American music and musicians

During the 1970s, the music industry created a number of rock genres, designed to appeal to the widest possible demographic and promoted on Top 40 radio and television. Musicians as diverse as Led Zeppelin; Stevie Wonder; Elton John; Carole King; Pink Floyd; Paul Simon; Neil Diamond; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the Rolling Stones; Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention; and Santana were promoted by record companies under the general heading of rock music. By the mid-1980s, the rocker Bruce Springsteen found a large audience. Springsteen’s songs reflected his working-class origins and sympathies, relating the stories of still young but aging men and women with dead end job, who were looking for romance and excitement in the face of repeated disappointments. Springsteen performed with his E Street Band, and their music was characterized by a strong, roots-rock sound that emphasized Springsteen’s connections to 1950s and 1960s music [3, p. 247-254].

Bob Dylan first established himself as an acoustic singer-songwriter in New York City’s urban folk scene. The early 1960s was a period of explosive growth for acoustic urban folk music. The baby boomers were reaching college age, demonstrating increasing cultural and political interests and awareness, and they represented an expanding audience for traditionally based folk music and for newly composed “broadsides” on the issues of the day (appendix B).

In addition to writing impressive topical songs like “Blowing in the Wind,” Dylan distinguished himself as a composer of more intimate but highly original songs about human relationships. The year 1965 was pivotal in Dylan’s career; he moved from being the most distinctive songwriter among American urban folk artists to being an epochal influence on the entirety of American popular culture.

Despite the popularity of “Like a Rolling Stone” and a few singles that followed, Dylan never really established himself as primarily a “singles artist.” Rather, he was the first important representative of another pop phenomenon: the rock musician whose career was sustained essentially by albums. Although his influence was at its peak in the 1960s, Dylan has continued to be a widely admired and closely followed artist into the new century. Never content to be pigeonholed or to fall into a predictable role as elder statesman for any movement or musical style, Dylan has over the course of his career produced a distinctive, heterogeneous, and erratic output of albums that represent a singular testament to the spirit of pop music invention. Among these albums may be found examples of country rock (Nashville Skyline, 1969), what would later be termed Christian rock (Slow Train Coming, 1979), and even latter-day forays back into traditional acoustic folk material (Good as I Been to You, 1992), No Direction Home (2005).

              3.4 Hip-hop

Of all genres of popular music, none has spurred more vigorous public debate than rap music. Rap has been characterized as a vital link in the centuries-old chain of cultural and musical connections between Africa and the Americas; as the authentic voice of an oppressed urban underclass; and as a form that exploits long-standing stereotypes of black people. In fact, each of these perspectives tells us something about the history and significance of rap music.

Rap draws on African musical and verbal traditions. Its deep continuities with African-American music include an emphasis on rhythmic momentum and creativity; a preference for complex tone colors and dense textures; a keen appreciation of improvisational skill (in words and music); and an incorporative, innovative approach to musical technologies.

Much rap music does constitute a cultural response to historic oppression and racism, a system for communication among black communities throughout the United States (“black America’s CNN,” as rapper Chuck D once put it), and a source of insight into the values, perceptions, and conditions of people living in America’s beleaguered urban communities. And finally, although rap music’s origins and inspirations flow from black culture, the genre’s audience has become decidedly multiracial, multicultural, and transnational. As rap has been transformed from a local phenomenon located in a few neighborhoods in New York City, to a multimillion-dollar industry and a global cultural phenomenon, it has grown ever more complex and multifaceted.

Rap initially emerged during the 1970s as one part of a cultural complex called hip-hop. Hip-hop culture, forged by African-American and Caribbean-American youth in New York City, included distinctive styles of visual art (graffiti), dance (an acrobatic solo style called break-dancing and an energetic couple dance called the freak), music, dress, and speech. Hip-hop was at first a local phenomenon, centered in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx, the most economically disadvantaged area of New York City [1, p. 299].

The young adults who pioneered hip-hop styles such as break dancing and rap music at nightclubs, block parties, and in city parks often belonged to informal social groups called “crews” or “posses,” each associated with a particular neighborhood or block. It is important to understand that hip-hop culture began as an expression of local identities. Even today’s multiplatinum rap recordings, marketed worldwide, are filled with inside references to particular neighborhoods, features of the urban landscape, and social groups and networks.

If hip-hop music was a rejection of mainstream dance music by young black and Puerto Rican listeners, it was also profoundly shaped by the techniques of disco DJs. The first hip-hop celebrities — Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler), and Afrika Bambaataa (Kevin Donovan) — were DJs who began their careers in the mid-1970s, spinning records at neighborhood block parties, gym dances, and dance clubs, and in public spaces such as community centers and parks. These three young men — and dozens of lesser-known DJs scattered throughout the Bronx, Harlem, and other areas of New York City and New Jersey — developed their personal styles within a grid of fierce competition for celebrity and neighborhood pride.

The disco DJ’s technique of “mixing” between two turntables to create smooth transitions between records was first adapted to the hip-hop aesthetic by Kool Herc. Sometime in the mid-1970s Kool Herc began to put two copies of the same record on his turntables. Switching back and forth between the turntables, Herc found that he could “backspin” one disc (i.e., turn it backward, or counterclockwise, with his hand) while the other continued to play over the loudspeakers. This allowed him to repeat a given break over and over, by switching back and forth between the two disks and back spinning to the beginning of the break.

