs were often bitter commentaries on the bleak and lonely conditions in the USA and the delusive promise of riches; a nostalgia for home was central. The best-known such song was Doină din America (‘Lament from America’). Still found in folksong repertories in parts of Transylvania, they were not transmitted beyond the first immigrant generation.

A more enduring tradition is the singing of colinde (Christmas carols). Starting about six weeks before Christmas the congregations of Romanian Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholic churches sing colinde at the Sunday service. The churches have groups of colindători (carollers), who, from Christmas Eve, visit the houses of parishioners. In Romanian villages colindători are always young men and boys, but in the USA the groups are not limited by age or sex. The colindători are invited inside to sing and are offered refreshments. The host is expected to make a donation to the carollers, who in turn give the money to the parish; this custom is an American innovation. The songs most commonly sung are colinde that are not limited to local village distribution in Romania. Trei pastori (‘Three Shepherds’), O ce veste (‘Oh, What News’), and Florile dalbe (‘White Flowers’) are the three most popular songs learnt by the American-born. There are regional variations of these songs, but the carollers usually practise in advance to standardize the texts. Although third-generation Romanian Americans learn the words phonetically and often do not know their meaning, many are proud to carry on an ancient tradition that symbolizes their ethnicity. Increasingly song texts have become fixed through the use of song sheets or homemade song booklets.

The most persistent and characteristic traditional genre maintained by Romanian Americans is dance music. Romanian Americans as well as Serbians, Macedonians and other eastern and Balkan groups play Romanian dance music as part of their mixed repertory for weddings and other festive occasions. Romanian dance music has been adapted to the new environment, and manufactured brass and woodwind instruments (e.g. clarinet, taragot) have replaced traditional handmade folk instruments. Other popular instruments include violin, accordion and cimbalom (associated frequently with Romani musicians). Different regional dance styles predominate in different American cities: Romanian folkdancing in Cleveland is identified as Transylvanian; the Banat style is characteristic for Chicago, Detroit, Gary and East Chicago. In the 1920s Romanian and Gypsy orchestras recorded popular dance tunes on the Victor and Columbia labels with titles such as Memorii din Banat (‘Memories from the Banat’) and Învârtita de la Chicago (‘Învârtita from Chicago’) by Joan Hategan’s Orchestra, which reflected ethnic sensitivity to Old World tunes. George Radu was one of the most popular Romanian musicians among Romanian Americans before World War II, recording such favourites as Doină din America (with Nicu Hanzi’s Orchestra) and Doină din Selişte (‘Lament from Selişte’, with Alex Fodor’s Orchestra). Also at this time a number of professional musicians from Romania visited the USA and stayed, carving out significant careers as promoters of Romanian traditional dance and music (e.g. the Ionescu-Ardeal couple) and instrumentalists (e.g. Iancu Cârlig, a cimbalom player who performed at the New York World’s Fair in 1939). In the 1950s and 60s, Larisa Lucaci (from Cleveland) also publicized Romanian folkdance and music widely. Some of the current musicians are more recent émigrés, including a number of professional Romani musicians (e.g. in Chicago and New York).

Although some folkdance groups, such as the Şezătoare group (founded in Cleveland in 1959 by Nicolae Smărăndescu to foster and preserve Romanian folksong and dance), try to maintain an authentic Old World style, most Romanian American dances are acculturated. The accommodation of dance styles originally resulted from the efforts of immigrants from different parts of Romania to adapt to each other. Now most original steps have been forgotten and the dances have been greatly simplified. The dances most frequently performed are the simplest ones, such as the horă (the basic circle dance of Romania and other parts of eastern Europe) and the sîrbă, or snake dance, performed in a long winding line with the arms of each dancer placed on the shoulders of those on either side; both are staples at weddings. The sirbă is sometimes still accompanied by strigături or traditional shouts. The învârtită and haţegană, originally from Transylvania, are more complex couple dances; an American variant of the învârtită – danced in a circle – is common at weddings. Originally a ritual dance of fertility and healing performed exclusively by men, the căluş or căluşer (leaping horse) became, among early 20th-century Romanian Americans, a virtuoso dance of performance, often in competitions. In modern times, it is performed by both men and women.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(j) Russian.

The first Russian explorers landed in north-western Alaska in 1741. In 1794 Orthodox missionaries began work among the native peoples, and by 1861 about 12,000 Aleuts, Tlingits and Eskimos had converted to Russian Orthodoxy. The church music of these early Russian immigrants was a blend of medieval znamennïy chants and 18th-century Western European musical styles. Although the connections between Russian and Amerindian musics have not been studied in depth, some scholars believe that multi-voice religious chants still sung among the Tlingits are the remnants of Russian Orthodox a cappella choral singing.

Since the 1880s, when mass immigration began, more than 750,000 people of Russian ancestry have settled in the USA. Each of the many ideological, social, religious, linguistic and ethnic Russian subgroups has contributed to the colourful mosaic of Russian American music. The Russian Orthodox Church of America has been a powerful influence for the expression of a unified Russian ethnicity; it has also provided advanced training for church musicians. The entire liturgy is still sung a cappella (no spoken words are allowed), in intricate polyphonic texture and with characteristic parts for low basses. The use of musical instruments, as objects of human artifice, is still forbidden in the Russian American church. The repertory includes multi-part arrangements of chants, old and new, and liturgical compositions by Russian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Members of several religious minorities, most notably Old Believers and Molokans, immigrated to the USA as a result of persecution in Russia. Accustomed to living in opposition to main-stream society in closed small communities in Russia, many of them persistently maintain their religious, ethnic and cultural identities; they have learned to live in two worlds, the old and the new simultaneously, but without allowing their complete merging. The Old Believers, who split from mainstream Russian Orthodoxy in the 1650s, preserved the repertory of monophonic znamennïy chants (see Russian and Slavonic church music, §2) sung a cappella, as well as knowledge of musical notation by Russian neumes called kryuki. First arriving in the USA in the 1880s, Old Believers scattered throughout New York, New Jersey, south-western Pennsylvania and Michigan, eventually forming a closely knit community in Erie; they spoke Russian at home and maintained traditional dietary customs. Their secular singing included village wedding songs, laments, lullabies, ballads and urban romances, all sung a cappella; only dance-songs and chastushki (see below) could be accompanied by instruments. The cultural separateness of these communities began to break down in the 1950s, and in 1978 one group of Old Believers in Erie, Pennsylvania, integrated English into church services by trnaslating texts of prayers and chants; znamennïy melodies and kryuki notation were preserved intact. Another group of Old Believers who arrived in Oregon in the 1960s also preserved the entire znamennïy repertory. Although it is taught by means of kryuki notation, the performance tradition is largely transmitted orally. Oregon Old Believers continue to perform lullabies, game- and dance-songs, ballads and other genres of Russian rural folksong. Traditional wedding songs and laments are still part of the wedding ceremony.

Unlike the Old Believers, the Molokans broke completely with the Russian Orthodox Church. Molokanism rejected all visual attributes of Orthodox liturgy; consequently, verbal and non-verbal forms of sound assumed some of the functions and energy that flowed through other channels of the Orthodox service. A prominent feature of Molokan sobraniye (communal worship) is psalms and songs sung a cappella by the entire congregation and led by specially trained singers. Psalms and songs are also sung at home on social occasions and during ritual celebrations associated with the benediction of children, weddings, funerals, memorials, house-warmings and religious holidays. The repertory of the Molokans in the USA consists of several hundred psalms and spiritual songs. Adult Molokans are not supposed to sing anything else. Before marriage, they can take part in secular singing and dancing together with non-Molokan youth, but they are expected to refrain from these activities after marriage. In reality, however, the secular repertory of adult Molokans ranges from Russian folksong to operatic arias and American popular music.

Religious singing is an essential factor of Molokan self-identification. The names of the creators of songs and psalms are never printed in Molokan songbooks: being both a manifestation and the source of the communal spiritual power, each composition belongs to the entire community. The repertory is maintained by individual training and spevki (‘singing classes’ led by experienced singers), participation in which is expected from young members of the church. Molokan singing employs a combination of oral and written forms. The melodies are transmitted orally from generation to generation; they are either ‘worked out’ (composed) by an individual singer, usually male for psalms, or ‘given’ by the Spirit. Depending on the local school, psalms are sung in unison (in two, three or sometimes four octaves) or in parts; the melody is often in the middle, surrounded by melodic counterpoints in the lower and upper registers or by heterophonic versions of the same melody. Any passage from the Bible can be used in psalms. A short segment is first read aloud and then lined out (see Lining out) to a melody. Psalm melodies are highly melismatic, use assymetrical phrases and, in general, are similar to protyazhnaya songs (see Russian federation, §I, 1(v)).

Although traditional psalm melodies are constantly undergoing changes, entirely new melodies are no longer composed. However, spiritual songs, set to rhymed poems, are still being created. Unlike psalms, song melodies are syllabic and usually symmetrical in structure. Connections with melodies of old Russian village ballads, dance, love and soldier songs, as well as songs of other sects, are easily traceable. Songs from Soviet films and American popular songs have also left their marks on Molokan music; some are used in their entirety with new texts (Korobochka, Kogda b imel zlatiye gorï, Na zakate khodit paren', Amazing grace, The Last Rose of Summer, Clementine and Red River Valley are examples). Emigré culture can often be characterized as operating between two poles: memory and adaptation. Among Molokans, traditional melodies of psalms and newly composed songs fill in the continuum. Although Molokan communities in the USA are quite different from those of Old Believers, they too have started to accept the use of English during sobraniye.

Outside of religious practices, popular repertories in many urban Russian American communities include late 19th-century romances and ballads, Ukranian, Gypsy and Jewish entertainment music, and poems composed as songs by favourite contemporary poets (Vladimir Vïsotsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksander Galich). This music is commonly performed in Russian restaurants and clubs and has been extensively recorded. A genre of traditional folk music that survived in both urban and rural communities is chastushka (from the adjective chastïy ‘quick’). These songs consist of short, single-stanza rhymed couplets and are usually sung to dance. Chastushka texts are often extemporized and reflect current local events and concerns. One of the few genres of Russian folksong that can be performed with instrumental accompaniment, they are sung with balalaika or, when available, garmoshka (a type of button accordion), and are easily adaptable to any other instrument at hand. Other genres of traditional village folksong have been preserved only in isolated Russian American communities. In the late 20th century, however, there was a revival of Russian folk music in new forms. Instrumental ensembles and orchestras (comprising different sizes and combinations of balalaika, domra, mandolin, accordion and string instruments) have attracted performers from Russian American and other multi-ethnic communities. Arrangements of folksongs also became popular among pop and rock ensembles of younger Russian Americans. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian American communities in larger metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles sponsored tours of popular Russian singers. Village performers from Russia have performed in the USA under the auspices of American government agencies, private companies and educational institutions.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(k) South Slavic.

Introduction. Although South Slavic immigration may have begun as early as the 17th century and continues to the present day, most immigrants from the lands of the former Yugoslavia left to escape economic hardship during the mass migration of 1880–1910. Most were peasants from the Austro-Hungarian territories of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and to a lesser extent from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia (which were under the control of the Ottoman Empire). By the turn of the 20th century, the principal communities had been formed (mostly in mining and manufacturing areas), and religious and social institutions – churches, fraternal organizations, newspapers and cultural organizations – had been established. It is estimated that between 1·5 and 2 million people of South Slavic descent live in North America.

A number of traditional contexts for music were transplanted to North America, including weddings, dances, informal home gatherings and the slava (family religious observance). New contexts include amateur singing societies, certain church services, bećar gatherings (see below), commercial recordings and public performances. The last is a particularly conspicuous part of Slavic American culture, as hundreds of groups dressed in traditional costumes perform regional songs and dances to the accompaniment of native instruments. Excellent relations between these groups and the government-sponsored matice iseljenike (immigrant societies) of the several former Yugoslav republics ensure continuing contact with the native cultures. In presenting traditional culture, transformed for the concert stage, Slavic American performing groups re-create and identify with an ethnic milieu in which they no longer live; contemporary Slavic American immigrant folklore, however, is generally not represented on stage.

Despite the enormous diversity of regional styles in South Slavic traditional music, the Slavic American immigrant repertories comprise somewhat homogenized musical styles. Vocal music, the largest part of the repertory, generally has rounded strophic forms, diatonic intervals and a manner of performance based to a large extent on evolving popular music styles in the home areas. This style was doubtless influenced by the presence of foreign élites (Austrian, Italian and Hungarian) in southern Slav cities at the time of the mass migration. Instrumental music, principally for dancing, also reflects these influences; the most common dance forms are waltzes and polkas, and Western instruments such as accordion, violin, guitar and wind instruments are more frequently played than traditional instruments. Nonetheless, distinctive regional hybrid styles may be found in Slavic American communities.

Slovenian. Americans of Slovene descent number some 350,000 individuals. As Slovenia is bordered by Austria and Alpine Italy, Slovenian folk music has an Alpine flavour that has been retained in the USA. Strophic forms, triadic harmonies and partsinging characterize the vocal music, whereas instrumental music follows the models of Alpine polkas and waltzes. Slovenian Americans such as Frank Yankovich have been in the forefront of the pan-ethnic polka movement in the Midwest, which created a hybrid American-style polka and waltz repertory. This style has been adapted to liturgical use in the so-called ‘polka mass’ shared by Slovenes, Croats, Poles and other eastern European Catholics. Yankovich's ensemble includes accordion, banjo, double bass, drums and voices, with woodwind and brass instruments sometimes added. While the conventional chromatic accordion continues to be the most popular Slovenian instrument, there has been a revival in recent years of ‘button-box’ orchestras, ensembles of diatonic button accordions.

Macedonian. Americans of Macedonian origin are thought to number some 60,000 individuals; many identify themselves as Bulgarians, and their culture has much in common with that of Bulgaria. They arrived later and in smaller numbers than other South Slavs and have not established cultural institutions to the same extent. Their music is taken largely from commercial sources in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and at Macedonian American gatherings traditional and modern songs, as well as a few Macedonian and Serbian dances, may be heard. Because of additive rhythms and scales with augmented intervals (the latter a legacy of Turkish occupation), Macedonian songs are considered somewhat exotic and oriental by other Slavic Americans and are very popular at their gatherings. As in other Slavic American groups, accordion and clarinet are prominent in dance and vocal accompaniment, and are sometimes augmented by guitar, double bass, tarabuka goblet drum or tapan double-headed bass drum (see also §(d) above).

Bosnians, Croatians, Serbians. Serbo-Croatian-speaking Americans and their descendants number some 600,000–1,000,000 Croats and 250,000–400,000 Serbs (including Montenegrins). The Bosnian Muslim population has swollen to an estimated 100,000 following the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and Bosnians (including Bosnian Croats and Serbs) who might formerly have associated with other South Slavic groups are now forming their own communities. Four distinct musical style areas are included in the Croatian and Serbian regions of the former Yugoslavia, and isolated examples from some of these styles may be found in a few American communities: ojkanje (non-tempered diaphonic song form) among highland Croats and Bosnians, sevdalinke (Turkish-influenced love songs) among Bosnian Muslims, the playing of chromatic polyphony on sopila (oboes) among northern Adriatic Croats, linđo dancing to rhymed calls and lijerica (three-string fiddle) accompaniment among Dalmatians, and the performance of epic songs accompanied by the gusle (one-string fiddle) mostly among Serbs. However, these styles have generally not been transmitted to the second and subsequent generations and hence have not contributed to a Slavic American style. Rather, a hybrid song repertory is shared by many Croats and Serbs and has been passed to second, third and in some cases fourth generations. It consists of rural songs of a more recent style, urban songs composed on rural models and foreign song styles (mostly Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and to some degree Turkish) adapted to Serbo-Croatian texts. Such a homogenization of styles is probably due to several factors: the long association and common experiences of different Serbo-Croatian-speaking nationalities in North America, a pan-Slavic trend already current in the South Slavic region in the late 19th century, and (despite the frequent use of accordions and other instruments) the general preference of American Croats and Serbs for the tambura instrumental medium.

Tambura refers to a family of long-necked plucked lutes, of Turkish origin, found throughout the Balkans. By the time of the mass migration, the simple, hand-hewn instruments had been pressed into the service of southern Slav nationalists as a symbol of cultural unity and had been modified to serve in a European-influenced string ensemble. By the 1890s tambura instruments had arrived and were being manufactured in North America; this industry continues to flourish. Tambura instruments and ensembles rapidly spread throughout the USA and Canada, a movement aided by appearances in vaudeville of tambura musicians, recordings in Serbo-Croatian, and teachers and arrangers such as Paul Perman, John Rozgaj, Rudolph Crnkovic and the Crlenica Brothers.

Three trends in American tambura music may be discerned, parallel to those in the former Yugoslavia. The first is a cultivated tradition whose adherents seek to legitimize tambura as a progressive cultural activity through an emphasis on musical literacy, trained musicianship, concert performances and a semi-classical repertory. Its most prominent representative is Walter Kolar, who as director of the Duquesne University Tamburitzans and Junior Tamburitzans, has established the model for Slavic American folklore groups and tambura music education. The second, often known as bećar (‘young rake’) music, derives from rural traditions emphasizing orally acquired repertory and technique, small ensembles and an informal celebratory atmosphere. Dave Zupkovich and Marty Kapugi are important bećar figures; some groups, such as the respected Popovich Brothers Orchestra, are equally comfortable in concert and bećar environments. Bećar ensembles also play for dances, which in addition to waltzes and polkas include many kolo (circle) and other southern Slav dances.

The third trend is the result of recent political developments. Since World War II, and particularly since the Yugoslav wars, the hybrid nature of the Croatian-Serbian musical culture has been weakened by political and religious disputes and by the increasing preference of all Slavic Americans for artists and recordings of their own ethnicity. This has led to a keen awareness in both Croatian and Serbian communities of the distinction between American and European Slavic traditions. Although each tradition has its partisans, the American hybrids are increasingly the province of the older generations, while younger generations espouse ethnic musical monocultures. As tambura is coming to be accepted in the former Yugoslav republics as an expressly Croatian musical form, and American tambura music is dominated by younger Croatian tambura musicians such as Jerry Grcevich and the Slanina (‘bacon’) Orchestra, who are actively engaged with contemporary Croatian tambura music and its incorporation of international popular styles. Younger Serbian and other Slavic Americans, to the extent that they honour a musical-cultural heritage, do so within their own ethnic groups and in general eschew tambura music. At the end of the 20th century the established Slavic American cultural institutions and expressive forms were undergoing a fundamental transition.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(l) Ukrainian.

The large numbers of immigrants from the Ukraine who settled in the industrial northeastern USA during the 19th century brought with them a rich heritage of village music-making, which was eventually changed and adapted to the New World setting. Much of the traditional folksong corpus died out, but some songs and instrumental music associated with weddings have lingered on, providing support for the communities’ growing sense of ethnic identity. The introduction of sound recordings and ethnic radio programmes in the early decades of the 20th century helped to maintain the group’s folk-music legacy, albeit in a greatly reduced form.

