An Introduction to America’s Music

USING THE BOOK

An Introduction to America’s Music is designed to bring a rich understanding of

American music to students of multiple musical backgrounds. To that end, sev-

eral new features have been added for the second edition: 

• The introduction includes a substantial Talking about Music section that ex-
  plains fundamental concepts with an eye toward helping students build a vocabu-
  lary for describing what they hear. Musical terms introduced throughout the
  book appear fi rst in boldface and are defi ned both in the text and in the Glossary
  located in the back of the book.


• There are four Part Introductions, which include concise overviews of artistic,
  political, and cultural developments within each time period, as well as timelines
  placing musical events in a chronological context.


• Each chapter ends with discussion questions and recommendations for further
  reading, listening, and viewing. A variety of sidebars offer different perspectives
  on the music and the people who make it:

As early as the 1650s European observers noted

the presence among African slaves in the West

Indies of instruments resembling both the present-

day banjo and West African antecedents. North

American accounts date back to the 1740s, and

by 1810 written references to the banjo often lack

descriptions, implying that the instrument was

familiar to most readers. In its earlier forms, the

banjo had a body made from a halved gourd, with

an animal skin stretched over the opening and from

one to six strings. Instruments of this description are

identifi ed by various names, some of which resemble

its modern name: bangil, bangar, banshaw, Creole-

bania, banjar, and bonjaw.

By the 1840s, the gourd sound chamber gave

way to a wooden rim with a metal tension hoop

The Banjo: African Origins of “America’s Instrument”

A CLOSER LOOK

and adjustable brackets much like a drum. Around

the same time, whites also began to play the banjo.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, a banjo

manufacturer could proudly state that “what the

mandolin is to Italy, and the guitar to Spain, the

banjo is to America.” That status inspired the

title of a recent history of the banjo, America’s

Instrument. An irony of history is that today the

instrument is associated almost exclusively with

white performers.

K This “Creole-bania,” made in Dutch Guyana before

1772, and now in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde,

Leiden, Holland, is made from a gourd, a sheepskin,

and gut strings.

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• A Closer Look boxes
  center on instruments,
  technical features, and
  musical subgenres.

xviii PREFACE

SSPOTLIGHT ON HISTORYPOTLIGHT ON HISTORY

Francis Hopkinson, Music Amateur

P

erhaps the most devoted musical amateur in eighteenth-century America was Philadelphia

Pennsylvania’s finative Francis Hopkinson, the University of rst graduate, a law yer and judge

by trade, a patriot, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hopkinson began playing the

harpsichord at age seventeen, in 1754, hand-copying

European songs and instrumental pieces, and by the early 1760s was good enough to join professional

musicians in concerts. As an Anglican, Hopkinson served for a time as organist of Philadelphia’s Christ

Church, taught psalmody, and compiled sacred

tunebooks for congregational singing. Music was Hopkinson’s springboard for entry into Philadel-

phia’s musical life, where, given the scarcity of pro-fessional performers, his ability and social position

made him welcome.In 1781, the last year of fi ghting in the American

Revolution, Hopkinson produced a patriotic pas-

tiche for solo singers, chorus, and orchestra called America Independent, or The Temple of Minerva, for

which he fiincluding George Frideric Handel. But his musical tted his own verses to music by others,

ambitions also reached further, into the realm of

original composition. As early as 1759 he was com-posing songs in two parts—with a keyboard accom-

paniment in which the right hand doubles the singer’s melody and the left hand supplies a simple

bass line—modeled on British songs he had copied out on his own.

For his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano

(Philadelphia, 1788), dedicated to George Washing-

ton, Hopkinson wrote both words and music. A pref-atory note declares: “I cannot, I believe, be refused

the Credit of being the fiStates who has produced a Musical Composition”—a rst Native of the United

claim referring to the nation born offi1788 when the ninth state ratifi ed the Constitution cially in June

of the United States of A merica.

K Francis Hopkinson (1737–1791).

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• Spotlight on History boxes provide addition-
  al information on individuals, institutions,
  and musical trends.

John Coltrane on His Musical Goals

M

y music is the spiritual expression of what I am—my faith,

my knowledge, my being.... When you begin to see the

possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for

people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups.... I want to

speak to their souls.

In their own words

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• In their own words boxes quote musi-
  cians and audience members speaking
  for themselves.

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