An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 2 | SONG, DANCE, AND HOME MUSIC MAKING 45

ample supply of music from the British Isles and the European Continent, made

available through oral tradition and written notation. Given a steady supply from

Europe, there was little demand outside religious circles for music by American

composers. Indeed, it apparently mattered little to singers and players that until

long after American independence was won, very few of the songs, dances, or

theatrical works they performed were composed here.

BROADSIDE BALLADS

An ocean separated early English-speaking settlers from the land of their origin,

but not from its language or music. Songs from Great Britain were woven into

A mericans’ lives, as a letter Benjamin Franklin wrote from London in 1765 to his

brother Peter back home suggests. Peter had sent Benjamin some original verses,

asking that an English composer be hired to set them to music. But in Benjamin’s

view, the verses called for a simpler tune than a London composer would write.

If Peter had given his text “to some country girl in the heart of Massachusetts, who

has never heard any other than psalm tunes or ‘Chevy Chace,’ the ‘Children in the

Wood,’ the ‘Spanish Lady,’ and such old, simple ditties, but has naturally a good

ear, she might more probably have made a pleasing popular tune for you than

any of our masters here.” The songs Franklin names are all ballads: narrative

songs in strophic form, with many stanzas of text sung to the same music. All

three had originated in Great Britain in the early 1600s or before. That they were

still circulating orally in North America in the 1760s testifi es to their place in the

hearts of the people. (Chapter 9 explores further the role of these traditional

British ballads in America’s musical culture.)

Oral ballads existed outside any commercial network. But by the early 1700s a

parallel tradition was thriving in America: that of songs sung to traditional ballad

melodies but with new verses commenting on current events, printed on sheets

called broadsides, and sold in the marketplace. These broadside ballads made

popular songs widely accessible just as sheet music and phonograph records would

in later times. Broadside ballads lacked the prestige that oral ballads came to enjoy.

Their reputation was that of cheap commercial goods. The Reverend Cotton

Mather complained in a diary entry in 1713: “I am informed, that the Minds and

Manners of many People about the Countrey are much corrupted by foolish songs

and Ballads, which the Hawkers and Pedlars carry into all parts of the Countrey.”

Almost anything could inspire a broadside ballad. Colonial settlement,

Indian wars, dissatisfaction with English rule, crime, love, and religion are

some of the favorite subjects. In contrast to oral ballads, many broadside ballads

show a cartoonlike quality of exaggeration, sometimes coupled with language

or images that make later standards of public taste seem prudish. Such ballads

were often used for political expression, circulating not only in broadsides but

also in newspapers. For patriotism aroused passions well suited to the editorial-

izing that broadside ballads invited.

In the years before and during the American Revolution, song after song,

whether written from a patriot or a loyalist perspective, trumpeted the same

claim: our side is virtuous and right, your side is corrupt and wrong; and if the

difference can be settled only through combat, then let’s fi ght. In the duel of

words that accompanied rising political unrest, loyalists and patriots used the

same stock of British song to argue for their cause. The songs that appeared

ballads

broadside ballads

subject matter

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