Choral singing, secular and religious, has become the most characteristic medium for Ukrainian music in the USA. Church cantors were at first especially important; later, choral masters such as Alexander Antonovych Koshyts (1875–1944) helped to develop the art among Ukrainian American communities from the 1920s onwards. After World War II a new wave of Ukrainian immigrants, including many professional musicians trained in the Ukraine, arrived in the USA as political refugees, and their presence helped to reinforce this trend and enrich Ukrainian American music. Soon after the war the Bandurist Male Choir of Detroit was formed under the direction of Volodymyr Bozhyk and Hryhory Kytasty. By 1959 the Association of Ukrainian Choirs of America was formed in New York.

Ukrainian musical plays and operettas, since the first production in New York in 1907, have been revived from time to time for both stage and screen; these include such popular pieces from the traditional repertory as Natalka Poltavka, Cossack Beyond the Danube and Marusia. Workshops stressing instrumental performance have been held to teach the rudiments of making and playing the bandura (psaltery), the national folk instrument of the Ukraine.

Efforts to provide a base for the Ukrainian community’s musical activities in the USA include the founding of a short-lived Ukrainian Conservatory of Music in New York in 1924 by one of the pioneer figures of Ukrainian American music, Mykhailo Hayvoronsky (1892–1949). In 1952 the Ukrainian Music Institute was established in New York; founded by Roman Sawycky (1907–60), it soon grew into a network of 14 branches, with 50 teachers and 400 students, from Buffalo, New York, to Washington, DC.

(i) African cultural traditions and musical aesthetics.

2. Black American.

African American musics consist of individual and group, and oral and written forms of expression. The various genres that comprise this tradition are associated with specific historical periods, social contexts and functions. They also share a common core of aesthetic qualities of African origin that positions black American music within an African cultural continuum. Black Americans resisted cultural imperialism of the larger society by maintaining fundamental ideals from the past. During the era of slavery, they adapted to and survived their oppressive existence by preserving existing and creating new musical forms from African traditions, and they brought relevance to European musical traditions by reshaping them to conform to African aesthetic ideals. After emancipation, they transformed oral forms into written traditions, folk idioms into concert and urban styles, and secular and sacred traditions into hybrid forms of expression.

(ii) Secular and sacred textual themes.

(iii) The fusion of oral and written traditions.

(iv) Secular-scared musical interactions in the 20th century.

(i) African cultural traditions and musical aesthetics.

When Africans were transplanted to the New World as slaves, they continued to engage in cultural traditions of African origin. Missionaries, slaveholders and other observers from the 17th–19th centuries noted that music was central to these traditions and that instrumental music, song, and dance or some form of bodily movement accompanied a range of ritualized events such as religious ceremonies, festivals and holiday celebrations, as well as work, recreational and social activities.

Descriptions of these African and American activities reveal that shared approaches to music-making and common aesthetic features link black musical events on to the two continents. Even though music is performed by individuals, musical events are generally organized as communal, celebratory and social occasions in which everyone participates freely without distinctions made between performer and audience. The musical event itself and the spontaneous and interactive involvement of the entire community dictate musical content, aesthetic priorities and structural components as evidenced in the text, vocal style and the prominence of repetitive chorus and call-and-response structures. In the case of the latter, the leader improvises the text and melody to which the chorus responds with a short repetitive phrase. Within the chorus section, individuals may make slight changes in the pitch and rhythm. Singers also employ vocal qualities ranging from raspy, guttural, strained and nasal to percussive, and their vocal interpretations weave groans, screams, grunts, cries, moans, whines and other interjections into melodies.

European observers responded negatively to the spontaneous quality and other features of musical performances by slaves. They described the singing as wild, crude, artless, barbaric and a mixture of ‘yells and screeches’, ‘boisterous outbursts’ and ‘nonsensical chants and catches’. According to Francis Bebey (1975, p.1145), ‘the objective of African music is not necessarily to produce sounds agreeable to the ear but to translate everyday experiences into living sound. The musician wisely avoids using beauty as his criterion because no criterion could be more arbitrary’. Instead, musicians use a criterion based on the function of music to accompany dance and a variety of activities such as work, religious, ceremonial, social and recreational events.

Dance and movement are intrinsic to African and African-derived musical expressions. European clergy were critical of this practice among slaves, interpreting it as pagan and contrary to European cultural and Christian traditions. The clergy simply were unable to relate to the dance aesthetic, the percussive sound qualities and polyrhythmic structures produced by the instruments that accompany dancing. African-derived dance styles emphasize exaggerated arm, shoulder, hip and leg movement, in contrast to the more sedate nature of European dance styles that centre around a straight and stiff posture. These aesthetic differences led to African dance styles being labelled by the clergy and other European observers as primitive, wild and vulgar.

To discourage and replace these ‘sinful’ dances and ‘secular’ musical events in America with sanctioned European activities, missionaries began to organize proselytizing campaigns in the 18th century in northern colonies. Despite the conversion of some slaves and free blacks, the clergy’s initial effort was largely unsuccessful. However, the Great Revival Movement mounted a century later in the South resulted in the conversion of large groups of slaves, who were attracted to the emotional aspect of the camp meetings associated with this movement. As Christians, the majority of slaves and free blacks relinquished neither their African religious beliefs nor cultural traditions. They resisted European cultural conformity by transforming Christian worship services into an African-styled ritual, developing the Protestant repertory into an African American tradition and reinterpreting biblical teaching through both an African world-view and their experiences as slaves.

When slaves and free blacks attended camp meetings and later conducted their own religious services, they changed the character of the ritual by freely interjecting verbal (‘Yes, Glory’, ‘Lord! sweet Lord’, ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Oh, Lord’ and ‘Ha! ha!’) and physical responses such as tossing heads, waving and clapping hands and stomping feet throughout the sermon. They also created improvised songs accompanied by bodily movement and a religious dance known as the ‘shout’. The white clergy disapproved of these unorthodox practices and expressed concern about the slaves’ practice of transforming psalms and hymns into African-styled songs. Henry Russell, a British musician who visited a black church in Vicksburg, MS, in the 1830s observed that

When the minister gave out his own version of the Psalm, the choir commenced singing so rapidly that the original tune absolutely ceased to exist – in fact, the fine old psalm tune became thoroughly transformed into a kind of negro melody; and so sudden was the transformation, by accelerating the time, for a moment, I fancied that not only the choir but the little congregation intended to get up a dance as part of the service (Russell, 1895, p.85).

Paul Svinin, a Russian visitor to a black church in Philadelphia in 1811 described the tranformation process:

At the end of every psalm, the entire congregation, men and women alike, sang verses in a loud, shrill monotone. This lasted about an hour. [They later] began chanting psalms in chorus, the men and women alternating, a procedure which lasted some twenty minutes (Svinin, 1930, p.20).

Elizabeth Kilham, a white school teacher in the South after the Civil War, witnessed this process applied to a hymn and concluded that ‘Watts and Newton would never recognize their productions through the transformations they have undergone at the hands of their colored admirers’ (Kilham, 1870, p.129). The slaves’ reinterpreted versions of psalms and hymns resembled their communal compositions. Both are characterized by call-and-response structures, repetitive choruses, repetitive melodic phrases, melodic ornamentation (i.e. slides, slurs, bends, grunts and moans), rhythmic complexity and heterophonic singing. The distinctive body of music later became known as Negro folk spirituals.

When missionaries converted slaves into Christianity they anticipated the end of ‘pagan’ activities and assumed that psalm and hymn singing would replace the improvised songs associated with both religious and secular events. To this end, several whites reported that ‘whenever the negroes become Christian, they give up dancing … and employ their musical talents merely on psalms and hymns’ (Epstein, 1977, p.11). The limited number of secular songs described in contemporary writings and included in collections of slave songs suggests that most slaves did not sing secular songs after becoming Christians. But slaves and free blacks often did not sing secular songs in the presence of whites, since they were expected to sing only religious songs. In other instances, the overseer and masters requested slaves to sing their favourite songs, which often were from the slaves’ sacred tradition. Despite the pressure to relinquish an African world-view and ‘pagan’ way of life, the majority of Christian slaves continued to define their cultural traditions from an African frame of reference. As such, they viewed their sacred and secular worlds as interconnected.

(ii) Secular and sacred textual themes.

Churches became central to the lives of slaves as institutions with multiple functions. In addition to religious functions, they became temporary refuges from a cruel world and centres for unrestricted cultural and personal expression. Through song, slaves expressed religious beliefs, vented frustrations and responded to daily experience. The slaves’ secular and sacred worlds became intertwined, as reported by the minister-abolitionist James McKim from Philadelphia, who noticed while travelling by boat to the Sea Islands of South Carolina in 1862 that the slave rowers sang only religious songs. When he asked about the origins of these songs, a rower responded: ‘Dey make ’em, sah’. Further inquiry about how they were made led to the following explanation:

My master call me up and order me a short peck of corn and a hundred lash. My friends see it and is sorry for me. When dey come to de praise meeting dat night dey sing about it. Some’s very good singers and know how; and dey work it in, work it in, you know; till dey git it right; and dat’s de way.

He then sang the song created from the incident:

No more driver call for me (3x)
Many a thousand die!
No more peck of corn for me (3x)
Many a thousand die!
No more hundred lash for me (3x)
Many a thousand die!
(McKim, pp.58–9)

Descriptions of slave singing in other secular contexts, including field, industrial and transportation-related labour, domestic chores and leisure activities, reveal that some songs consist exclusively of either secular or religious texts, whereas others interweave the two, as the following example demonstrates:

It’s a long John, it’s a long John,
He’s a long gone, he’s a long gone,
Like a turkey through the corn, through the long corn,
Well, my John said, in the ten chap ten,
If a man die, he will live again,
Well, they crucified Jesus and they nailed him to the cross,
Sister Mary cried, my child is lost. …
(Lomax, 19)

Secular songs not only facilitated work and the passing of time but also provided a forum for social commentary and criticism, as shown in the lyrics of the following song:

We raise the wheat, Dey gib us de corn;
We bake the bread, Dey gib us de crust;
We sif de meal, Dey gib us de huss;
We peel de meat, Dey gib us de skin;
And dat’s de way, Dey take us in;
We skin de pot, Dey gib us de liquor,
And say dat’s good enough for nigger.
(Levine, 1977, pp.2–3)

Slaves psychologically survived their inhumane treatment by relating their plight to that of Jesus and other scriptural figures who endured hardships and unwarranted situations. Biblical stories from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations from the New Testament provided thematic material for some secular songs and the majority of folk spirituals. Slave songs recreated stories about the oppressed Hebrew people, the cruel Egyptians, the Red Sea and the land of Canaan to reflect their oppression, their treatment by whites and their desire for freedom. The stories about Daniel, Jacob, Moses, Gabriel, Jesus, Jonah, Paul, Silas, Mary and Martha provided them with the courage, strength and determination to endure worldly hardship with the promise of a better life in Heaven.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go.
Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go.
Go down Moses, ‘way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh, let my people go.
(Songs of Zion, 1981, p.112)

Folk spirituals also provided a forum for slaves to protest their bondage and criticize their masters: ‘Befo’ I’d be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, An’ go home to my Lord an’ be free’ (Southern, 1997, p.57).

A number of Negro spirituals include language coded with double entendre, whose meaning can only be understood if analyzed in the appropriate performance context. Slaves sang these songs to organize clandestine meetings and plan escapes for the thousands of slaves who found freedom in the North and in Canada:

Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus!
Steal away, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here!
My Lord calls me, He calls me by the thunder;
The trumpet sounds within a my soul, I ain’t got long to stay here.
(Songs of Zion, 1981, p.34)

The first line of the song text given above alerted slaves to the presence of the person who would lead them to freedom. The remaining text warned that the journey would begin immediately upon receiving a signal that the path was clear. These and other texts were incomprehensible to whites who interpreted them as unintelligible and meaningless.

After slavery ended, double entendre remained a part of African American musical expression, providing options for black Americans to express their private thoughts freely in public space. During this time, the secular world became increasingly important in the lives of black Americans as, did the need for individual expression. Freedom presented new challenges for blacks, who struggled to establish new lives and cope with limited opportunities for economic independence and social advancement. In response, they created a new musical form called the Blues, through which they spoke frankly about the realities of everyday life. In blues songs emotional and sexual references were masked through the use of coded and/or metaphorical language. However, when protesting their treatment as workers and commenting on social inequalities, they did so in direct and overt ways. Even though the blues are associated with individual singers, their messages express the feelings and experiences shared by African Americans as a community.

(iii) The fusion of oral and written traditions.

Emancipation provided blacks with a degree of freedom and mobility, yet they were expected to conform to the world-view and cultural standards of society at large. As a free people, according to W.E.B. DuBois (1989, p.3), African Americans were faced with the conflicts of their double identity, both American and African, with ‘two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body’. The diverse ways in which African Americans sought to reconcile this dual cultural identity are manifested in the transformation of folk forms for the concert stage in the late 19th century and urban forms in the 20th century.

Following the Civil War, southern whites resisted all attempts to equip black Americans with the tools necessary for economic stability and social advancement. Conversely, northern abolitionists and religious organizations such as the American Missionary Association promoted education as the only viable solution for achieving social and racial equality in society. Committed to this mission, they established schools throughout the South and recruited teachers from the North, and in these schools, the teachers expected African-Americans to conform to Euro-American cultural models and ideals.

The teachers and administrators who established and taught in schools located in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina reported that the children showed progress in learning the basic subjects and that they performed new songs with enthusiasm. However, their views differed about the ways in which these new songs and the general curriculum would affect indigenous cultural expressions. Some teachers expressed disappointment that the children continued to engage in past religious rituals and musical activities. Others predicted that the distinctive features and cultural forms of African American music would gradually disappear with the continued education of the current and subsequent generations. Still others were ambivalent about promoting cultural superiority at the risk of destroying the richness of African American culture.

Education did not destroy black American culture, but it became one of the many factors that would reshape and diversify it as the musical transformations and innovations that occurred on black American college campuses demonstrates. These schools exposed students to Euro-American cultural models and ideals, and many ultimately distanced themselves from folk spirituals, referring to them as undignified and primitive and opposing their inclusion in arranged forms in the repertory of African American college choirs. Nevertheless, through the initial efforts of the white choral instructors at Fisk University, Hampton Institute and other African American colleges, the Negro folk spiritual quickly became known and admired throughout the world as a concert form of black American artistic expression.

The concert versions of spirituals differed from folk styles in their development, function and performance aesthetic. Folk spirituals developed as a form of communal religious expression, and their performance was governed by the aesthetics of the African American oral tradition. Arranged versions, created by musicians trained in the European concert stage tradition, established African American music as a written tradition. As such, performers executed and interpreted written scores according to European aesthetic principles. Nevertheless, the arrangements preserved aspects of the original form through the use of call-and-response structures, syncopation, polyrhythms, melodic and textual repetition and linguistic dialect.

The transformation of folk spirituals into arranged versions mirrors cultural changes that took place in African American communities during the decades following the Civil War. Arranged versions embody the new experiences and imperatives of African Americans as well as their adoption of new attitudes, values and world-view. Despite the popularity of arranged spirituals, the core black American folk community did not relate to them, stating that the songs didn’t sound ‘right’, that they were too ‘pretty’ and that choirs confused them with classical music. Differences in aesthetic ideals and musical expectations shaped this assessment. The emerging African American middle-class began to reshape aspects of and bring diversity to African American musical traditions, yet folk and new forms of cultural expression coexisted amid the two social classes.

The transformation of folk expressions into new written forms continued throughout the 20th century. The arranged spiritual developed when existing versions no longer operated effectively within a given context or when new values changed the significance of old traditions. When the original expressions no longer served their designated functions they became part of the historical legacy and were performed as such.

During the first four decades of the 20th century, millions of black Americans moved from rural to urban areas, where they faced unexpected discriminatory practices and a host of new problems. Many adapted to and endured life in the city by turning to African American churches for support, strength and guidance. Many urban dwellers were attracted to the Holiness Pentecostal church, whose doctrine emphasized sanctification on earth for believers. Its ritual resembled that of slaves and centred around the congregation; the musical repertory consisted of folk spirituals, spontaneously created songs in the style of folk spirituals and a new body of religious music written by an emerging group of Methodist and Baptist songwriters. The singing style preserved all of the aesthetic features associated with the folk spiritual: improvised melodies, call-and-response structures, multi-layered rhythms, hand-clapping and foot-stamping.

Holiness Pentecostal congregations introduced two major innovations to the folk spiritual tradition: new textual themes and instrumental accompaniment. The new texts centred on the difficulties of living a Christian life and Christian-inspired solutions to worldly burdens. The new themes replaced the ‘dying and going to Heaven’ theme found in spirituals, thus capturing the urban experiences, new values, attitudes and world views of the city dwellers.

Holiness Pentecostal churches also brought an urban spirit and sound to the ritual by incorporating instruments from the secular world into the service. The various scriptures that instructed congregations to praise the Lord with instruments inspired this development. The musicians responded by bringing to church their guitars, drums, trombones, trumpets and saxophones among other secular instruments, which they played in improvised ragtime, jazz and blues styles. The addition of these instruments to accompany the singing and the introduction of new song texts transformed the folk spiritual into a new body of religious music known as folk gospel.

The development of gospel music as a written tradition paralleled the emergence of the folk gospel style (see Gospel music, §II). The Methodist minister Charles Albert Tindley, created the prototype for this music during the first decade of the 20th century. Tindley’s compositions, known as gospel-hymns, related scriptural themes to daily life experiences, combined the verse-structure from hymns with the verse-refrain structure of folk spirituals and retained the melodic and rhythmic features of the African American folk tradition. Tindley originally wrote these hymns in conjunction with his sermons, and they were performed within this context by him, his congregation and the seven-member all-male Tindley Gospel Singers. Tindley, as well as many gospel music composers that followed, did not read or write music; they used transcribers to translate their songs into a form of notation that performers interpreted by employing the conventions of oral tradition.

Tindley’s compositions provided the foundation for an original form of gospel music created in the 1920s by Thomas A. Dorsey, a trained musician and ragtime, blues and jazz performer. While Dorsey preserved in his songs the textual themes and African American vernacular features found in Tindley’s model, he replaced many of the melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and structural features common to hymns with those from ragtime, blues and jazz. Adhering to the process of musical transmission in the African American tradition, Dorsey’s scores provide only a skeletal outline of the basic melody, harmony and rhythm. Performers interpreted Dorsey’s compositions using the oral method and performance aesthetic associated with black American vernacular traditions. In the process, they freely changed keys, substituted metres and improvised on the notated melody, harmony, rhythm and text. Gospel music is a fluid and changing tradition defined by a body of original compositions and a distinctive performance style.