Until 1979 hip-hop music remained primarily a local phenomenon. The first indication of the genre’s broader commercial potential was the 12-inch dance single “Rapper’s Delight,” recorded by the Sugar hill Gang, a crew based in Harlem. This record, which popularized the use of the term “rapper” as an equivalent for MC, established Sugar Hill Records — a black-owned independent label based in New Jersey — as the predominant institutional force in rap music during the early 1980s. The recording recycled the rhythm section track from Chic’s “Good Times,” played in the studio by session musicians usually hired by Sugar Hill to back R&B singers. The three rappers — Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright, Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien, and Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson — recited a rapid-free succession of rhymes, typical of the performances of MCs at hip-hop dances [18, p. 182-190].

One of the first things that strike one about Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958) is his productivity. Between 1982 and 1992 he placed nine albums in the Top 10. During the same decade he placed 26 singles in the Top 40. Over the course of his career, he has sold almost 40 million recordings. More importantly, he is one of the most talented musicians ever to achieve mass commercial success.

Prince’s recorded output reflects a wide range of inspirations, from funk and guitar-based rock ’n’ roll to urban folk music, new wave, and psychedelic rock. He has from the beginning sought to exert equally tight control over his music and the business of creating and distributing that music. Prince owns his own studio and produces his own recordings; plays most of the instruments on his albums; and struggled to wrest control of his music from Warner Brothers. By the late 1990s he was releasing music exclusively on his own label, through his Web site, and via his direct-selling telephone hotline.

Descriptions of Prince’s personality in the popular press present a series of opposed images: he is portrayed as a flower child and as a dictator; a male chauvinist who can form close personal relationships only with women; an intensely private person and a shrewd self-promoter; a satyr and a steadfastly pious man [19, p. 256-274].

Prince’s British biographer Barney Hoskins christened Prince “the Imp of the Perverse,” referring to his apparent delight in confounding the expectations of his audience. As a celebrity, Prince occupies a middle ground between the hermitlike reclusiveness of Michael Jackson and the exuberant exhibitionism of Madonna. Throughout his career, Prince has granted few press interviews yet has managed to keep himself in the limelight. The best example of his skill at manipulating the boundary between the public and the private is the film and soundtrack album Purple Rain (1984), which established him as a pop superstar. The album sold more than 13 million copies. The plot and characters of Purple Rain draw heavily on Prince’s life. The film concludes on an upbeat note as the Kid adopts one of his father’s compositions, incorporating a rhythm track created by members of his band, The Revolution, and creates the song “Purple Rain.”

                  It is not easy to draw boundaries between the fictional character, the celebrity persona, and the private individual. A major source of the film’s attraction for Prince’s fans lay in the idea that this was a tantalizing opportunity to catch a glimpse of the “man behind the curtain.” If Purple Rain is a film with confessional aspects, it is also a product of the sophisticated marketing strategies applied by entertainment corporations during the 1980s.

CONCLUSION

The music of the United States can be characterized by the use of syncopation and asymmetrical rhythms, long, irregular melodies, which are said to reflect the wide open geography of the American landscape and the sense of personal freedom characteristic of American life. Some distinct aspects of American music, like the call-and-response format, are derived from African techniques and instruments.

Throughout the later part of American history, and into modern times, the relationship between American and European music has been a discussed topic among scholars of American music. Some have urged for the adoption of more purely European techniques and styles, which are sometimes perceived as more refined or elegant, while others have pushed for a sense of musical nationalism that celebrates distinctively American styles. Modern classical music scholars have contrasted American and European that the music of the United States is inherently distinct because the United States has not had centuries of musical evolution as a nation. Instead, the music of the United States is that of dozens or hundreds of indigenous and immigrant groups, all of which developed largely in regional isolation until the American Civil War, when people from across the country were brought together in army units, trading musical styles and practices. They deemed the ballads of the Civil War the first American folk music with discernible features that can be considered unique to America: the first American sounding music, as distinct from any regional style derived from another country.

The Civil War, and the period following it, saw a general flowering of American art, literature and music. Amateur musical ensembles of this era can be seen as the birth of American popular music. After the Civil War, a time in which American painters, writers and serious composers addressed specifically American themes. During this period the roots of blues, gospel, jazz and country music took shape; in the 20th century, these became the core of American popular music, which further evolved into the styles like rhythm and blues, rock and roll and hip hop music.

Much of modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the late 19th century of African-American blues and the growth of gospel music in the 1920s. The African-American basis for popular music used elements derived from European and indigenous music. The United States has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of the Ukrainian, Irish, Scottish, Polish, Hispanic and Jewish communities, among others. Many American cities and towns have vibrant music scenes which, in turn, support a number of regional musical styles. Along with musical centers such as Seattle, New York City, New Orleans, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Austin, and Los Angeles, many smaller cities have produced distinctive styles of music. The Cajun and Creole traditions in Louisiana music, the folk and popular styles of Hawaiian music, and the bluegrass and old time music of the Southeastern states are a few examples of diversity in American music.

In the process of study American music and the most popular musicians have been characterized. A lot of facts have been studied. Having focused on the main aspects of American music development can come to the conclusion that it plays one of the leading roles in the life of the nation, American music has a big variety of styles and genres, it gave foundation for music all over the world and gave a lot of musicians opportunity to develop their skills. American music has a great history; it is widespread in our days and can be actual in future.