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Early
Southern Music and Its Influence
“Early Southern Roots of Modern Popular Music, Part 3” Instruments, Song, and Dance At the recent Westville Dulcimer Festival, Southern musical heritage was rampant! The skills of the instructors were superb. Despite weather concerns, the two days of music drew people from all over the Southeast. It was a delightful time for those who participated, as well as for those who just listened. At one moment on the second day, two champion dulcimer players improvised an instrumental duet out of the now-standard Hank Williams tune, "I’m So Lonesome, I Could Die." David Schnaufer played the lead, while Stephen Seifert accompanied. It was one of the most beautiful and moving performances of any type that I’ve ever witnessed. Music of the Southern Soul Everything about that performance was embued with Southern heritage---the instruments, the song, the chording. I took notice of one technique in particular which Schnaufer and Seifert used. They "bent" some of the notes. Bending a note on a dulcimer, as with a guitar, is done by pushing a vibrating string to and fro along a fret. The pitch increases slightly for a moment---or bends---plaintively It was a singular moment, the essence of Southern music. Appalachian dulcimers arose among the mountain folk of the eastern U.S. in the late 1700s. No note was ever bent on a dulcimer, however, until some unnamed player heard a black voice or instrumental player, harkening an African tradition. From then on, a Euro-African fusion inevitably took place. Musical style was forever changed, or "grayed," as historian C. Vann Woodward called this blending of black and white cultures. Early Musical Instruments in Georgia The dulcimer was probably not present in Georgia in the 18th century. It appeared in the state about the same time as the 19th century did. The next few paragraphs will look at Georgia’s first instruments, the tools of this early cross-cultural mixing. The influence of Native Americans and African-Americans on the early scene was mostly vocal and rhythmic. Nevertheless, each contributed certain instruments. The Indians, according to William Bartram, played the drum, rattle, and reed flute. The first African-American slaves associated with the British Georgia made banjars/banjers (from which came the banjo), drums, and perhaps horns. Among the 1,847 people who lived in the new colony of Georgia by 1742, there was but one professional musician---a Moravian. Musical instruments were brought in quickly, however. The most common instrument was the violin or fiddle, and there were at least fourteen drums. Bagpipes arrived with the Scottish Highlanders at New Inverness (now Darien) in 1735. The colony progressed to employ trumpet and French horn players, though these instruments were probably different from today’s versions. By the time of the Revolution, one could buy fifes, flutes, pianos, harpsichords, jew’s harps, and guitars in Savannah shops. There were even a few organs available by the 1790s. Native and African Song and Dance Bartram gave this description of an Indian dance in Georgia about 1775: They have an endless variety of steps, but the most common...is a slow shuffling to accompany alternate steps...First a circle of young men, and within, a circle of young women, moving together opposite ways, the men with the course of the sun, and the females contrary to it; the men strike their arm with the open hand, and the girls clap hands and raise their shrill sweet voices... To accompany their dances they have songs, of different classes, as martial, bacchanalian, and amourous; which last I must confess are extravagantly libidinous. This passage shows that Native Americans danced and sang primarily for spiritual/religious purposes. For early African-American slaves, however, the connection of music to cultural expression was less specific. For example, the heritage of a dozen slaves on a Georgia plantation might represent a dozen different African cultures. The knowledge of refined ceremonies was thus effectively extinguished by slave handlers. Therefore, when slavery became legal in Georgia in 1749, the music of Georgia’s early slaves contained only general work, entertainment, and spiritual meaning. An example is the "field holler." As the slaves worked in the corn and rice fields (this is before the invention of the cotton gin), one slave might sing a musical phrase. The phrase then would be answered by others in the field. These "calls-and-responses," African in nature, gave comfort to the individual workers through feelings of cohesiveness. White Secular Song and Dance In 1734, when some South Carolinians sought a clergyman in Savannah to perform their marriages, Governor James Oglethorpe ordered a hog killing. He served beer, wine, rum, and punch. The couples "were all very merry and danc’d the whole Night long." They probably danced to minuets and country dances. Among the Highlanders at New Inverness, the bagpipes offered a variety of musical types---marches, reels, airs, laments, and more. By 1763, Savannahians were enjoying balls. A fiddler, often a slave, would play minuets, gavottes, and country dances. Savannah had operas, though not the "heavy" type we know today. Dancing schools for children were popular as a sign of status. By 1786, concert-goers could hear the music of Arne, J.C. Bach, Stamitz, and others in a single evening (usually Mondays and Wednesdays). When President Washington visited Georgia in 1791, he was treated to a "dancing assembly, at which there was about 100 well dressed handsome women." He heard minuets and a country dance. Folk Music Emerges Society began forming around musical types in this period. In a general sense, urban music became the popular music, while rural music kept the folk tradition. Out in the country of 18th century Georgia, one could hear such traditional ballads of the British Isles as "Barbara Allen," "Lord Randall," "The Outlandish Knight," and "The House Carpenter." They were sung solo with no instrumental backing. Ballads recalled people and events of the past. Popular music, on the other hand, dealt with contemporary issues. Country folk thus retained their ties with the past through their music. The instruments themselves were a clue to status. City people might hear a guitar, but on the plantation---in the hands of a slave---one would hear the banjo. Effect on West Georgia West Georgia’s official settlement was still over two decades in the future. Still, the music and instruments we have discussed in early east Georgia set the musical stage for the Chattahoochee Valley. As the 18th century rolled into the 19th, a new economy based in cotton planting exploded into Georgia’s farthest reaches. Georgia’s economic elite were increasingly situated in the cities, including Columbus---places much influenced by Savannah. Popular music was sought and consumed in cities. Those settlers who made their way to the farms and plantations of west Georgia, however, brought their African and British folk musical traditions with them from the Fall Line areas of east Georgia. City/Country Here is a confirmation of this early contrast of city and country. A decade ago, we at Westville studied the migration patterns affecting the settlement of Stewart County, Westville’s home. We were amazed that we could identify only two Savannah families who had settled in this populous (but agricultural) county by 1850. Rather, settlers overwhelmingly came here from other Fall Line counties of Georgia and of the Carolinas. (Indeed, half of Stewart County’s early settlers came from Washington, Wilkes, Jones, Hancock, and Putnam Counties, a cluster in the Fall Line area near Macon and Augusta.) A similar pattern is seen in other agricultural counties of west Georgia. If popular and folk music were polarized by urban and rural locales, though, a surprise was in the making. The gentle ladies and men of the cities could not have imagined that the musical forms and styles developing in the countryside (think note bending) would one day subsume all popular music! Home
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Early Southern Music and Its Influences
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