The transformation of the folk blues into a written tradition followed a similar pattern of development, as did the Negro spiritual. Initially middle-class black American musicians with formal training distanced themselves from the blues, which they viewed as ‘primitive’. This perception began to change with the success of w.c. Handy, an African American professional musician and bandleader, who was the first person to publish original blues compositions. Handy realized the commercial potential of the blues during a performance of his dance orchestra in a rural black Mississippi community in 1903, when his orchestra’s repertory of arranged marches, light classics, polkas, schottisches, waltzes and other American popular forms failed to meet the expectations of the audience. At the request of the audience, a local three-member blues band substituted for Handy’s orchestra. According to Handy, this group played songs on a battered guitar, mandolin and worn-out bass that were repetitive, monotonous and with no clear beginning or ending. Yet this blues band made more money in tips than his band made on contract. He concluded that an audience existed for this ‘weird’ music despite its need for ‘polishing’ (Handy, 1970, pp.80–81).

Inspired by this experience, Handy began a formal study of folk blues and wrote arrangements of this music and original compositions that employed the form, vocabulary, rhythms and text of the blues idiom. He claimed originality, emphasizing that his compositions were built upon, rather than constructed of the snatches, phrases and cries of specific folk blues songs. Handy’s first composition, Mister Crump (1909), later published as The Memphis Blues (1912; fig.17), followed by The St. Louis Blues (1914) and The Beale Street Blues (1917), popularized the blues as a formal musical genre that crossed racial and class boundaries. These works quickly entered the repertory of brass, society dance and jazz bands, radio and symphony orchestras, vaudeville, Broadway, concert singers and professional choirs. Through such performances the blues acquired new forms, performance styles, and meanings.

After Handy introduced the blues to mainstream society, professional musicians of all races began writing, publishing and recording in the new blues style. In 1920, African American songwriter Perry Bradford convinced a record executive from Okeh Records to record one of his blues compositions, That Thing Called Love sung by Mamie Smith, a black American woman. Smith’s vaudeville-influenced vocal style was diluted by the stilted instrumental accompaniment of white session musicians. However, Smith’s subsequent recording of Bradford’s Crazy Blues contained aesthetic qualities of the oral tradition. The accompanying African American jazz ensemble played from a head arrangement, bringing an element of spontaneity to the performance. Crazy Blues and subsequent vocal recordings of original blues compositions quickly established this new blues style as a viable commercial commodity. Even though its performance aesthetic differed from that associated with folk blues, it retained elements such as form, melodic and harmonic structures; rhythm from the blues idiom known as vaudeville blues binds this blues style to the larger African American musical tradition.

Black American instrumental forms followed developmental patterns similar to the vocal traditions. They were created as oral forms of expression, often within communal contexts. Later, they were transformed into a written tradition in which the performance aesthetic preserved many conventions of the oral tradition, as illustrated in the development of ragtime and jazz. Ragtime, characterized by a syncopated melody played over a quarter (crotchet)- or eighth (quaver)-note bass pattern, evolved from instrumental dance music of slaves. After the Civil War, it was first popularized in black communities as a style performed by African American brass bands and by itinerant pianists who improvised on folk and popular tunes in a highly rhythmic and syncopated manner. By the 1890s, ragtime referred to an original body of notated music written and arranged in this style. Performances of this music by black American composers and amateur musicians often differed from their Euro-American counterparts. The ragtime compositions of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Eubie Blake and Artie Matthews often employed the improvisatory style of the oral tradition, producing great melodic and rhythmic complexity. Conversely, Euro-American musicians played these compositions exactly as notated on the printed score. Thus interpretation of the written score is guided by sets of culturally determined aesthetic principles and musical ideals.

There are also differences in the construction, use and interpretation of the printed score in Jazz, a tradition that also developed as a form of collective improvisation. Similar to the transformation of gospel and ragtime into written composition, some jazz styles became the music of composers and arrangers. As notated music, jazz arrangements became increasingly intricate and complex. Despite the availability of fully notated and arranged compositions, many African American jazz bands played primarily from head arrangements, skeletal notations of the melody, rhythm and harmonic changes. Even though oral forms of African American musics have been transformed into written traditions, performances of the music transcend the printed page and represent a continuation of aesthetic principles and musical conventions associated with oral tradition.

(iv) Secular-scared musical interactions in the 20th century.

The artificial boundaries that historically separated secular and sacred traditions in black American communities became virtually non-existent in the 20th century. The hybrid musical styles that developed from cross-fertilization of the sacred and secular traditions in the Holiness Pentecostal church invaded the secular realm through recordings and radio broadcasts beginning in the 1920s. The ragtime, jazz and blues influences on the gospel compositions of Thomas Dorsey eventually found a home in African American demoninational churches after an initial rejection because of their ‘secular’ sound. In the 1940s and the decades that followed, the unique rhythms, melodies, harmonies, form and styles intermingled and were recycled. This process, which continues to the present, brought life to new black American popular forms beginning in the 1940s and gospel beginning in the late 1960s.

In the 1940s and 50s, gospel music influenced the popular styles created by youths who patterned their styles after those of gospel performers rather than the blues and jazz musicians who influenced earlier generations. In 1954, the rhythm and blues performer Ray Charles defied the secular-sacred boundaries when he repackaged the well-known gospel version of the spiritual This Little Light of Mine as This Little Girl of Mine. Ten years later, rhythm and blues singer Mitty Collier recorded a secular version of the gospel song I had a Talk with God as I had a Talk with my Man. In the 1960s, Ray Charles, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Gene Chandler and Aretha Franklin successfully transformed gospel music into a new popular style, ‘Soul’, by employing elements of gospel in their vocal and instrumental stylings.

Paralleling this development was the use of gospel music to revitalize and reshape folk spirituals, hymns, gospel-hymns, folk ballads and earlier popular styles such as rhythm and blues into freedom or civil rights songs. The melodies, harmonies, rhythms and sensibilities of gospel combined with the message of equal rights and black pride captured the ethos and philosophy of the 1950s Civil Rights and 1960s Black Power movements.

In the 1970s, the message of gospel music became more universal. While retaining the established theme of salvation, some performers began omitting direct references to God or Jesus. They introduced themes of peace, compassion and universal love inspired by the Civil Rights movement and the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gospel performers also began recording popular songs in the gospel tradition, substituting ‘Jesus’ for ‘me’, ‘baby’, and ‘my man’. Popular songs inspired by religious beliefs, such as People Get Ready by Curtis Mayfield, were recorded by gospel singer Shirley Caesar and the Thompson Community Singers without changes to the text.

Since the 1970s, gospel music has been a part of popular music radio programming. Popular music artists freely move between both traditions on a single album, and gospel artists include songs on their albums with popular music arrangements. Both groups use songwriters, producers and artists from ‘opposite’ traditions on their albums. Such trends further illustrate the fluidity of black American musical traditions and suggest a common core of features, approaches to music making and shared life experiences that bind all African American musical genres into a conceptual whole.

(i) Mission and colonial contributions.

3. Hispanic American.

The official classification of social groups in the USA considers Hispanics to be individuals originating or descending from Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries, regardless of their ethnic heritage or social classes. Thus conceived, Hispanics represent the second largest minority in the country, with the prediction that they will soon be the most numerically important non-Anglo-Saxon group in the USA. Despite this reductionist classification, Hispanics are as diversified as the cultures from which they originate. Hispanic or Iberian Americans include not only Spanish Americans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, Dominican Americans, Portuguese and Brazilian Americans, but also other citizens from Central and South America. Their musical expressions and traditions are therefore as diverse as their various parent cultures. In some specific cases, such as those of Afro-Cuban or certain Mexican or Andean indigenous groups, one confronts a musical tradition that, as a whole, is anything but Hispanic; thus a wide range of different traditions are subsumed under the term Hispanic American music.

(ii) Contemporary traditional music.

(iii) Latin urban popular music.

USA, §II, 3: Traditional music: Hispanic American

(i) Mission and colonial contributions.

The vast territory of what is now the American Southwest and California was first explored and claimed by Spain in the 16th century, but the mission life introduced by the Spaniards was not fully organized until the 17th and 18th centuries. Spanish missionaries, particularly Franciscans in the Southwest, gave a prominent place to music in their conversion work among the Amerindians. Religious education included vocal and instrumental training. Following models established in Mexico (New Spain), Amerindian choirs sang at daily services in the mission churches. Training in making instruments for church use also received special attention, particularly organ building and the production of brass, percussion and, in the 18th century, string instruments.

The earliest well-organized Spanish missions were in what is now New Mexico. Among the Franciscan friars who accompanied the Conquistador Juan de Oñate into the area (1598) was Cristóbal de Quiñones, considered ‘the first music teacher who worked within the confines of the present United States’ (Spell, 1927). Before 1669 one of these friars had installed an organ in the church of the San Felipe mission. By the time of the Amerindian rebellion of 1680, which drove the Spaniards out of the New Mexico territory for the next 12 years, some 25 missions had been established in the area. Those of San Francisco at Sandia and of San Antonio at Isleta had ‘schools for reading and writing, singing and playing of all instruments’, as Alonso de Benavides reported in 1630 in his Memorial, the chief source of information for New Mexican church music in the first half of the 17th century.

Music teaching revolved around Gregorian chant, polyphonic music (canto de órgano) and traditional Spanish religious music. The last included villancicos and aguinaldos (Christmas songs), and alabados and alabanzas (songs of praise), all in Spanish. In addition, the monks introduced into the area the music and songs of the traditional Iberian catechetical folk theatre. Particularly important in the New Mexico and Texas areas were the autos sacramentales, dramatic religious representations with appropriate songs. The folk play Los pastores, still occasionally performed in New Mexico and Texas, is believed to be a retention of the old auto sacramental. The performance of Los pastores is preceded by the singing of posadas recounting the search of Joseph and Mary for shelter in Bethlehem. One of the three recognized genres of alabado was introduced into the Texas area by Antonio Margil de Jesús, a Franciscan missionary who worked there from 1716 and founded several missions, including the San José mission in San Antonio.

The discovery of Once misas mexicanas from the village of Tomé (founded in 1739) and other villages of northern New Mexico points to the existence of a Latin folk mass tradition, as these masses incorporate secular dance music and folksongs. Although these works were notated between 1875 and 1904 they probably dated from the 1840s or even earlier. Likewise documentary evidence on the secular musical life in Hispanic New Mexico in the 19th century, as reported by Koegel (1997), indicates folk-dance music performed in fandango festivities.

The Franciscans established their missions in the California territory only after 1769, with a total of 21 missions extending from San Diego to Sonoma by 1823. The most notable music teacher and composer in California was Narciso Durán (1776–1846), head of the San José mission. He compiled a very substantial choirbook of Gregorian chant and polyphonic music (1813), and a mass, La misa de Cataluña, discovered at the San Juan Capistrano mission, has been attributed to him. As a good pedagogue, Durán developed a simplified method of music teaching to respond to the needs of the Amerindian population of the missions. For example, he used only the F clef for all voices, wrote the melodies in the most suitable range and included all four voice parts on a single staff, the bass in solid black notes, the baritone in red, the tenor in black with white centres and the alto in red with white centres (such coloured notes were used in the California missions and in the Texas missions; see fig.18). The number of tones or melodic formulae used in the service for introits, alleluias and communions was reduced in Durán’s method. Another notable musician and dramatist was Florencio Ibáñez, who served at the missions of San Antonio de Padua and Nuestra Señora de Soledad. A pastorela (nativity play) of his apparently won great popularity throughout the California missions.

Little is known of the actual development of traditional music in that same area during the colonial period. It stands to reason, however, that traditional music activities, similar to those developed in Mexico during the 17th and 18th centuries, were present (to a certain degree) in the Southwest and California. In addition, Hispanic traditions must have been introduced gradually by the colonizers, though documentary evidence is scant.

USA, §II, 3: Traditional music: Hispanic American

(ii) Contemporary traditional music.

(a) Mexican American and Southwest.

Hispanic traditional music in the southwestern USA clearly derives from Mexican sources, although northern New Mexico and southern Colorado retain more archaic elements of Renaissance Spain, and numerous New Mexicans claim a direct Spanish rather than Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans (or Chicanos) are present from Texas to California and Colorado, and as a result of migratory movements, Chicano music has spread to areas of the Midwest and the northern plains. The music stems primarily from the Mexican norteño style but also includes several genres of the greater Mexican area. Regional norteño styles developed during the latter part of the 19th century in northern Mexico. Central to that music was the regional ensemble (conjunto) with the diatonic button accordion as the chief melodic instrument and the bajo sexto (12-string bass guitar) and the double bass as harmonic and rhythmic instruments. Out of this ensemble developed, from the mid-1930s, the Texan Mexican conjunto tradition that came to be known generically as musica norteña by Mexican Americans. This tradition has remained associated with the poor, while the orquesta or orquesta texana tradition, developed after World War II, has been more closely associated with the urban, middle-class, more Americanized minority of Texan Mexicans.

Conjunto music took over the polka as its main song-and-dance genre, not so much under the direct influence of German and Czech settlers in Texas, as has been too readily assumed, but as part of the general assimilation of European 19th-century salon dances and the creolization process common to the whole Latin American continent since the late 19th century. The same applies to the growing popularity of the button accordion from the 1890s. At first the two-row button accordion was used, with an emphasis on the bass, especially in polkas, as is evident from the recordings of Narciso Martínez and Santiago Jiménez, the first popular conjunto musicians in the 1930s and 40s. In the 50s the three-row button accordion, tuned in various keys, became the main instrument of the ensemble; from this time little or no attention was paid to the bass and harmonic possibilities of the accordion, since this function was fulfilled by the bajo sexto and the electric bass guitar. The rhythmic accompaniment had also been reinforced with the addition of a drum kit. By 1960 this instrumentation had become standard for the conjunto. The polca became predominantly a vocal genre, performed in a typically Hispanic type of folk polyphony – two voices in parallel 3rds and 6ths, in a fast tempo and with a strongly tonal harmonic support. Quite frequently the accordion and bajo sexto players are also the singers. Polka tempos tended to slow down from the 1930s to the 50s, perhaps as a result of the addition of drums and the changing styles of dancing. Concurrently a more staccato, choppy style of accordion performance developed, which became the trademark of numerous virtuoso players, such as Tony de la Rosa and Flaco Jiménez.

Another aspect of Hispanic traditional music of the Southwest is associated with social dances, found especially in New Mexico. Dances such as the polka (polca), schottische (chotis), waltz (valse), mazurka (mazurca), redowa and cotillion (cutilio) have been retained in the tradition. Since the beginning of the 20th century dance tunes have been performed traditionally by fiddle and guitar. The fiddle-tune tradition remained vigorous until the end of the 1900s. Ex.4 illustrates a polca tune as performed by Melitón Roybal (1898–1971), one of the most accomplished New Mexican folk fiddlers; such a tune very frequently accompanied the performance of the cuadrilla, a dance much like the Anglo-American quadrille.

Among the various folksong types not primarily associated with dance are the décima (which has a ten-line verse), referred to as décima cantada (an older genre) on the Texas-Mexico border, and the corrido, the archetypal ballad genre. In its most generalized form, the corrido follows the literary structure of the copla (octosyllabic quatrains, generally with the rhyme scheme ABCB). Corridos are sung to simple, symmetrical tunes in 3/4 or 6/8, accompanied by a guitar, bajo sexto and often accordion. The melodies frequently have a range of less than an octave: ‘The short range allows the corrido to be sung at the top of the singer’s voice, an essential part of the corrido style’ (Paredes, 1958). Although the essential narrative character of the corrido prevails, there are also non-narrative examples, such as simple love songs or political commentaries. Numerous episodes in the long conflict along the Texas-Mexico border (from about 1848 to 1930) are recounted in Chicano corridos, the epic character of which reflects the long struggle of the Mexican American population for social justice. One of the best examples of the border corrido is Gregorio Cortez, narrating the killing by Cortez of Sheriff Morris on 12 June 1901 in reprisal for the death of his brother at the sheriff’s hand; the corrido recounts Cortez’s heroic escape and final capture and became an important element in the emerging group consciousness of Mexican Americans (see Paredes, 1958). The melody of the Cortez corrido is typical in its anacrusis, isometric and symmetrical structure, and simple harmonic implications (I–IV–V–I) (ex.5). This type of border-conflict corrido appeared up to about 1930, but the tradition of celebrating heroes continued in new corridos, for example, those of the 1960s about John F. Kennedy or those of the 70s about César Chávez and the Chicano movement.

In Hispanic New Mexico and southern Colorado, narrative folksongs of the Spanish romance tradition are quite common and include not only the corrido but the indita (with some influence from southwestern Amerindian music) and the relación (a type of humorous romance). In addition, alabados are the main hymns of the religious brotherhood of the Penitentes or Los Hermanos, sung in a free metre and somewhat reminiscent of plainsong. The New Mexico matachines dance, a pantomime ritual dance-drama of Spanish and Moorish origin, is generally performed on the most important Catholic feasts, in a so-called ‘Spanish’ version, with violin, guitar and rattle accompaniment. There is also a ‘drum’ version performed by Pueblo Indians and a male chorus accompanied by drums and rattles (Romero, 1993). Most significantly, there are also versions with Amerindian dancers accompanied by Hispanic musicians.

Throughout the Southwest from Austin, TX, to San Diego, CA, the tradition of the Mexican danza azteca performed by the famous concheros has taken root as an expression of Mexican American identity. This tradition combines re-created elements of supposedly pre-Columbian Mexican Indian ritual dance with strongly mestizo, Spanish-related, popular religious songs, accompanied by conchas (guitar-like instruments with armadillo shells and usually five courses of double strings). The dance itself is frequently accompanied by drums of the teponaztli and huehuetl Aztec types and by rattles, and the dancers wear reconstructed and reinvented Aztec costumes as well as jingles on their ankles. The conchero groups (also known as corporaciones de danza azteca or danza de la conquista) are syncretic religious groups, combining Christian and Amerindian beliefs and practices. They form a sort of religious army whose weapons are their musical instruments and songs. The fact that they carry an essentially Christian-Catholic message does not contradict the mystic search for and identity with their Amerindian ancestry. Therefore, aside from annual pilgrimages of conchero groups to such Mexican shrines as Chalma and Los Remedios, the danza is frequently performed on 12 October, which for most Hispanic Americans is the ‘día de la raza’ (feast day of the ‘race’, or the new mestizo culture), symbolized by the so-called discovery of the New World by Columbus.

(b) Caribbean American.

In contrast with the Mexican Americans, who have a long history in the Southwest and California, the various groups of Caribbean Hispanics have immigrated to the USA relatively recently, and the great majority have settled in the urban centres of the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. The largest Puerto Rican communities are in New York (especially in East Harlem). Their music involves several genres, some inherited from Puerto Rico, others developed locally out of contact with other Latin and black American groups. African-related folkdance music of Puerto Rico’s coastal areas, such as the bomba, has been retained with a few changes. Typical of the bomba is its accompaniment by drums in sets of three, consisting of the conga, tumbadora and quinto (all types of conga drum), reinforced by idiophones such as cowbells and claves (fig.19). Responsorial singing prevails. It may involve song texts improvised by the soloist, who is answered by the chorus, or four-line stanzas sung alternately by soloist and chorus. The performance of such music by ‘conga groups’ (so called in New York) takes place in informal settings in Puerto Rican neighbourhoods. The interaction of Puerto Ricans with American blacks in New York is reflected in the ritual behaviour and musical practices of Latin Pentecostal churches. Religious music is provided by an instrumental ensemble consisting of drums, maracas, electric guitars and a melodic instrument such as a trumpet or clarinet, and includes the singing of coritos, songs of praise in strophic forms. Ritual dancing and spirit possession closely relate to Pentecostal religious practices.

Cubans in the New York area and in southern Florida especially have established Afro-Cuban religious groups known as santería. Whether of Yoruba (Lucumí) or Congo (Mayombé) derivation, these groups retain belief systems and practices closely related to West African cultures. Music functions as an essential and necessary element of worship and consists of extensive and complex song repertories and drum (especially batá) rhythmic patterns associated with the various deities or orishá. Each ritual gesture (sacrifice, offering, purification and initiation) is made meaningful by the performance of appropriate songs. Dances associated with particular orishá are an integral part of ritual performances. The majority of religious songs are monophonic and are performed in responsorial fashion, with much overlapping of call and response. The open, relaxed vocal style retains a strongly African character.

The rumba continues to be the principal secular dance and musical genre among Cuban Americans. Although better known in its urbanized, highly sophisticated version, as performed by Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, the rumba also enjoys great popularity as a folkdance, particularly in the form of the guaguancó and columbia. The guaguancó stresses improvised patterns on the quinto drum in contrast to the patterns of the tumbadora (larger conga drum) and the palitos (sticks); as revealed in the performances of such virtuosos as Mongo Santamaria, this creates the typical multilayered rhythmic activity of Afro-Cuban music (ex.6). The vocal parts of the guaguancó consist of a largely improvised solo part, answered by a set, harmonized choral part. This call-and-response practice is built on four- or eight-bar patterns equally divided between the soloist and the chorus. Both vocal and percussion soloists fluctuate in their improvisatory freedom. The other performers’ parts provide referential bases for the tension and release of the soloists’ improvisations. This effective contrast is one of the most distinctive qualities of the folk rumba.

The other major Caribbean presence in the north-eastern main urban centres is the Haitians, who, beginning in 1905, have brought to the area the black traditions of vodoun and Congo-Guinée religious music and dance, to name only the prevailing cult groups.

(c) Portuguese American.

Portuguese settlers are concentrated in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, on the New England seaboard and in northern California. Since the mid-19th century immigrants have come not only from Portugal itself but also from the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores. Their descendants retain folksongs and dances associated with bailados (social gatherings), and dramatic dances, such as the reisados and marujadas, narrating in popular theatrical forms Portuguese maritime exploits and the festivities of the Christmas cycle. Sea life is also the major topic of several folksong genres, such as the fade marítimo from the Azores, still performed in New England. As the main genre of urban vocal music in Portugal, the fado has been extended to the Portuguese American communities in New England with the arrival of new immigrants since the 1960s.

Among the various folkdances preserved by Portuguese Americans are the corridinho, a polka-like dance from southern Portugal, and the chamarrita, a square dance from the Azores, variously accompanied by string ensembles (including the viola, a Portuguese folk guitar) and by bands consisting of amplified strings, brass and percussion.

Beginning in the 1980s, Brazilians have settled in fairly large numbers in southern Florida and cities such as Los Angeles and Boston. They have gradually established Brazilian popular music celebrations, such as carnival samba parties, and have sponsored the more frequent appearance of Brazilian professional musicians in the USA.

USA, §II, 3: Traditional music: Hispanic American

(iii) Latin urban popular music.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, American popular musical trends, including jazz, have assimilated a number of Latin American urban musical styles. Such influences came primarily from Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Starting with the tango, introduced to the USA by Broadway in 1913, a series of Latin American styles, some related to dances, swept American cities: the rumba in the 1930s, the samba in the 40s, the mambo and cha cha cha in the 50s, bossa nova in the 60s and salsa in the 70s. Tin Pan Alley, the American popular song industry, has always kept abreast of these cycles of fashion and has assiduously marketed the Latin popular songs associated with them. Similarly, Hollywood and Broadway have frequently promoted Latin music, as with the Brazilian singer and dancer Carmen Miranda in the 1930s.

Beginning in the 1970s, mariachi ensembles and their music have taken on additional significance for Mexican American identity. With the recognition of multiculturalism in the 1980s, mariachi groups have been established in many high schools and universities as regular scholastic activities. Official festivals and conferences (e.g. the ‘Mariachi Spectacular’ in Albuquerque, New Mexico) have been sponsored more frequently by cities of the Southwest. Mariachi music functions in many different contexts, from the traditional restaurant setting to social events of all sorts and even in the Catholic church, where mariachi masses are celebrated.

Salsa music has become especially emblematic of ‘Hispanidad’ throughout the country because of its syncretic nature. Cuban musicians who flocked to Miami and New York City during and after the Revolution (1959) cultivated the Cuban son, guaracha and rumba, among others, but also salsa and other forms. Interacting with other Spanish Caribbeans and Central Americans, they contributed, with Puerto Rican musicians, to the salsa phenomenon in the 1970s and beyond. A ‘mixture of mixtures, the results of a long process of syncretization’ as Jorge Duany (1984) characterized salsa (literally ‘sauce’, i.e. with many different ingredients), the trend developed primarily in New York City, created by both Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians and reflecting the life, culture and socio-political aspirations of the ‘barrio’ or poor urban neighbourhoods of East Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn. The musical genre that served as the basic model for salsa (the barrio sound par excellence) was undoubtedly the son cubano, with its driving, multi-layered ostinato patterns, followed by the guaracha and the guaguancó, but it also incorporated aspects of Puerto Rican plena and bomba, Dominican merengue, and sometimes Colombian cumbia and vallenato.

Concurrently with these Latin influences in American popular music, specific Latin stylistic fusions such as Latin jazz, Latin soul and Latin rock represent the genuine expressions of the bicultural world of Hispanic Americans in the USA and are an integral part of contemporary American popular music. In the 1990s the mixing of various Latin and Anglo American pop styles by some young Latin pop stars, such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer López, Marc Anthony and Shakira, symbolizes the biculturalism of the new generations of Hispanic Americans.

(i) The pan-Indian movement.

4. Amerindian.

(ii) Inuit.

USA, §II, 4: Traditional music: Amerindian

(i) The pan-Indian movement.

Several factors led to the development of an intertribal Amerindian culture in the 20th century: hitherto unrelated tribes were combined on single reservations; interaction between tribes became easier, both physically and through mass communication; and Amerindians wanted to present themselves as having a united culture in order to preserve their identity in the face of relocation and urbanization. This new intertribalism and the increased secularization of music have resulted in what is referred to as ‘pan-Indian’ music because of the degree to which many tribes participate in it and because of the breakdown of tribal distinctions. The principal occasions at which this music is performed are intertribal powwows, accompanied by dancing; these are attended by members of more than one tribe as well as by interested non-Indians who may participate in the dancing and occasionally the singing. As a result, there has developed a class of professional or semi-professional Amerindian singers and composers, whose performances are judged by musical rather than religious or any other criteria. Individuals are now accepted as composers, whereas formerly they were viewed primarily as carriers of tradition or purveyors of supernatural inspiration. A new type of non-participating audience, comparable to a Western concert audience, has arisen, particularly in the Plains, which includes Amerindians and others. Nevertheless, a good deal of music is still restricted to private or tribal use.

The intertribal powwow is the occasion for the performance of most pan-Indian music. The singers and dancers at powwows, whether urban or rural, represent many tribes. All activities at the intertribal powwow revolve around the ‘drum’, a group of male (and, more recently, sometimes female) singers who perform while seated at a large bass (or home-made) drum turned on its side. Each singer has a drum beater, and all play and sing in unison (although differences in vocal style create heterophony). Female singers also may stand behind the drum and reinforce the melody an octave higher. Each powwow is sponsored by an organization or club that raises money and plans months ahead for such an important event. While the main emphasis is on singing and dancing, the powwow also includes feasting, ‘give-aways’ (the public distribution of gifts), arts and crafts sales, raffles and often the crowning of a princess. Plains Indian music prevails at these gatherings with some regionally specific music and dance; there are for example, substantial differences between the performing practices of the northern Plains Indians (Blackfoot, Crow, Dakota) and those of the southern Plains (Oklahoma).

The intertribal powwow is a complex social and religious event. The lead singer and lead dancers are chosen not only for their superior knowledge of song and dance repertory but also for their community status and network of family and friends, who perform with them to show their support. The characteristics of a good lead singer are a strong voice, musical talent, a superior memory and an ability to guide the group of singers constituting the ‘drum’.

Before many southern Plains and urban powwows, members of a Gourd Clan may dance. These dancers represent warrior societies and are ceremonially dressed with a red and blue blanket over the shoulder; they carry a tin-can rattle in the right hand and a feather fan in the left. In contrast to the general southern Plains powwow with its war dance, fancy dance and grass dance, the gourd dance seems slow and less vigorous, and the song sets are extremely long. The music is similar to other southern Plains music in that it is sung by men and is in duple metre, but it uses a narrower vocal range; the characteristic accompaniment is an alternating loud–soft beat.

While round dances are frequently used prior to the formal opening of a powwow (after the gourd dance, if it is performed), they may also be interspersed among war dances or trick songs (for contests). These social dances, along with the Oklahoma two-step, rabbit dance and owl dance (all usually in triple metre, alternating crotchets and quavers or quavers and crotchets), offer a chance for audience members to participate. At such times, ceremonial dress requirements and etiquette are relaxed, and visitors are encouraged to dance.

War dances are the mainstay of intertribal music and dance. Whether ‘slow’ or ‘fast’, ‘straight’ or ‘fancy’, all the songs share common musical characteristics: A – opening phrase sung by the leader; A' – repeat of opening phrase by the ‘second’ (one or more followers); B – second phrase, sung by all men at the drum as well as female back-up singers if they are present; C – third phrase sung by all; and D – fourth (or more) phrase(s) sung by all. Phrases B to D are repeated, then the entire piece is repeated from A, usually three more times. The melodies have a descending, ‘terraced’ contour; the range is wide (up to two octaves); although the scales are usually pentatonic, they may differ from song to song even in the same set; the metre is duple, the pulse accented–unaccented; the vocal style is tense with non-rhythmic pulsation on the sustained tones (particularly the high ones).

Regional traditions are carried on through individual genres such as the stomp dance, which originated in the Southeast and is now used by Amerindians from various areas living mainly in Oklahoma and the Northeast. This dance preserves in its generally responsorial use of short phrases one of the indigenous characteristics of the south-eastern tradition, though it may also have been influenced by the music of black Americans.

Special dances performed during interludes might include the Navajo ribbon dance, the swan dance, the hoop dance, the shield dance, and one of the Pueblo buffalo or eagle dances. In a powwow setting these dances are strictly for show, and often the dancers are paid handsomely for demonstrating them. Contests are also held to draw the best dancers and singers to a powwow.

The ‘forty-niner’ dances are performed mostly by young people after powwows and sometimes last all night. Regalia is not prescribed, and the accompanying drum may even be a cardboard box or car bonnet. Because these affairs are mostly for fun, the words of the songs may be changed to fit the location or tribe involved. Like popular or country music and sometimes in English, they often contain references to love, sweethearts and problems. The metre is triple, having an accented–unaccented pulse, and the music is fast; the melodic contour and form are much like those of the Plains round dance.

The intertribal musical events have given rise to a large number of songs with vocables as well as with English words, several of which have become known throughout reservation culture. The acceptance of English texts can be attributed to the decrease in the Amerindians' use of their own languages, the growth of an intertribal Amerindian audience, and the participation of non-Amerindians.

Standardization of forms and the restriction of the repertory to a small number of tune types are also characteristic of the pan-Indian musical culture. Most stomp dances use variants of about two dozen melodies, and in Plains music the rapid composition of new songs by retaining and recombining phrases from existing songs builds a highly homogeneous repertory.

Since the 1960s there has been among Amerindians a resurgence of interest in their own musical, dance and ceremonial traditions, which has been part of the desire to assert their ethnic identities. Amerindians since the middle of the 19th century have changed from being a group of relatively independent and isolated cultural units to being a minority within a large population culturally unrelated to them. The function of music and – to some degree – its style and structure embody this basic change in society.

Traditionally dancers performed both to vocal and instrumental music featuring a variety of instruments. Many of these instruments are still used in intertribal powwows, for instance drums; hand-held rattles; strung rattles worn on the dancers' arms, legs and torsos; flutes, conch-shell trumpets, whistles; hollow logs, rasps and striking sticks. Some important new additions to instruments and dance regalia involve the substitutions of metal rattles and bells for formerly natural materials. Also new are tin-can leg rattles substituted for turtle shells or metal salt shakers for gourd dance hand-held rattles. Sequins, trade beads, plastic bones and other mass-manufactured items adorn contemporary dance outfits. Popular Latin American musicians now use Claves, guiros, teponaztles and other rhythm instruments based on the striking sticks, rasps and hollow logs.

Despite tribal variations in music and dance forms, pan-Indian dance is generally somewhat restrained, with the dancers staying close to the earth, for both religious and practical reasons. Usually following the drum, dancers take small steps – because of space, number of participants or because they must conserve strength in order to dance for long periods of time. Some dancers still mimic animals or birds or the work of hunting, fishing, planting, harvesting, preparing food, or warfare. The music often underscores these movements by using onomatopoeia, shouts, changes in accent, metre or tempo, or even rises and falls in pitch. Dancers may shake rattles, sticks or branches, adding texture to the music.

Tribalism may still be distinguished. For instance, while individual expression is allowed in most North American Plains music and dance, Pueblo dances require unison singing and dancing, broken up from time to time by the relatively free movements of the ritual clowns. The hoop dance, a ‘show dance’ of many tribes, is one of the most individual: it features a dancer's manipulation of a dozen or more hoops over and around his torso, legs and arms to form a variety of geometric shapes. Customarily, Amerindian dances require communal interaction of musicians, dancers and family members cooperating across generations. Within the context of the powwow, however, tribal distinctions are superseded by a dynamic pan-Indian tradition. Despite differences in terms of groups involved, size and location, there is regularity in the main components – types of dances, costumes, procedures, format and spatial organization.

In the 1990s Amerindian traditional singers and dancers were found at Amerindian and county fairs, public receptions honouring dignitaries, national Amerindian conferences, political rallies, crafts fairs, public programmes of museums and colleges, demonstrations by Amerindian political activists, graduation ceremonies of Amerindian students, tourist attractions, amusement parks and in various Amerindian education programmes.

Ancient songs, dances and ceremonies are performed to maintain certain social, religious and curing ceremonies, but the creation and performance of new songs and dances ensures sustained interest and continuity. For example, some Kiowas and Blackfeet composed new songs and dances for Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

The new dances and genres have new words, melodies, steps and dress. For example, the women's fancy-shawl and jingle-dress competitions feature many innovations, particularly in freedom of movement. Costumes, particularly those worn by men, do not express any specific tribal identity. Many of the individual ornaments are purchased on the powwow circuit, and the costume itself embodies a dynamic notion of pan-Indian identity. The contemporary revival of many Amerindian dances has also fostered healthy controversy about authenticity of versions, proper instrumentation and dress, suitable venues, ownership of songs, dances and ceremonies, and even the issue of dance. The dynamics of change and tradition are complementary, and music and dance are still vital for Amerindians whether in rural areas, cities or on reservations.

USA, §II, 4: Traditional music: Amerindian

(ii) Inuit.

Inhabitants of the circumpolar region, about 34,000 Inuit live in Alaska, and this article refers specifically to the music of the Alaskan people. The traditional reliance of the coastal Inuit on sea mammals as a source of food, clothing and other materials, and of the inland Inuit on caribou-hunting, have been the principal determinants of their ceremonialism. Although there are considerable differences in culture and race between the Inuit and other Amerindians, the music of the two groups is stylistically related.

(a) Genres and functions.

Most indigenous explanations of songs, dances and drumming distinguish between social, secular and religious functions. St Lawrence Islanders refer to ilaegaek as ‘night-time singing’ or shamanistic song, and to aetok as ‘daytime singing’ or secular song used for entertainment (Hughes, 1960, p.304). A similar distinction is reported for the Northwest; of the four generic categories of song recognized there, three are secular, and the fourth is literally translated as ‘songs of group of things done in a trance’: qitkutim atuutaa, game songs; unipkaaq atuutilik, songs in stories; uamipiaq, dance songs; angaiyatikun atuutit, ceremonial dance songs (Johnston, ‘The Eskimo Songs of Northwestern Alaska’, 1976, p.8). By the 1970s the last category had been subdivided into six subgenres: kiapsaq, whalers’ spinning-top dance songs; tohoyaqhuuqaun, puppet ceremony dance songs; nalukataun, whalers’ skin-toss dances; uingarung, whalers’ masquerade dance songs; kigugiyataun, northern lights dance songs; kalukhaq, box-drum dance songs. Most of these are modified fragments of such larger ceremonials as the Messenger Feast (kalukhaq) or whaling rituals (first four categories), which flourished in the 19th century.

In coastal communities of the Northwest, communal religious festivals were related to whaling and centred around the hunting-group leader (ümealiq) and his crew or lodge. In the interior similar lodges were traditionally associated with the annual caribou drive. A large cycle of songs was sung by the ümealiq, the kaakliq (an older, more experienced whaler who was also often a shaman) and the crew to accompany each stage of the whaling operation (Spencer, 1959). Songs thought to ensure the efficacy of the harpoon, lances, lines and floats, to control the weather and to attract the whale were also sung. The season ended with a spring whaling feast. Special dances performed in recent decades in Point Hope on New Year’s Eve and at the June Whaling Feast derive from these practices. Traditional festivals involved social dancing, distribution of whale meat, ceremonial masked dances and, at their culmination, the nalukatug, in which an individual was thrown into the air from a walrus skin to the accompaniment of a song.

The second important ceremonial of the Northwest was the social Messenger Feast, last held at Wainwright in 1914–15. This event, which has some features in common with the Northwest Coast Amerindian potlatch, demanded a long period of preparation to amass food and gifts, prepare songs, dances and costumes, build a karigi (dance house) and train participants. Songs of invitation were sent from one village to another by a messenger bearing a symbolically marked staff. The festival included the formal announcing and greeting of guests, pretended insults between the messengers and the chief host, footraces between the guest and host camps, stomping dances accompanied by a box drum, distribution of gifts, dances by hosts and guests either separately or together, a soccer game and social dances. A contemporary box-drum dance cycle at Wainwright has evolved from this feast.

In the Southwest, whaling rituals culminated in the annual Bladder Festival. For approximately one month the spirits of animals taken during the year’s hunt were honoured, and through the action of returning the bladders to the sea, the rebirth of the spirits in new creatures was requested. Rival groups practised new songs in darkness until correct performance was assured; wild parsnip was burnt to the accompaniment of a special song as a purification rite. Modified parts of this festival continued into the 1970s in some communities (e.g. the April Walrus Carnival and June Whaling Feast in Savoonga).

An ancient Feast for the Dead shared some characteristics with the Bladder Festival: the careful preparation of ceremonial songs in the darkness of the dance house and the singing of songs to honour the spirits of the dead and encourage their return. Ghost songs unassociated with dance continue to constitute a special repertory in this area, but their relationship to earlier ritual is unclear.

A third ceremonial in the Southwest and on St Lawrence Island is the Inviting-in Feast, which relates to some extent to the northern Messenger Feast. Originally involving elaborate wooden masks that represent animal protectors (Nelson, 1899, p.358), these dances are now intercommunity events at which dance teams display story dancing.

Central to ceremonial and recreational life in the 19th century was the karigi (also called kashgee, kashim, kudyigi or kazigi), a large house built either temporarily for the winter season or remaining permanently in the community (as at Point Hope). In southern areas the semi-subterranean building was a men's house for hunt-related chores, meetings, socializing, bathing and sleeping, while in the north, women were more freely admitted. Shamanistic performances and ritual and recreational dancing occurred there.

In addition to the role that music played in these festivals, songs could be used for many nonsecular purposes to extend personal power. ‘Power’ songs were sung to attempt control of the weather, to encourage game, to seek protection in conjunction with amulets or to facilitate shamanistic actions. There were songs designed to prevent conception, to ease the birth of a child, to raise a boat or house, to cure illness, to find objects and to effect love magic. Such songs were personal property, not always the shaman’s, and could be sold. The power of such songs was feared; children were told not to learn the songs sung by the shaman lest they themselves become imbued with shamanistic power.

Secular, recreational, nonceremonial songs and dances are either composed or, in the case of some dance types, improvised. In northwestern communities, dances for which the choreography is fixed, taught and rehearsed by dance teams are called sayuun. This category includes specific dances such as the women’s bench dance, often with paddling motions (taliq in Point Hope, paagurraqtuq in Wainwright). The permanently assigned motions that accompany the drum rhythms and musical motives of a song are often devised by the composer’s male hunting partner or trading associate. The atuutipiaq dances, on the other hand, have freely improvised motions, often including jumping or stomping for men and knee-bending or arm-curving for women. Both dance categories frequently imitate hunting or other subsistence activities. The southwest region does not recognize a division between fixed-motion and freely improvised dances, but rather classes dance styles according to the body position of the dancers. The men’s arula is done in a kneeling position; during an arula performance women do a gentler style known as putuluteng, standing behind and to the side of the men with eyes downcast. The pualla is a men’s stomping dance; the talirluteng (like the Inupiaq taliq) is a seated bench dance with arm motions executed by both men and women.

In the game-song category juggling songs are the most widespread. These are characterized by texts containing sexual allusions and indelicate references, features shared by juggling songs in northern Canada. In a hopping game called mitquliksraq, in which opposing lines of boys and girls hop towards each other and try to break through the linked arms of the other team, the hopping is timed to the asymmetrical rhythm of the song’s words (Johnston, Eskimo Music, 1976, p.57). A song also accompanies annami-analuuraq, a chasing game. Short chants accompany string games, in which cat’s-cradle figures represent segments from stories. Songs associated with stories range from short, half-spoken dialogues between animals to longer, dramatic performances with masked dance (e.g. The Beautiful Woman and the Three Suitors dance, performed in Point Hope on New Year’s Eve).

Thus fragments of traditional festivals continue, usually in conjunction with recreational dances by community dance teams. Ritual items are now often associated with Euro-American holidays (Christmas, New Year’s Day, Independence Day) or with special community events (the Point Hope Northern Lights Dance, the Barrow Eskimo games, the Dillingham Beaver Round-up).

(b) Instruments.

The Alaskan Inuit use a wider variety of traditional instruments than do the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, where the single-headed frame drum is often the only indigenous instrument. In Alaska this type of drum – called tchauyuk (by Koranda) or cauyuk (by Johnston) in Yupik, and keylowtik (Koranda) or gilaun (Johnston) in Inupiaq – has a thin, wooden, circular frame covered with a natural membrane that is wetted and stretched in preparation for playing.

On the northwest coast the Inuit frame drum is cylindrical, about 60 cm in diameter and 4 cm deep, with a membrane usually made from the stomach or liver of a whale, walrus or (inland) caribou. The beater, a thin, slightly curved stick about 75 cm long, is used to strike the instrument from below. The player strikes the rim either in one or two places, or strikes both the rim and membrane. The southwestern frame drum differs in that the diameter of the head may vary from 55 to 65 cm; plastic membranes have sometimes been used since the 1970s. The beater (about 90 cm long) strikes the instrument from above, on the edge, the membrane or both. On St Lawrence Island a pyriform frame drum is used; its head is about 40 × 45 cm, and the instrument is about 5 cm deep, with a membrane made from walrus tissue. The beater, a sharply curved stick roughly 45 cm long with a paddle carved at each end, strikes the membrane from above.

Another important type of ‘drum’ is the kalukhaq (also spelled kalluraq, kaylukluk or kotlookuk), a box drum associated originally with the Messenger Feast. In the myth that explains the feast’s origin the drum is said to represent an eagle’s heartbeat. The instrument consists of a wooden, rectangular case of variable size with a decorative, zigzag top edge and eagle feathers. A fur-padded rail along one side is struck with a short stick. The drum is suspended from the roof and played by a seated drummer.

Other instruments include rattles made of bone, bird beaks, animal teeth or cartridge shells, which are attached to the northwest-coast dance mittens worn in deference to whaling spirits. Arm gauntlets with puffin-beak rattles are worn on King Island. Rattles are sometimes attached to other items of apparel; an interesting historical example is the tall, conical cap covered with rows of mountain-sheep teeth (Murdoch, 1892, p.365). Bullroarers are found chiefly as children’s toys. Rare instances of chordophones have been observed, one a one-string fiddle (kelutviaq) tapped with a small wand or quill (Johnston, Eskimo Music, 1976, p.107).

(c) Style.

Dance songs vary from one region to another, but most are pentatonic. Certain scale notes (especially the note below the tonal centre) may be microtonally inflected according to context. A tonal centre, defined by its reiteration and position at the end of a phrase, is often the second-lowest scale tone. The range of dance songs is usually around an octave but may be as great as a 12th; intervals differ according to region, but large, ascending leaps are rather common. An exception to this is the style of the riverine communities of the Southwest (such as Pilot Station and St Mary’s), where narrow-ranged, tetratonic melodies with many ascending 4ths and descending minor 3rds were analyzed by Johnston (ibid., p.109).

Text settings are generally syllabic; there is some melismatic prolongation of certain vowels in large, downward melodic leaps, but only in specific positions within words. Dance songs are generally single strophes (except in some inland communities of the Southwest, such as Pilot Station), but many are performed twice, first with vocables and light drumming on the rim, then slightly faster with lexical text and heavier drumming involving membrane strokes. More vigorous dancing parallels the appearance of song words in the second part.

The most common metre is 5/8, but heterometrical sections, often parallel to the rhythms of the text, are frequent. Some areas have distinctive metres; for example, 7/8, related to Siberian styles, is characteristic of St Lawrence Island (Johnston, ibid., pp.16, 97ff). Song and drum pulses (as well as dance motions) generally coincide, but the metrical grouping of vocal and drum rhythms often diverges, producing polyrhythms and syncopation.

Game songs such as those for juggling usually have a range exceeding an octave and a modular, motivic structure that might be represented AA' … BB' … CC' … (ellipses denote a variable number of repetitions of the same motif). Some motifs are repeated at a later point in the song. Although pebble-juggling implies a regular, duple rhythm (many transcriptions are written in 2/4 metre), not all musical motifs are consistently duple, and the resulting cross-rhythms add a dimension of complexity to the juggling performance.

Songs-in-stories and string-figure songs are generally narrow-ranged, and they sometimes use speech-song in which relative, rather than exact, pitch levels are important; animal calls are sometimes interspersed. The most wide-ranging melodic motion occurs at the beginning of the song, and tone reiterations increase toward the end.

Acculturation in musical style ranges from the parodying of Euro-American song features to the complete imitation of new styles (e.g. four-part hymns and pop songs accompanied by guitar). The merging of Euro-American and Inuit styles, however, is rather rare. The continuity of traditional music varies widely, depending on such factors as the relative tolerance of religious authorities and the influence of the mass media.

USA, §II, 5: Traditional music: Asian American music

5. Asian American.

(i) Introduction.

(ii) East Asian.

(iii) South Asian.

(iv) South-east Asian.

(i) Introduction.

The almost 9 million people designated as ‘Asian American’ in the USA include those of Chinese, Japanese and Korean extraction; South Asians (primarily from India and Pakistan); Filipinos and recent arrivals from mainland South-east Asia (especially Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), most of whom have been given asylum as refugees; and those of Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian ethnic groups. The numbers of Asian immigrants rose sharply after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, and again between 1980 and 1990, when there was an increase of almost 100%.

Many immigrants come from the larger Asian cities, which have a strong international flavour. In many of these urban centres traditional music has mostly been replaced by Western art music and new forms greatly influenced by Western popular music. This is particularly evident in Korea, where children in the major cities are more likely to receive instruction in Western instrumental music than in any of their native traditions; the same is becoming increasingly true of children in China and Japan (see especially Japan, §IX, 2). In South Asia, however, although Westernized film music dominates the urban scene, traditional forms such as Hindustani and Karnatak music and dance, devotional music and folksong continue to be prominent. In mainland South-east Asia much of the population is rural and, although influenced by the new pan-Asian music, still retains contact with its indigenous musical traditions. Recent immigrants to the USA are sometimes less deeply steeped in the musical traditions of their birthplace than were earlier ones, and the impetus to maintain their ethnic culture often comes from previous generations of immigrants. However, some second- and third-generation Asians in the USA, particularly the Chinese and Japanese, want to revive and perpetuate their cultural heritage and participate in the musical functions of the community.

In this section the state of music among the larger Asian immigrant populations is examined. Influences and responses vary considerably: some groups appear to have adopted the Western musical world exclusively; others maintain a dual involvement; and others, like the Filipinos, have created neo-traditional forms.

USA, §II, 5: Traditional music: Asian American music

(ii) East Asian.

(a) Chinese.

The history of Chinese American music began in the 1850s, when the original wave of contract railroad labourers and gold miners came to California from the south-east coast of Guangdong province in China. In 1943 the Chinese exclusion laws were repealed, and in 1965 the annual quota of Chinese immigrants was raised to equal that of other countries; the demographic changes brought changes in the musical scene. This current has intensified since the 1978 normalization of diplomatic relations between China and the USA as more people have emigrated from mainland China.

The 1895 Exclusion Law restricted all Chinese residents to living in Chinatowns. Without families and homes, these labourers formed a bachelor society. Listening to Cantonese opera, the favourite music from their homeland, was their main pastime. The first Cantonese opera was staged in San Francisco in 1852, and from 1870 to 1890 this tradition enjoyed a golden era: San Francisco supported four theatres with nightly performances. Until the 1940s, the touring opera troupes from Canton and Hong Kong were vital links among the scattered Chinese communities in the USA. The opera theatre was a ‘community centre’, and opera was an educational experience, used to related ancient legends and history. The heroes and heroines served as role models for Chinatown dwellers during the dark years of exclusion.

Besides professional operas there was also amateur music-making: instrumental playing in one's apartment was an after-hours activity, and performers held forth in gambling houses, at restaurants and banquets, and during Chinese festivals, New Year's parades and funerals. The words of songs and chants inscribed on Angel Island cabin walls bear witness to the music culture of immigration detention centres.

There were also integrated music styles. Formed in 1911, the oldest music club in San Francisco's Chinatown – the Cathay Club – had a marching band with a Western repertory but Chinese traditional instruments such as erhu bowed fiddles, di bamboo flutes and sanxian plucked lutes; Chinese percussion was added later, and the repertory expanded to include a few Chinese pieces. In the 1930s Chinese American nightclubs were opened as part of a booming nightlife business in San Francisco. The most famous, Forbidden City, featured Chinese performers, attracted tourists internationally and inspired the establishment of similar clubs on the east coast. This business, however, came to a halt with the postwar recession and the advent of television.

After World War II new waves of immigrants comprised mostly students and intellectuals, whose origin, backgrounds and goals were different from those of their predecessors. The growth of a family society, a new variety of occupations and differing degrees of assimilation all helped to generate a more diverse musical culture within the Chinese community.

Cantonese opera experienced a long decline due to events such as the exclusion laws, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and, later, competition from new forms of entertainment. Despite the disappearance of regular performances by professional companies in the 1960s, Cantonese opera singing is still alive in amateur clubs, whose headquarters are not only a place for weekly singing but also for social gathering. The nucleus of the club consists of veteran professionals who give lessons to pass on the tradition. Each club has its own collection of instruments, and most singers also play in the ensemble. No regular performances are given, but artists or groups from mainland China or Hong Kong are periodically invited to perform with club members.

Younger Chinese Americans seem to prefer instrumental ensemble music: Chinese traditional classical music, Chinese and Western pop music, Chinese and American dance band music and Western classical music. Traditional and contemporary instrumental ensembles such as San Francisco's Flowing Stream Melody of China (fig.20), and New York's Music from China give concerts in cultural centres and other venues. Virtuoso performers of Pipa and Zheng find many students among the young and carry on the refined solo traditions. The study of Western classical music on piano, violin and flute is even more popular among young students, with many starting at five or six and continuing through high school. Chinese Americans are highly visible among winners of local competitions.

Choral singing is also practised. Chinese Protestant church choirs and congregations sing mainly Western hymns with Chinese texts but also include a few Chinese songs. Local choral groups aim to promote Chinese culture and often foster community participation; they perform Chinese art songs and folksongs, composed or arranged by musicians with Western training along with a selected repertory of European classics. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone there are nine choruses, and each holds an annual concert.

Beijing opera clubs, organized by generations of northern Chinese, became more common in the 1980s in major cities such as New York, Washington, DC, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. They tend to give annual performances by combining their resources with those of professionals, who perform the leading roles and instruct amateurs. A classical opera style, kunqu, is favoured by a small group of people but also has a national organization. One authentic folksong style, Taishan muyu song, has won recognition since singer Uncle Ng (b 1910) received a 1992 US National Heritage Fellowship.

Two new styles emerged during the 1980s: Chinese American jazz and new contemporary art music. From the late 1960s an indigenous drive to develop a distinct Chinese American identity as part of a broader Asian American movement followed the lead of the civil rights movement. Asian American jazz developed as its cultural wing and included Chinese American musicians Fred Ho (b 1957) and Jon Jang (b 1954). A new ethnic pride and consciousness inspired their fusion of black American jazz with Chinese musical elements, instruments, history and legends to create a new genre, with many artists joining their path. In the 1990s some first-generation immigrants with backgrounds in European classical and Chinese traditional music ventured into this art form. Contemporary classical composers trained in China and the USA, such as Tau Dun and Chen Yi, have drawn significant attention with new works blending Western techniques and themes based on a Chinese experience.

Other current trends include rap music, folksong and popular song contests, and karaoke singing of Chinese popular songs in Chinese nightclubs and restaurants. With the exception of a few Cantonese opera clubs, most musical activities, especially performances, are open to mainstream society and aim to promote mutual understanding through music. While most Chinese American musical styles preserve and maintain aspects of cultural heritage, interaction between the Chinese community and the society at large will produce more musical change in the years to come.

(b) Japanese.

Japanese American music is an expression of ethnic identity, a bi-cultural form drawing on the idiomatic playing styles of traditional Japanese instruments and use of pentatonic melodies, rhythms, forms, stylistic and aesthetic elements from Japanese folk or classical traditions. The incorporation of these elements in Western or American music has resulted in a transculturated music with varying degrees of experimentation and success.

Japanese American music has developed primarily in the hands of sansei, third generation immigrants who were born after World War II. A number of sansei musician-composers, taking their cues from black American culture and the black power movement, write in a jazz-based idiom as a vehicle for their artistry and in some cases politics. The improvisational nature of jazz offers great freedom of expression, allowing for experimentation in form, rhythm and melody, especially in avant-garde jazz. Sansei musicians consider the openness and spirit of jazz to be conducive for incorporating Japanese and Asian musical ideas in their compositions.

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the redress and reparations movement in the 1980s serve as themes for several sansei jazz-based compositions: Glenn Horiuchi’s Poston Sonata for shamisen (three-string plucked lute), alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, bass, percussion and piano, Sumi Tonooka’s Out from the Silence (inspired by her mother’s internment experience) for koto (13-string board zither), shakuhachi (end-blown bamboo flute), violin, clarinet, trumpet, tenor saxophone, trombone, vibes, rhythm section and voice; and Anthony Brown’s E.O. 9066 (Truth be Told) for piano, bass, drum set and percussion, sheng (Chinese mouth organ), di (Chinese transverse bamboo flute), suona (shawm), tenor saxophone, clarinet and taiko (Japanese barrel drum). The sansei Key Kool and his partner Rhettmatic also address internment in their rap song Reconcentrated for voice, turntable, DJ mixer and other ‘scratch’ equipment. The expressive range of these compositions, from anger to reconciliation, address the injustices and humiliation of the internment experience and its aftermath.

The greatest concentration of Japanese American musical activity is in California, particularly in the urban areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Asian American creative music scene in San Francisco is home to a number of sansei musician-composers, many of whom study or have studied Japanese court music (gagaku; see Japan, §V). The San Francisco Gagaku Society, directed by the pianist and koto player Miya Masaoka, received training under the tutelage of Suenobu Togi, former Imperial Japanese court dancer and musician, who taught these forms for more than 20 years at UCLA. Gagaku’s tripartite jo-ha-kyū form and aesthetic concept of ma (silent beat) are examples of musical elements that broaden the musical landscape for sanseis in their own work.

Other forms of traditional music from which sansei musician-composers draw include Japanese taiko drumming, folksongs and the repertories of the koto, shamisen and shakuhachi. This music is combined with a wide spectrum of contemporary musical styles. Nobuko Miyamoto, with the assistance of Reverend Kodani of the Senshin Buddhist Church in Los Angeles, composed two Japanese folksongs set to English-language lyrics, Yuiyo Bon Odori and Tanpopo, intended for use at Bon festivals of the dead. Among fusion bands, the well-known Los Angeles-based group Hiroshima was first to incorporate the koto, shakuhachi, taiko and shamisen in popular music. The spectrum of Hiroshima’s music fuses elements of rock, rhythm and blues, jazz, pop and Latin, with the pentatonic style of the koto.

Taiko drumming (see Kumi-daiko) continues to be the most pervasive and popular Japanese American genre among sansei and yonsei (fourth generation). It is an adaptation of the Japanese folk genre suwa daiko, which combines music and choreographed movement. A taiko ensemble consists of five to thirty or more performers, and includes drums of various sizes (most of which are made by the drummers themselves), atarigane (small bronze gong), hōragai (conch-shell trumpet), and takebue (Japanese bamboo transverse flute). There were about 100 taiko groups in the USA in the 1990s, and the numbers continue to grow. The annual taiko festival sponsored by the Japan America theatre in Los Angeles, featuring around eight or ten groups, is a response to the popularity of this genre among audiences. Other contexts for taiko drumming include sacred events, such as the Buddhist Hōraku Festival, as well as secular celebrations – the Cherry Blossom Festivals of San Francisco, New York and Washington, DC; the Asian-Pacific American Heritage Festival in New York and elsewhere, and at summer O-Bon festivals throughout the USA.

(c) Korean.

Before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Koreans in the USA constituted a small population mainly concentrated in Hawaii and California. Since then, the increase in Korean immigrants to the USA has given rise to thriving Korean American communities in urban areas. In Korean American societies, music is the main emblem for high culture, an indispensable vehicle for social and religious functions and the favoured medium for the expression of Korean identity. As such, Korean American music embraces such diverse categories as Korean traditional performing arts, the Western musical canon, Christian evangelical music and recent popular idioms.

Most visibly within the USA, Korean Americans perform and create music of the Western canon. Not only do Korean and Korean American students predominate in the string sections and piano classes of the leading musical conservatories, but Korean Americans sponsor and participate in their own organizations, such as the Korean Philharmonic of Los Angeles, and sponsor musical events at prestigious concert halls throughout the country. These events typically feature Korean and Korean American artists performing virtuosic and lyrical repertories of 19th-century Europe or new works by Korean composers.

Within Korean American society, the Christian church serves as perhaps the most important social institution. 70–80% of Korean Americans and recent Korean immigrants are church members. As a result, old Protestant hymns, sung in Korean often at a slow pace, and other evangelical music, either in a Korean gospel or European Romantic style, comprise musical knowledge common to most Korean Americans. Even in small churches, choirs attempt a challenging repertory, and the musical director and worship accompanist are highly valued. Korean churches also serve as cultural institutions, often sponsoring musical events.

The preservation and performance of Korean traditional music and dance are important to Korean immigrants. This urge to maintain, teach and exhibit their heritage has given rise to several cultural centres in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, the Halla Pai Huhm Dance Studio in Hawaii, the Korean Classical Music Institute in Los Angeles and the Korean Traditional Music Institute in New York. Increasingly, younger generations of Korean Americans are taking up p’ungmul (farmers’ dance music popularized by the group Samul Nori) in order to give sound and visibility to their ethnic identity and political entity as Korean Americans. Korean drumming groups have been formed on college campuses (such as Stanford Hwimori, Yale Unity, MIT Hansori) and in Korean American communities such as P’ungmulpae of Oakland. Numerous p’ungmul workshops are offered every year by different organizations. As a traditional musical idiom recently adopted by student and labour groups in Korea as a symbol of power against oppression, p’ungmul offers American student groups a ready musical form to express Korean identity and to bring attention to the socio-political obstacles facing Korean Americans.

The musical expression of Korean American identity extends to hip hop and rock music. Korean American rappers (e.g. Fists of Fury and rap artist Jamez Chang), like their black American counterparts, focus on social and political issues as they perform on college campuses and at heritage festivals. Many of them point especially to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which devastated the Korean American community and brought forth a new call for political action. Artists such as Sooyoung Park take part in the larger scene of Asian American ‘indie rock’. Park’s compilation album, Ear of the Dragon, and its subsequent tour seek to show that Korean and Asian Americans can create rock and roll, hence breaking the stereotype of the meek, ‘good minority’ Asian American.

USA, §II, 5: Traditional music: Asian American music

(iii) South Asian.

The American transcendentalists R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau and the Unitarians drew on Indian philosophy, paving the way for the Western missions of Annie Besant and Vivekananda at the beginning of the 20th century. These prepared the ground for the visits of the north Indian vīnā player Inayat Khan, who toured the USA after 1910, taking part in the Indian-influenced dance productions of Ruth St Denis. In the 1930s Uday Shankar and Menaka toured with a group of musicians and dancers.

The music of north India began to flourish in the USA after 1955, when Ali Akbar Khan was invited by Yehudi Menuhin to appear on the CBS Omnibus show and made the first LP recording of Hindustani music. Shortly thereafter Ravi Shankar began touring in the West, and he and Ali Akbar became powerful ambassadors for the music. Young Americans were particularly taken with the virtuosity of their tablā accompanists, Chatur Lal, Alla Rakha, Kanai Dutta, Mahapurush and Shankar Ghosh. This interest elevated the role of the accompanists to nearly that of the soloists, altering the status of these players, even in India. Tablā players Zakir Hussain, Swapan Chaudhuri and many others have established residence in the USA, taken on many students and organized cross-cultural percussion ensembles. Basurī player Hari Prasad Chaurasia and santūr player Shiv Kumar Sharma, as well as numerous other musicians, have created loyal followings.

In the 1960s Robert Brown of Wesleyan University brought to the USA the south Indian musicians T. Visvanathan (vocal and flute) and T. Ranganathan (mrdangam) and the dancer Thanjavur Balasaraswati; their student Jon Higgins became one of the first Western students to demonstrate that artistic accomplishment in Indian music by non-Indians was viable. Bonnie Wade, Daniel Neuman, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Regula Quereshi, Lewis Rowell and Charles Capwell were among the students of ethnomusicology who brought Indian music into American academic life.

Ali Akbar Khan began teaching at Berkeley during the summer of 1965. Three years later he had more than a hundred students, partly through the surge of interest created by the Beatle George Harrison becoming a student of Ravi Shankar. The Ali Akbar College of Music was opened in 1968 and has become a major centre for the study of Hindustani vocal and instrumental music and dance. Other teachers have also settled in the USA, and a number of institutions offer instruction in north and south Indian classical traditions. A new generation of American artists now teach and perform in Indian classical styles. The qawwālī singer Nusrat Fateh Ali performed with several Western artists, and his concerts drew large audiences.

The first wave of Indian immigration, primarily men with professional and technical vocations, came in the 1960s, and with them came the popular musics of films, bhajans, ghazals and Tagore songs (see India, §§IV and VIII). This was augmented by brides from South Asia who had learnt classical music and dance, notably bharata-nātyam. In the 1970s the concentration of South Asian immigrants in the major cities was such that associations of Bengalis, Gujaratis, Tamils and Punjabis were set up, which in turn sponsored temples and schools where classical and semi-classical music is taught and performed. A tour of a major pop performer will attract audiences of thousands. Young people of South Asian ethnicity frequently gather to take part in traditional dances, notably bhangra and dandia rās, the popularity of which has sparked off new pop song and dance genres.

Ashrams, often with multiple centres, begun by a great variety of primarily Hindu religious teachers, regularly hold sessions of bhajan and kīrtan. These are distributed in recordings and publications both in the original South Asian languages and in English.

USA, §II, 5: Traditional music: Asian American music

(iv) South-east Asian.

(a) Mainland.

Beginning in 1975, many refugees from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were given asylum in the USA, and by 1996 over one million immigrants from these countries had been admitted; over a third of them settled in California, and there are large population clusters in several other states. Representing virtually all segments of mainland South-east Asian society, they continue their traditional musical practices. In addition, they are developing innovative as well as imitative cultural forms that reflect the new elements of their ethnic and social identity created by their radically changed environment. For further information on music genres see under names of individual countries.

Laotian. Laotians in the USA include both Lao-speaking lowland villagers and urban dwellers, and members of non-Lao-speaking tribal groups from mountain villages. Of their several musical traditions the best-known is the court music, which is Khmer and Thai in origin but has been established in Laos for many centuries. The two major Lao classical music traditions are derived from the court, that of the orchestra and dance ensemble of the royal palace in Luang Prabang, and that of the more Thai-influenced and modernized Lao Natassin (National School of Fine Arts) in Vientiane; both have representatives in the USA. Using imported masks, costumes and musical instruments, the immigrants continue to perform the most important items of the repertory in concerts and community festivals such as the Lao New Year. These presentations include parts of the Rāmāyana story as well as other tales and dances related to religious themes. Many are accompanied by the pī phāt orchestra of xylophones (lanat), gong-chimes (khong wong), flutes (khoui), drums and cymbals.

Lao Buddhist ritual forms, which include chanting and sermons, are practised at religious festivals, other rites and wakes by Lao monks now living in the USA. The musical content of these rituals ranges from near-monotone recitations of Pali texts to highly ornate cantillation of scriptures.

The lowland village traditions featuring the national instrument, the khene, a free-reed bamboo mouth organ, also continue in many American Lao communities. The solo repertory for this instrument includes both metred and unmetred polyphonic compositions; the instrument is also used to accompany the memorized or extemporized verses sung by one mohlam (‘song expert’) or several. Singers and instrumentalists alike may incorporate dance movements in these performances. Since Lao is a tonal language, the melodic contours of the songs are generated, in part, by speech tone. The texts of the songs are usually romantic but often contain philosophical, poetic and humorous comments on current events. Social circle-dancing (lam vong) may also take place during mohlam performances or may be performed to modernized folksong renditions played by Lao rock bands.

Modern urban forms are particularly prominent among the Lao communities in the USA. Lao rock bands, usually deriving their tunes from the large repertory of South-east and East Asian popular songs (Lao, Thai, Filipino, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese and Japanese), commonly perform at the major festivals and provide an occasion for social dancing. Stylistic elements of this music are derived from both Asian and Western popular music.

Laotian tribal groups in the USA include the Hmong (Miao, Meo), Tai Dam, Kmhmu, Mien (Yao) and others. The Hmong are the largest group in the USA and in Laos, and have continued the unique and rich musical traditions of their homeland. These include over 30 genres of sung poetry. Among their instruments, always played individually, are the gaeng (qeej), a free-reed mouth organ (fig.21), the ja (raj nplaim), a transverse free-reed bamboo aerophone, and the nja (ncas), a jew’s harp. The melodic contours follow speech tones and may function to some extent as ‘speech surrogate’ systems. Ritual performances involving music still accompany life-cycle rites, although some forms are also heard at New Year festivals. The mouth organ is characteristic of funerals, at which the tones and rhythms of its music represent sacred texts, and the player’s dance movements are ritually meaningful. Some of the traditional Hmong sung poetry has been incorporated into Catholic masses and pageants. As among other South-east Asian communities, pop and rock bands (with lyrics in the native language) are prominent features at Hmong festivals for social dancing.

Cambodian. Cambodian musical traditions have much in common with those of Laos and Thailand. In the USA the court orchestra (pin peat) is sometimes augmented by aerophones and chordophones from the folk orchestra (mohori). The combined ensemble may include xylophones (roneat), tuned gong-chimes (khong wong), flutes (khloy), oboes (sralai), two-string fiddles (tror), struck zithers (khim), plucked zithers (krapeu), drums (skor), wooden clappers (krap) and finger cymbals (ching). A chorus (chamrieng) sings poetic texts that narrate the classical dance dramas, such as the Rāmāyana story, as well as other dances of religious significance. The wedding orchestra (phleng kar), considered to be the most characteristically Khmer ensemble, performs at Cambodian weddings and festival occasions. It may include a hammered dulcimer (chin), a two-string spike fiddle (tror), plucked lute (takkei, krapeu), drums and voices.

Many Cambodian American communities also have youth groups devoted to folk traditions, whose dances depict the cultural forms of various Khmer village and tribal groups; they perform chiefly at Cambodian New Year. Like the other South-east Asian groups, Cambodian American youths also enjoy their own version of contemporary urban rock music.

Cambodian Buddhist forms, such as the chanting of Pali scriptures by Khmer monks, are maintained at Cambodian temples in the USA. Congregational singing of contemporary Khmer devotional poetry, following classical rhyme-tune formulae, can also be heard.

Vietnamese. The most popular classical solo instrument for both study and listening among Vietnamese Americans is the 16-string board zither (đàn tranh), the metal strings of which are particularly well suited to ornamentation and arpeggiation; other popular solo instruments include the four-string pear-shaped lute (đàn tY bà), moon-shaped lute (đàn nguyệt) and the plucked single-string box zither (đàn bau), which is uniquely Vietnamese; its delicate tone is produced from harmonics and by manual variations in string tension. Many of these instruments are played in the USA at Tết (Vietnamese New Year); also presented are excerpts from classical theatre (hát boi), folk theatre (hát chèo) and ‘modernized’ theatre (hát cẢi lu’o’ng), folkdances, nightclub routines and at least one performance of the aria Vọng cổ. This aria, sometimes called Nostalgia for the Past, is the most widely known item of south Vietnamese music and can be sung to virtually any suitable text. It allows the singer extensive opportunities to express his feelings, either in the song or in the unmetred prelude (rao); a few string instruments supply a freely heterophonic accompanniment, the improvised ornaments and melodic contours of which create new polyphonic strata and textures in each performance.

(b) Filipino.

Filipinos in the USA are predominantly of lowland (Christian) origin. They have settled chiefly in the western states and in Hawaii and Alaska. During the years of their presence, they have maintained the musical traditions of the homeland while being open to innovations from their new environment. Each Filipino American community responds to its local circumstances rather than to regional or national influences. The responses vary according to language, educational background at the time of immigration, the period of immigration (before World War II, immediately after the war, or the 1970s onwards), and location in the USA, whether urban or rural.

Instrumental music was popular in the pre-war period, especially in the agricultural centres of the west. Rondalla (string ensembles) such as the Black and Tan (Kauai, HA) and banda (wind bands) such as the Filipino Federation Band (Stockton, CA), were organized early on. Talented musicians quickly found employment in hotel and nightclub dance bands, however, playing popular American rather than traditional Filipino repertory. Few wind bands are currently active, though the Honolulu community established a banda in 1980. In recent years communities in California, Texas, and Hawaii have formed rondalla ensembles. The University of Hawaii provides instruction in rondalla and kulintang (gong ensembles), as well as in song and dance, and the University of Washington, Seattle, teaches kulintang in Maranao and Magindanao styles. The Kalilang Ensemble (San Francisco) studies and presents authentic performances of repertory from Maranao and Magindanao cultures).

Traditional vocal music, which is generally solo, is performed in both informal and formal settings. It is a part of cultural presentations and nationalistic celebrations, such as Rizal Day, when Filipinos celebrate their national hero. Beginning in 1946, choral groups have gained in popularity among civic organizations, and touring choirs from the Philippines reinforce this interest; performances include choral arrangements of folksongs, as well as kundiman (love-songs) and Tagalog film songs; contemporary works by Filipino composers are occasionally presented. The principal motivation for the groups is singing in Filipino languages.

Commercial and pop genres from the Philippines (e.g. Pinoy rock, see Philippines, §IV) have found a market in the USA, chiefly among young, recent immigrants but also to some extent among the American-born. Sound recordings are an important means of dissemination, as are Filipino-language radio and television broadcasts, Tagalog films and concert tours by singers such as Freddie Aguilar and Jun Polistico.

The development of neo-traditional music arises from the concern for a Filipino-American identity among the younger generation and is part of a larger Asian American movement. Gong music of upland and Islamic cultures (those least influenced by the West) forms the basis for such creativity, as exemplified by the Samahan Percussion Ensemble (San Diego, CA) and the Cumbanchero Percussionaires (Seattle, WA). In addition, neo-traditional music of Philippine and American origin provides musical material for folkdance groups inspired by Bayanihan traditions.

The transfer of music from a Philippine to an American setting has caused changes in musical style and in social context. Performances are predominantly presented as entertainment rather than participated in as social or ritual events. An important function for music is to stress ethnic solidarity and identity in contrast to the mainstream of American culture. Many Filipino-Americans, however, choose to concentrate on Western art music and popular music rather than Filipino traditions. This focus and commitment are also a significant part of the Filipino-American experience, and are consistent with patterns of adaptation developed in the Philippines during the Spanish and American colonial periods.

black american traditions

BIBLIOGRAPHY

european american

hispanic american

mission and colonial

mexican american and southwest

caribbean and portuguese, american and urban popular music

Amerindian

asian american

european american

General

Western

Eastern

General

G. Korson, ed.: Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Philadelphia, 1949, rev. 2/1960)

H.M. Kallen: Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: an Essay in Social Philosophy (Philadelphia, 1956)

B. Nettl: An Introduction to Folk Music in the United States (Detroit, 1960, rev. and enlarged by H. Myers as Folk Music in the United States, 3/1976)

N. Glazer and D.P. Moynihan: Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, MA, 1963, 2/1970)

M.M. Gordon: Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964/R)

B. Nettl: Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965, rev. 2/1973)

T.C. Grame: America’s Ethnic Music (Tarpon Springs, FL, 1976)

J. Potter, ed.: Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/1 (1978)

S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov, and O. Handlin, eds.: Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, MA, 1980)

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R.A. Georges and S. Stern: American and Canadian Immigrant and Ethnic Folklore: an Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1982)

N. Tawa: A Sound of Strangers: Musical Culture, Acculturation, and the Post-Civil War Ethnic American (Metuchen, NJ, 1982)

V. Greene: A Passion for Polka: Old Time Ethnic Music in America (Berkeley, 1992)

Western

British – instrumental

S.P. Bayard: Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1944/R)

A. Jabbour: American Fiddle Tunes (Washington DC, 1971)

L. Burman-Hall: ‘Southern American Folk Fiddle Styles’, EthM, xix (1975), 47–65

P.F. Wells: New England Traditional Fiddling: an Anthology of Recordings, 1926–1975 (Los Angeles, 1978)

S.P. Bayard, ed.: Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania (University Park, PA, 1982)

C. Goertzen: ‘American Fiddle Tunes and the Historic-Geographic Method’, EthM, xxix (1985), 448–73

C. Goertzen and A. Jabbour: ‘George P. Knauff's Virginal Reels and Fiddling in the Antebellum South’, American Music, v (1987), 121–44

C. Goertzen: ‘Balancing Local and National Approaches at American Fiddle Contests’, American Music, xiv (1996), 352–82

British – vocal

F.J. Child: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1882–98/R)

G.P. Jackson: White and Negro Spirituals (New York, 1943)

G. Vail: ‘Backgrounds of Welsh Musical Life in Colonial Pennsylvania’, Church Music and Musical Life in Pennsylvania, ed. Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America, iii/2 (Philadelphia, 1947), 351

S.P. Bayard: ‘Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folk Song’, Journal of American Folklore, lxiii (1950), 1–44

T.P. Coffin: The British Traditional Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, 1950, rev. 2/1963/R)

G.M. Laws, Jr: Native American Balladry: a Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus (Philadelphia, 1950, rev. 2/1964)

G.M. Laws, Jr: American Balladry from British Broadsides (Philadelphia, 1957)

D.K. Wilgus: Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1959/R)

B.H. Bronson: The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, NJ, 1959–72)

R. Abrahams and G. Foss: Anglo-American Folksong Style (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968)

B.H. Bronson: The Ballad as Song (Berkeley, 1969)

D.K. Wilgus and E.R. Long: ‘The “Blues Ballad” and the Genesis of Style in Traditional Narrative Song’, in Narrative Folksong: New Directions, ed. C.L. Edwards and K.E.B. Manley (Boulder, CO, 1985), 435–82

A.D. Shapiro: ‘Sounds of Scotland’, American Music, viii/1 (1990), 71–83

H. Gower: ‘For Singin' and Not for Readin': Scottish Ballads in America’, Now & Then, ix/2 (1992), 31–3

N. Cohen: Traditional Anglo-American Folk Music: an Annotated Discography of Published Sound Recordings (New York, 1994)

T. Burton: ‘The Lion's Share: Scottish Ballads in Southern Appalachia’, Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, lviii/3 (1997), 95–101

French – north-eastern

E. Viau: Chants populaires des Franco-Américains (Woonsocket, RI, 1931)

M. Barbeau: ‘French-Canadian Folk Songs’, MQ, xxix (1943), 122–37

A. Police: Manuel de cantiques et chants religieux (Boston, 1974)

D. Waldman: Transcultural Folk Song Survival: Active and Passive Bearers of French-Canadian Folk Song Tradition in Woonsocket, R.I., and Adjacent Towns (thesis, Brown U., 1976)

R. Albert, ed.: Chansons de chez-nous (Bedford, NH, 1978)

J. Olivier: D' la boucane: une introduction au folklore franco-américain de la Nouvelle-Angleterre (Cambridge, MA, 1979)

S. Miskoe and J. Paul: Fiddle Tunes of Omer Marcoux (Bedford, NH, 1980)

J. Olivier: Pas de gêne: Omer Marcoux, violoneux et sculpteur (Bedford, NH, 1981)

E. Brody: ‘“Vive la France”: Gallic Accents in American Music from 1880 to 1914 (April 1977)’, MQ, lxxv (1991), 225–34

French – Cajun

I.T. Whitfield: Louisiana French Folk Songs (Baton Rouge, LA, 1939; repr. New York, 1969)

H. Oster: Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians, Arhoolie 5009, 5015 (197–) (1958) [disc notes]

J. Broven: South to Louisiana: the Music of the Cajun Bayous (Gretna, LA, 1983)

B.J. Ancelet and E. Morgan: The Makers of Cajun Music (Austin, 1984)

A.A. Savoy: Cajun Music: a Reflection of a People (Eunice, LA, 1985)

B.J. Ancelet: Cajun Music: Origins and Development (Lafayette, LA, 1989)

C. Strachwitz and L. Blank: J’ai été au bal: the Cajun and Zydeco Music of Louisiana, videotape, dir. Brazos Films (El Cerrito, CA, c1989)

B.J. Ancelet, J. Edwards and G. Pitre: Cajun Country (Jackson, MS, 1991)

P. Gould: Cajun Music and Zydeco (Baton Rouge, LA, 1992)

R. Sacre: Musiques cajun, creole et zydeco: que sais-je? (Paris, 1995)

S.K. Bernard: Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues (Jackson, MS, 1996)

German

H.E. Johnson: ‘The Germania Musical Society’, MQ, xxxix (1953), 75–93

B. Nettl: ‘The Hymns of the Amish: an Example of Marginal Survival’, Journal of American Folk-Lore, lxx (1957), 323–8

E.C. Wolf: Lutheran Church Music in America during the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (diss., U of Illinois, 1960)

T.J. Albrecht: ‘The Music Libraries of German Singing Societies in Texas, 1850–1855’, Notes, xxxi (1974–5), 517–29

D. Yoder: ‘Die Volkslieder der Pennsylvanien-Deutschen’, in Handbuch des Volksliedes, ii, ed. R.W. Brednich, L. Röhrich and W. Suppan (Munich, 1975), 221–70

P. Westermeyer: What Shall we Sing in a Foreign Land? Theology and Cultic Song in the German Reformed and Lutheran Churches of Pennsylvania, 1830–1900 (diss., U. of Chicago, 1978)

W. Salmen: ‘“Tyrolese Favorite Songs” des 19. Jahrhunderts in der Neuen Welt’, Festschrift für Karl Horak, ed. M. Schneider (Innsbruck, 1980), 69–78

F.H. Pierce: The Washington Saengerbund: a History of German Song and German Culture in the Nation's Capital (Washington DC, 1981)

P.V. Bohlman: ‘Deutsch-amerikanische Musik in Wisconsin: Überleben im “Melting Pot”’, Jb für Volksliedforschung, xxx (1985), 99–116

P.V. Bohlman: ‘Prolegomena to the Classification of German-American Music’, Yearbook of German-American Studies, xx (1985), 33–48

E.C. Wolf: ‘Two Divergent Traditions of German-American Hymnody in Maryland, c. 1800’, American Music, iii/3 (1985), 299–312

D.R. Hinks: Brethren Hymn Books and Hymnals, 1720–1884 (Gettysburg, PA, 1986)

J.P. Leary and R. March: ‘Dutchman Bands: Genre, Ethnicity, and Pluralism in the Upper Midwest’, in Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life, ed. S. Stern and J.A. Cicala (Logan, UT, 1991), 21–43

R. Pietsch: Musikalische Volkskultur bei burgenländischen Auswanderern in Pennsylvania, USA, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Instrumentalmusik (diss., U. of Vienna, 1991)

P.V. Bohlman: ‘Religious Music/Secular Music: the Press of the German-American Church and Aesthetic Mediation’, in The German-American Press, ed. H. Geitz (Madison, WI, 1992), 69–90

P.V. Bohlman: ‘Die ‘Pennsylvanische Sammlung von Kirchen-Musik’: ein Lehrbuch zur Deutsch-Amerikanisierung’, Jb für Volksliedforschung, xxxviii (1993), 90–109

H. Wulz: ‘Vom Musikleben der kanadischen Hutterer’, Jb des Österreicischen Volksliedwerkes, xlii/xliii (1993–4), 75–91

O. Holzapfel and E. Schusser, eds.: Auf den Spuren der Westpfälzer Wandermusikanten (Munich, 1995)

O. Holzapfel: Religiöse Identität und Gesaugbuch: zur Ideologiegeschichte deutschsprachiger Einwanderer in den USA und die Auseinandersetzung um das ‘richtige’ Gesangbuch (Berne, 1998)

O. Holzapfel and P.V. Bohlman, eds.: Land without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German America (Madison, WI, 2000)

Irish

F. O'Neill: O'Neill's Music of Ireland (Chicago, 1903)

F. O'Neill: The Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems (Chicago, 1907)

F. O'Neill: Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago, 1910)

F. O'Neill: Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago, 1913)

F. O'Neill: Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody, arr. S. O'Neill (Chicago, 1922)

M. Moloney: ‘Medicine for Life: a Study of a Folk Composer and his Music’, Keystone Quarterly, xx/1–2 (1975), 4–37

L. McCullough: ‘The Role of Language, Music and Dance in the Revival of Irish Culture in Chicago’, Ethnicity (1976)

L. McCullough: ‘Style in Traditional Irish Music’, Ethnomusicology, xxi (1977), 85–97

M. Moloney: ‘Irish Ethnic Recordings and the Irish American Imagination’, in Ethnic Recordings in America (Washington, DC, 1978), 84–101

M. Moloney: Irish Music on the American Stage (Cork, 1993)

M. Moloney: ‘Irish Dance Bands in America’, New Hibernia Review, ii (1998), 127–138

M. Moloney: ‘Acculturation, Assimilation and Revitalization: Irish Music in Urban America, 1960–1996’, Proceedings of the Traditional Music Crossroads Conference: Dublin 1999

Italian

C. Nigra: Canti popolari del Piemonte (Turin, 1888/R)

P.H. Williams: South Italian Folkways in Europe and America: a Handbook for Social Workers (New Haven, CT, 1938/R)

M.D. Ramirez: ‘Italian Folklore from Tampa, Florida’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, v (1941), 101–6

H.J. Gans: The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian Americans (New York, 1962)

C. Bianco: ‘Il folklore degli emigrati italiani in America’, Lares, xxx (1964), 148–52

M. Urik: ‘The San Rocco Festival at Ahquippa, Pennsylvania: a Transplanted Tradition’, Pennsylvania Folklife, xix (1969), 14–22

C. Bianco: Italian and Italian-American Folklore: a Working Bibliography (Bloomington, IN, 1970)

A.F. Rolle: The American Italians: their History and Culture (Belmont, CA, 1972), 22–5

C. Bianco: ‘Folklore and Immigration among Italian-Americans’, Journal of the Folklore Institute, xi (1974), 141–4

C. Bianco: The Two Rosetos (Bloomington, IN, 1974)

R. and R. D’Ariano: Italo-American Ballads, Poems, Lyrics and Melodies (Parsons, WV, 1976)

M. Gualerzi: La musica popolare italiana in dischi commerciali … in Italia e negli Stati Uniti (Bologna, 1977)

V. Scarpaci: A Portrait of the Italians in America (New York, 1982)

R. Tucci: ‘Discografia del folklore musicale italiano in microsolco’, Culture musicali, no.1 (1982), 121–42

L. Del Giudice: Preliminary Survey of Italian Folklife in Los Angeles (Los Angeles 1990)

T. Magrini: ‘Recorded Documentation of Italian Traditional Music’, YTM, xxii (1990), 172–84

M. Sorce Keller: Tradizione orale e canto corale (Bologna, 1991), 63–71

L. Del Giudice, ed.: Studies in Italian American Folklore (Logan, UT, 1993)

Scandinavian

‘Swedish Church Music: Organs and Church Bells in Pennsylvania’, Church Music and Musical Life in Pennsylvania, ed. Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America, i (Philadelphia, 1926), 185–224

M.B. Ruud: ‘Norwegian Emigrant Songs’, Publications of the Norwegian American Historical Association: Studies and Records, ii (1927), 1–22

M. Edgar: ‘Finnish Folk Songs in Minnesota’, Minnesota History, xvi (1935), 319–29

T.C. Blegen and M.B. Ruud: Norwegian Emigrant Songs and Ballads (Minneapolis, 1936)

E. Haugen: ‘Norwegian Emigrant Songs and Ballads’, Journal of American Folklore, li (1938), 69–72

L.N. Bergmann: Music Master of the Middle West: the Story of F. Melius Christiansen and the St Olaf Cboir (Minneapolis, 1944/R)

A. Wilden: ‘Scandinavian Folklore and Immigrant Ballads’, Bulletin of the American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature, and Science, ii (1947), 2–44

T.C. Blegen: ‘Singing Immigrants and Pioneers’, Studies in American Culture: Dominant Ideas and Images, ed. J.J. Kwiat and M.C. Turpie (Minneapolis, 1960)

R.L. Wright: Swedish Emigrant Ballads (Lincoln, NE, 1965)

K.A. Swanson: ‘Music of Two Finnish-Apostolic Lutheran Groups in Minnesota: the Heidemanians and Pollarites’, Student Musicologists at Minnesota, iv (1970–71), 1–36

P. Gronow: ‘Recording for the “Foreign” Series’, JEMF Quarterly, xii (1976), 15–20

P. Gronow: Studies in Scandinavian-American Discography (Helsinki, 1977)

P. Gronow: ‘Ethnic Recordings: an Introduction’, Ethnic Recordings in America: a Neglected Heritage (Washington DC, 1982) [pubn of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress], 1–49

R. Wright and R.L. Wright: Danish Emigrant and Ballads and Songs (Carbondale, IL, 1983)

Tunes from the Amerika Trunk: Traditional Norwegian-American Music from Wisconsin, ii: Fiddle Tunes and Button Accordion Melodies, Folklore Village Farm Records FVF2 (c1984)

Old Time Dance Music from Norway and Minnesota, perf. Viola Kjeldahl Lee, Banjar Records BR-1846 (1985)

P. Martin: Farmhouse Fiddlers: Music and Dance Traditions in the Rural Midwest (Mount Horeb, WI, 1994)

Swiss

E. Osenbrüggen: Die Schweizer: daheim und in der Fremde (Berlin, 1874)

R. Andersen: ‘Traditional Music: the Real Story of Ethnic Music and How it Evolved in Minnesota and Wisconsin’, Minnesota Monthly, xii/10 (1978), 9

U. Hostettler: Anderi Lieder: von den Geringen Leuten (Gümligen, 1979)

B. Bachmann-Geiser and E. Bachmann: Amische: die Lebensweise der Amischen in Berne, Indiana (Berne, 1988)

D.H. Klassen: Singing Mennonite: Low German Songs among the Mennonites (Winnipeg, MB, 1989)

J.P. Leary: Yodeling in Dairyland: a History of Swiss Music in Wisconsin (Mount Horeb, WI, 1991)

Eastern

Albanian

R. Sokoli: Les danses populaires et les instruments musicaux du peuple albanais (Tiranë, 1958)

D. and E. Stockmann: ‘Die vokale Mehrstimmigkeit in Süd-Albanien’, Ethnomusicologie III [and IV]: Wégimont IV [recte V] 1958 and 1960, 85–135

D. Stockmann: ‘Zur musikalischen Struktur einiger mehrstimmiger Gesänge der südalbanischen Laben’, Deutsches Jb für Volkskunde, xi (1965), 173–82

D. Stockmann, E. Stockmann and W. Fiedler: Gesänge der Çamen, Albanische Volksmusik, i (Berlin, 1965)

J. Sugarman: Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (Chicago, 1997)

Armenian

B. Mowšēł, ed.: Amērikahay tarēcoyc/Armenian American Yearbook (Boston, 1912)

M.V. Malcom: The Armenians in America (Boston, 1919/R)

Y. Xašmaneanš, ed.: Amerikahay hanragitak taragirk/Armenian American Encyclopedic Almanac (Boston, 1925)

The Armenians in Massachusetts (Boston, 1937) [pubn of Armenian Historical Society]

S. Poladian: Armenian Folk Songs (Berkeley, 1942)

Y. Gowyowmčean: Grigor M. Siwni: eražštageta ew mardo/Grikor M. Suni: the Musician and the Man (Philadelphia, 1943)

J.H. Tashjian: The Armenians of the United States and Canada (Boston, 1947)

A. Dinkjian: ‘The Music and Musicians’, Ararat, xviii/1 (1977), 43–9 [Armenian American issue]

V. Nercessian, ed.: Essays on Armenian Music (London, 1978)

H.B. Vassilian, ed.: Armenian American Almanac (Glendale, CA, 1985, 3/1995)

D. Waldstreicher: The Armenian Americans (New York, 1989)

Baltic

J. Balys: disc notes, Lithuanian Folk Songs in the United States, Folkways FW 1009 (1955)

J. Zilevičius: ‘Native Musical Instruments’, Lituanus, iii/1 (1957), 12–15

J. Balys: Lithuanian Folksongs in America (Boston, 1958)

‘Choir and Chorus’, ‘Čiurlionis Ensemble’, ‘Kandlės’, ‘Music’, ‘Musical Folk Instruments’, Encyclopedia lituanica (Boston, 1970–78)

J. Balys: Lithuanian Folksongs in America, ii (Silver Spring, MD, 1977)

C.J. Niles: ‘The Revival of the Latvian Kokle in America’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/1 (1978), 211–39

C. Jaremko-Porter: ‘Ideology and Collective Expression in the Latvian Folk Song’, Journal of Baltic Studies, xiii (1983), 60–68

C. Jaremko-Porter: ‘Musical Instruments’, in Latvia, ed. V. Simanis (St Charles, IL, 1984), 88–9

G. Šmidchens: The Folklore Movement in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, 1968–1991 (diss., Indiana, U., 1996)

Bulgarian and Macedonian

M. Montgomery: ‘A Macedonian Wedding in Indianapolis’, Hoosier Folklore, vii (1948), 101–04

P. Tilney: ‘The Immigrant Macedonian Wedding in Ft. Wayne’, Indiana Folklore, iii/1 (1970), 3–34

N.G. Altankov: The Bulgarian-Americans (Palo Alto, CA, 1979)

I. Markoff: ‘Persistence of Old World Cultural Expression in the Traditional Music of Bulgarian-Canadians’, Culture and History of the Bulgarian People: their Bulgarian and American Parallels, ed. W. Kolar (Pittsburg, 1982), 217–39

Czech and Slovak

A.V. Seckar: ‘Slovak Wedding Customs’, New York Folklore Quarterly, iii (1947), 189–205

C.M. Babcock: ‘Czech Songs in Nebraska’, Western Folklore, viii (1949), 320–27

J.A. Evanson: ‘Folk Songs of an Industrial City’, in Pennsylvania Songs and Legends, ed. G. Korson (Philadelphia, 1949/R), 423–66

G. Korson: ‘Coal Miners’, in Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Philadelphia, 1949/R), 354–400

J.J. Lach, ed.: A Treasury of Slovak Folksongs/Slovensky si Spievaj (New York, 1950)

B. Nettl and I. Moravcik: ‘Czech and Slovak Songs Collected in Detroit’, Midwest Folklore, v (1955), 37–49

S. Pirkova-Jacobson: ‘Harvest Festivals among Czechs and Slovaks in America’, Journal of American Folklore, lxix (1956), 266–80

S. Erdely: ‘Research on Traditional Music of Nationality Groups in Cleveland and Vicinity’, EthM, xii (1968), 245–50

K.J. Freeze: ‘Czechs’, in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov and O. Handlin (Cambridge, MA, 1980)

P.R. Magocsi: ‘Carpatho-Rusyns’, ibid.

M.M. Stolarik: ‘Slovaks’, ibid.

R.C. Metyl[Metil]: ‘The Influence of Interethnic Conflicts and Alliances on the Patronage and Performance Repertoire of the Rusyn American Folk Ensemble “Slavjane”’, in Echo der Vielfalt: Traditionelle Musik von Minderheiten-etnischen Gruppen/Echoes of Diversity: Traditional Music of Ethnic Groups, ed. U. Hemetek and E. Lubej (Vienna, 1996), 157–71

Greek

S.G. Canoutas: Hellenism in America (Boston, 1918)

P.T. Kourides: The Evolution of the Greek Orthodox Church in America and its Present Problems (New York, 1959)

I. Sanders: Rainbow in the Rock: the People of Rural Greece (Cambridge, MA, 1962)

T. Saloutos: The Greeks in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1964)

S. Chianis: Folk Songs of Mantineia: Greece (Berkeley, 1965)

G. Holst: Road to Rembetika (Athens, 1975)

T. Petrides: Greek Dances (Athens, 1975)

M.G. Kaloyanides: ‘New York and Bouzoukia: the Rise of Greek-American Music’, Essays in Arts and Sciences, vi/1 (1977), 95–103

S. Chianis: ‘Survival of Greek Folk Music in New York’, New York Folklore, xiv/3–4 (1988), 37–48

Hungarian

B. Bartók: A Magyar népdal [Hungarian folksong] (Budapest, 1924/R; Eng. trans., 1931/R)

Z. Kodály: A Magyar népzene [Hungarian folk music] (Budapest, 1937, 6/1973; Eng. trans., 1960, rev. and enlarged 2/1971)

M.L. Hansen: The Immigrant in American History (Cambridge, MA, 1940)

E. Lengyel: Americans from Hungary (New York, 1948)

I. Babow: ‘The Singing Societies of European Immigrants’, Phylon, xv (1954), 289–95

I. Babow: ‘Types of Immigrant Singing Societies’, Sociology and Social Research, xxxix (1954–5), 242–7

J. Kósa: Land of Choice (Toronto, 1957)

S. Erdely: ‘Folksinging of the American Hungarians in Cleveland’, EthM, viii (1964), 14–27

S. Erdely: Methods and Principles of Hungarian Ethnomusicology (Bloomington, IN, 1965)

S. Erdely: ‘Research on Traditional Music of Nationality Groups in Cleveland and Vicinity’, EthM, xii (1968), 245–50

S. Erdely: ‘Traditional and Individual Traits in the Songs of Three Hungarian-Americans’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/1 (1978), 98–151

S. Erdely: ‘Ethnic Music in the United States: an Overview’, YIFMC, xi (1979), 114–37

Polish

R.K. Spottswood: ‘Karol Stoch and Recorded Polish Folk Music from the Podhale Region’, JEMF Quarterly, xiii (1977), 196–204

B. Falkowski: Polka History 101 (Buffalo, 1980)

L.T. Blaszczyk: ‘The Polish Singers' Movement in America’, Polish American Studies, xxxviii (1981), 50–62

J.E. Kleeman: The Origins and Stylistic Development of Polish-American Polka Music (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1982)

R.K. Spottswood: ‘The Sajewski Story: Eighty years of Polish Music in Chicago’, in Ethnic Recordings in America: a Neglected Heritage (Washington, DC, 1982)

L. Wrazen: ‘Traditional Music Performance among Górale in Canada’, EthM, xxxv (1991), 173–93

V. Greene: A Passion for Polka: Old-Time Ethnic Music in America (Berkeley, 1992)

C. Keil and A.V. Keil: Polka Happiness (Philadelphia, 1992)

P. Savaglio: ‘Polka Bands and Choral Groups: the Musical Self-Representation of Polish-Americans in Detroit’, EthM, xl (1996), 35–47

T.J. Cooley: Ethnography, Tourism, and Music-Culture in the Tatra Mountains: Negotiated Representations of Polish Górale Ethnicity (diss., Brown U., 1999)

Beloved Polish Songs, perf. the Lira Singers, Lira Singers LS 0103 (1988)

Polish Village Music: Historic Polish-American Recordings 1927–1933, Arhoolie Productions CD 7031 (1995)

Fire in the Mountains: Polish Mountain Fiddle Music, i: The Karol Stoch Band and ii: The Great Highland Bands, Yazoo 7012–13 (1997) [incl. notes by T.J. Cooley and D. Spottswood]

Romanian

C.A. Galitzi: A Study of Assimilation among the Romanians in the United States (New York, 1929)

V. Haţegan: Fifty Years of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America (Jackson, MI, 1959)

K.A. Thigpen: ‘Rumanian Folklore of the New Year’, Folklore Forum, vi (1973), 160–64

V. Wertsman: The Romanians in America, 1748–1974: a Chronology and Fact Book (Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1975)

T. Andrica: Romanian Americans and their Communities in Cleveland (Cleveland, 1977)

K.M. Bogolia: Romanian Folk Dancing (West Lafayette, IN, 1977)

M. Leuca, ed.: Ballads of the Romanian Immigrants (West Lafayette, IN, 1977)

M. Leuca: Romanian Americans in Lake County, Indiana: an Ethnic Heritage Curriculum Project (West Lafayette, IN, 1978)

G. Bobango: ‘Romanians’, in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. S. Thernstrom, O. Orlov and O. Handlin (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 879–85

K.A. Thigpen: Folklore and the Ethnicity Factor in the Lives of Romanian-Americans (New York, 1980)

V. Haţegan: Romanian Culture in America (Cleveland, 1988)

Russian

P. Young: The Pilgrims of Russian-Town (New York; 1932/R)

K. Peacock: Songs of the Doukhobors: and Introductory Outline (Ottawa, 1970)

M.B. Clymer: Radical Acculturation Patterns in a Traditional Immigrant Group, Project No.BO-123, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, Bureau of Research (January, 1970)

W.B. Moore: Molokan Oral Tradition: Legends and Memorates of an Ethnic Sect (Berkeley, 1973)

V. Wertsman, ed.: The Russians in America: a Chronology and Fact Book, (Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1977)

E. Dunn: The Molokan Heritage Collection, i: Reprints of Articles and Translations (Berkeley, 1983–9)

M.A. Colfer: Morality, Kindred and Ethnic Boundary: a Study of the Oregon Old Believers (New York, 1985)

P.R. Magocsi: The Russian Americans (New York, 1989/R)

L. O'Brien-Rothe: The Molokan Heritage Collection, iv: The Origins of Molokan Singing (Berkeley, 1989)

R.A. Morris: Old Russian Ways: Cultural Variations Among Three Russian Groups in Oregon (New York, 1991)

R.R. Robson: ‘Liturgy and Community Among Old Believers, 1905–1917’, Slavic Review, lii (1993), 713–24

M. Mazo: ‘Molokans and Old Believers in Two Worlds: Migration, Change, and Continuity’, 1995 Festival of American Folklife (Washington, 1995), 83–9 [programme notes]

M. Mazo: ‘Change As Confirmation of Continuity as Experienced by Russian Molokans’, in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham and London, 1996), 254–75

(k) South Slavic.

G.G. Govorchin: Americans from Yugoslavia (Gainesville, FL, 1961)

W. Kolar: A History of the Tambura, ii (Pittsburgh, 1975)

W.G. Lockwood: ‘Bosnian Muslims’, ‘Croats’, ‘Macedonians’, in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov and O. Handlin (Cambridge, MA, 1980)

M. Petrovich and J. Halpern: ‘Serbs’, ibid.

R. Susel: ‘Slovenes’, ibid.

M.E. Forry: The Bećar Music of Yugoslav-Americans (thesis, UCLA, 1982)

R.A.-D. March: The Tamburitza Tradition (diss., Indiana U., 1983)

Ukranian

H. Kowalsky: Ukranian Folk Songs: a Historical Treatise (Boston, 1925)

Z. Lys'ko: Ukrainian Folk Melodies (New York and Jersey City, NJ, 1967–71)

J. and L. Naples: ‘The Music and the Man’, New Jersey Folklore, vii (1982, 39–40 [discusses bandura music of Ukranian Americans in New Jersey]

R.C. Metyl: ‘The Influence of Interethnic Conflicts and Alliances on the Patronage and Performance Repertoire of the Rusyn American Folk Ensemble “Slavjane” of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania’, in Echo der Vielfalt: Traditionelle Musik von Minderheiten-ethnischen Gruppen/Echoes of Diversity: Traditional music of Ethnic Groups-Minorities, ed. U. Hemetek and E.H. Lubej (Vienna, 1996), 157–71

black american traditions

E. Kilham: ‘Sketches in Color: IV’, (1870)

H. Russell: Cheer! Boys, Cheer!: Memories of Men and Music (London, 1895)

P. Svinin: Picturesque United States of America, 1811, 1812, 1813 (New York, 1930)

J.W. Work: Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York, 1940)

J.W. Work: ‘Changing Patterns in Negro Folk Songs’, Journal of American Folklore, lxii (1949), 136–44

H. Courlander: Negro Folk Music U.S.A. (New York, 1963)

J.M. McKim: ‘Negro Songs’, in The Negro and His Folklore, ed. B. Jackson (Austin, TX, 1967), 57–60

W.C. Handy: Father of the Blues (New York, 1970)

F. Bebey: African Music: A People’s Art (New York, 1975)

Z.N. Hurston: ‘Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals’, in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. N. Huggins (New York, 1976), 344–7

D. Epstein: Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (Urbana, IL, 1977)

L. Levine: Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York, 1977)

Songs of Zion: Supplemental Worship (Nashville, TN, 1981)

W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk (New York, 1989)

M.M. Fisher: Negro Slaves Songs in the United States (New York, 1990)

P.K. Maultsby: ‘Africanisms in African-American Music’, in Africanisms in American Culture, ed. J. Holloway (Bloomington, IN, 1990), 185–209

P.K. Maultsby: ‘The Impact of Gospel Music on the Secular Music Industry’, in We’ll Understand it Better By and By, ed. B.J. Reagon (Washington, DC, 1992), 19–23

L. Parrish: Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (Athens, GA, 1992)

A. Lomax, ed.: Folk Music of the United States: Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, and Ballads, Library of Congress, Music Divisions Recording Laboratory AFS L3

hispanic american

J.S. Roberts: The Latin Tinge: the Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York, 1979, 2/1999)

G. Béhague: ‘Improvisation in World Musics’, World Music Educators Journal, lxvi/5 (1980), 116–45

mission and colonial

A. de Benavides: Memorial (Madrid, 1630; Eng. trans. as Benavides’ Memorial of 1630, Washington DC, 1954)

L.M. Spell: ‘Music Teaching in New Mexico in the 17th Century’, New Mexico Historical Review, ii/1 (1927), 27–36

Sister Joan of Arc: Catholic Music and Musicians in Texas (San Antonio, TX, 1936)

A.B. McGill: ‘Old Mission Music’, MQ, xxiv (1938), 186–93

O. da Silva, ed.: Mission of Music of California (Los Angeles, 1941) [score]

J.D. Robb: ‘The Music of Los Pastores’, Western Folklore, xvi (1957), 263–

L.B. Spiess: ‘Benavides and Church Music in New Mexico in the Early 17th Century’, JAMS, xvii (1964), 144–56

L. Warkentin: ‘The Rise and Fall of Indian Music in the California Missions’, LAMR, ii (1981), 45–65

mexican american and southwest

L.M. Spell: Music in Texas (Austin, 1936)

V.T. Mendoza, ed.: El corrido mexicano (Mexico City, 1954)

J.D. Robb, ed.: Hispanic Folk Songs of New Mexico (Albuquerque, 1954)

M. Simmons: The Mexican Corrido as a Source of an Interpretive Study of Modern Mexico (1870–1950) (Bloomington, IN, 1957)

A. Paredes: With his Pistol in his Hand: a Border Ballad and its Hero (Austin, 1958)

J.B. Rael: The New Mexican Alabado (Stanford, 1951/R)

R.B. Stark: Music of the Spanish Folk Plays in New Mexico (Santa Fe, 1969)

A. Paredes: A Texas-American Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border (Urbana, IL, 1976/R) [score]

D.W. Dickey: The Kennedy Corridos: a Study of the Ballads of a Mexican-American Hero (Austin, 1978)

R.B. Stark, ed.: Music of the ‘Bailes’ in New Mexico (Santa Fe, 1978) [score]

J.D. Robb: Hispanic Folk Music of New Mexico and the Southwest: Self-Portrait of a People (Norman, OK, 1980) [score]

M. Peña: The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music (Austin, 1985)

M. Peña: ‘Ritual Structure in a Chicano Dance’, LAMR, i (1980), 47–73

P. Poveda: ‘Danza de concheros en Austin, Texas: entrevista con Andrés Segura’, LAMR, ii (1981), 280–99

M. Peña: ‘From ranchero to jaitón: Class and Ethnicity in Texas-Mexican Music’, EthM, xxix (1985), 29–55

B. Romero: The Matachines Music and Dance in San Juan Pueblo and Alcalde, New Mexico: Contexts and Meanings (diss., UCLA, 1993)

S. Loza: Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (Urbana, IL, 1993)

A. Paredes: Folklore and Culture in the Texas Mexican Border (Austin, TX, 1993)

J. Limón: Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican American South Texas (Madison, WI, 1994)

R.R. Flores: Los Pastores: History and Performance in the Mexican Shepherds’ Play of South Texas (Washington DC, 1995)

M. Herrera-Sobek: Northward Bound: the Mexican Immigrant Experience in Ballad and Song (Bloomington, IN, 1993)

P.J. García: ‘The New Mexican Early Ballad Tradition: Reconsidering the New Mexican Folklorists' Contribution to Songs of Intercultural Conflict’, LAMR, xvii (1996), 150–71

J. Koegel: ‘Village Music Life Along the Río Grande: Tomé, New Mexico Since 1739’, LAMR, xviii (1997), 173–251

M. Peña: Música Tejana: the Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation (College Station, TX, 1999)

M. Peña: The Mexican American Orquestra (Austin, 1999)

caribbean and portuguese, american and urban popular music

M.C. Hare: ‘Portuguese Folk-Songs from Princetown, Cape Cod, Mass.’, MQ, xxiv (1928), 35–53

R.L. Singer: ‘Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Latin Popular Music in New York City’, LAMR, iv (1983), 183–202

J. Duany: ‘Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of salsa’, LAMR, v (1984), 186–216

P. Manuel, ed.: Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives (Lanham, MD, 1991)

G. Béhague, ed.: Music and Black Ethnicity: the Caribbean and South America (New Brunswick, NJ and London, 1994)

R. Glasser: My Music is my Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and their New York Communities, 1917–1940 (Berkeley, 1997)

S. Loza: Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music (Urbana, IL, 1999)

J.S. Roberts: Latin Jazz: the First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today (New York, 1999)

Amerindian

F.G. Speck, L. Broom and W.W. Long: Cherokee Dance and Drama (Berkeley, 1951/R)

R.D. Theisz and Ben Black Bear: Songs and Dances of the Lakota (Rosebud, SD, 1976)

T. Vennum: The Ojibwa Dance Drum: its History and Construction (Washington, DC, 1982)

C. Heth, ed.: Sharing a Heritage: American Indian Arts (Los Angeles, 1984)

J.D. Sweet: Dances of the Tewa Pueblo Indians (Santa Fe, 1985)

G.P. Kurath: Half a Century of Dance Research (Flagstaff, AZ, 1986)

L.F. Huenemann: ‘Dakota/Lakota Music and Dance’, in The Arts of South Dakota, ed. R. McIntyre and R.L. Bell (Sioux Falls, SD, 1988)

G.P. Horse Capture: Powwow (Cody, WY, 1989)

W. Smyth, ed.: Songs of Indian Territory: Native American Music Traditions of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK, 1989) [incl. cassette]

W.K. Powers: War Dance: Plains Indian Musical Performance (Tucson, AZ, 1990)

C. Heth, ed.: Native American Dance: Ceremonies and Social Traditions (Washington, DC, 1992)

A. Herle: ‘Dancing Community: Powwow and Pan-Indianism in North America’, Cambridge Anthropology, xvii/2 (1994) [special issue Living Traditions: Continuity and Change, Past and Present]

Recordings

Apache Music of the American Indian, Library of Congress AFS L42

Love Songs of the Lakota, Indian House IH 4315

Songs of the Arizona Apache, Canyon 705

Songs of the Sioux, Library of Congress AAFS L23 (1951)

Songs and Dances of the Flathead Indians, Folkways P445 (1953)

The Eskimos of Hudson Bay amd Alaska, Folkways FE 4444 (1954)

Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest Coast, coll. I. Halpern, Folkways FE 4523 (1967)

Sioux Favorites, Canyon 6059 (1968)

Iroquois Social Dance Songs, Iroqrafts QC 727, 728, 729 (1969)

Pueblo Indian Songs from San Juan, Canyon 6065 (1969)

Cloud Dance Songs of San Juan Pueblo, Indian House IH 1102 (1972)

Crow Celebration: Ten Great Drums at Crow Fair, Canyon 6089 (1973)

Music of the Alaskan Kutchin Indians, Folkways 4253 (1974)

Songs from the Blood Reserve, perf. Kai-Spai Singers, Canyon 6133 (1975)

Songs of Earth, Water, Fire and Sky, New World NW 80246 (1976)

Songs of the White Mountain Apache, Canyon 6165 (1977)

Stomp Dance, 1–4, Indian House IH 3003, 3004, 3005, 3006 (1978)

Oku Shareh: Turtle Dance Songs of the San Juan Pueblo, New World NW 80301 (1979)

Seneca Social Dance Music, coll. M.F. Riemer, Folkways FE 4072 (1980)

Songs of the Sioux, perf. Ironwood Singers, Indian House IH 4321 (1980)

Songs and Dances of the Eastern Indians from Medicine Spring and Allegany, New World NW 80337 (1985)

Powwow Songs: Music of the Plains Indians, New World NW 80343 (1986)

Honor the Earth Powwow: Songs of the Great Lake Indians, Rykodisc RCD 10199 (1991)

Creation's Journey: Native American Music, Smithsonian/Folkways 40410 (1994)

American Warriors: Songs for Indian Veterans, Rykodisc RCD 10370 (1997)

Inuit

J. Murdoch: ‘The Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition’, Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, ix (1892), 3–441

E.W. Nelson: The Eskimo about Bering Strait (Washington DC, 1899/R)

E.W. Hawkes: The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo (Philadelphia, 1914)

D. Jenness: ‘Eskimo Music in Northern Alaska’, MQ, viii (1922), 377–83

M. Lantis: ‘Social Culture of the Nunivak Eskimo’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, xxxvi (1946), part 3

E. Groven: Eskimo melodier fra Alaska: Helqe Ingstads samling av opptak fra Nunamiut studier over Tonesystemer og rythmer [Eskimo melodies from Alaska: Helqe Ingstad’s Nunamiut collection studied with regard to tonal and rhythmic system] (Oslo, 1956)

The Eskimos of Hudson Bay and Alaska, coll. L. Boulton, Folkways P 444 (1956) [sound disc]

R. Spencer: The North Alaskan Eskimo: a Study in Ecology and Society (Washington, DC, 1959/R)

C.C. Hughes: An Eskimo Village in the Modern World (Ithaca, NY, 1960)

J.L. Giddings: Kobuk River People (Fairbanks, AK, 1961)

J.W. VanStone: Point Hope: an Eskimo Village in Transition (Seattle, 1962)

W. Oswalt: Napaskiak: an Alaskan Eskimo Community (Tucson, AZ, 1963)

N.J. Gubser: The Nunamiut Eskimos: Hunters of Caribou (New Haven, CT, 1965)

Alaskan Eskimo Songs and Stories, coll. L.D. Koranda, U. of Washington Press UWP 902 (1972) [sound disc]

L.A. Waller: ‘Eskimo Dance and Cultural Values in an Alaskan Village’, Dance Research Journal, viii/1 (1975–6), 7–12

T. Johnston: Eskimo Music by Region: a Comparative Circumpolar Study (Ottawa, 1976)

T. Johnston: ‘The Eskimo Songs of Northwestern Alaska’, Arctic, xxix (1976), 7–19

T.L. Pulu and others, eds.: Inupiat Dance Songs (Anchorage, AK, 1979)

L.D. Koranda: ‘Music of the Alaskan Eskimos’, in Musics of Many Cultures, ed. E. May (Berkeley, 1980), 332–62

M. Maguire: American Indian and Eskimo Music: a Selected Bibliography through 1981 (Washington, DC, 1983)