Western music (North America)

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Western music
Stylistic origins
Cultural origins
Typical instruments
Derivative forms Western swing
Other topics
Western arts

Western music is a form of folk music originally composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the western United States and western Canada. Directly related musically to old English, Scottish, and Irish folk ballads, western music celebrates the life of the cowboy on the open ranges and prairies of western North America.[1] The Mexican music of the American Southwest also influenced the development of this genre. Western music is related to country music, which shares similar origins but developed in the Appalachians and reflected the life of the people of that region. Guitars, fiddles, and the accordion are the most common instruments used in Western music.

Contents

[edit] Origins

The origins of Western music can be traced back to the folk music traditions of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The music was brought to North America during the mid-nineteenth century by pioneers and ranchers who settled the western plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the American Southwest. The mix of ethnic English, Scotish, Irish, German, Mexican, and Eastern European peoples who settled these regions gave the music its unique qualities. Reflecting the realities of the range and ranch houses where the music originated, the early cowboy bands were string bands supplemented occasionally with the harmonica. Otto Gary, an early cowboy band leader, stated authentic Western music had only three rhythms, all coming from the gaits of the cowpony—walk, trot, and lope.[2]

In 1908, N. Howard Thorp published the first book of Western music, titled Songs of the Cowboys. The book was very popular west of the Mississippi. It included many songs of unknown authorship, but it contained the first popular cowboy song, "Little Joe, the Wrangler," which was written by Thorpe.[3] The book did not include musical notation.

In 1910, John Lomax, in his book Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, first gained national attention for Western music. His book contained many of the same songs as Thorp's book (he collected most of them before Thorp's was published). However, Lomax's compilation included many musical scores. Lomax published a second collection in 1919 titled Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp.

With the advent of radio and recording devices the music found an audience previously ignored by music schools and Tin Pan Alley.[4] Many Westerners preferred familiar music about themselves and their environment.

The first successful cowboy band to tour the East was Otto Gray's Oklahoma Cowboys put together by William McGinty, an Oklahoma pioneer and former Rough Rider. The band appeared on radio and toured the vaudeville circuit from 1924 through 1936. They recorded few songs however, so are overlooked by many scholars of Western Music.[5]

[edit] Mainstream popularity

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, western music became widely popular through the romanticization of the cowboy and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. Singing cowboys, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, sang cowboy songs in their films and became popular throughout the United States. Film producers began incorporating fully orchestrated four-part harmonies and sophisticated musical arrangements into their motion pictures. Bing Crosby, the most popular singer of that time, recorded numerous cowboy and western songs. During this era, the most popular recordings and musical radio shows included western music. Western swing also developed during this time.

[edit] Decline in popularity

By the 1960s, Western music was in decline. Relegated to the Country and Western genre by marketing agencies, popular Western recording stars released albums to only moderate success. Rock and Roll dominated music sales and the Hollywood recording studios dropped most of their Western artists. Caught unawares by the boom in Country and Western sales from Nashville that followed, Hollywood rushed to cash in. In the process, Country and Western music lost its regionalism and most of its style. Except for the label, much of the music was indistinguishable from Rock and Roll or Popular. Some Western music traditionalists oppose the association of Western music with the Country and Western genre, which does not reflect the spirit of true Western music.

[edit] Rediscovery

Still, many Westerners prefer music about themselves, their culture, and the land around them. Older music is still available at retail stores in major population centers, through mail-order, or by the internet. New Western music is constantly written and recorded, and performed all across the American West and western Canada.

In recent years, Michael Martin Murphey has almost single-handedly resurrected the cowboy song genre, promoting western singers and groups and cowboy poets. The singing group Riders in the Sky recorded a mix of Western and Western Swing and have won Grammy Awards for their work with Disney on Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.

[edit] List of Western songs

[edit] List of Western singers

[edit] References

  1. ^ Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, Collector's Note: "Out in the wild, far-away places of the big and still unpeopled west—in the caňons along the Rocky Mountains, among the mining camps of Nevada and Montana, and on the remote cattle ranches of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona—yet survives the Anglo-Saxon ballad spirit that was active in secluded districts in England and Scotland even after the coming of Tennyson and Browning. ... In some such way have been made and preserved the cowboy songs and other frontier ballads contained in this volume."
  2. ^ Shirley, "Daddy of the Cowboy Bands", p. 29: " 'There were only three rhythms to the real songs of the range—not the distorted versions you hear today,' Otto pointed out. 'They came from the gaits of the cowboy's horse—the walk, the trot and the lope.' "
  3. ^ Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys, 1921, p. 96: "'Little Joe, The Wrangler', by N. Howard Thorp. Written by me on the trail of herd of O Cattle from Chimney Lake, New Mexico, to Higgins, Texas, 1898. ... It was copyrighted and appeared in my first edition of Songs of the Cowboys, published in 1908.
  4. ^ Quay, Westward Expansion, p. 179, "Finally, the popularity of radio stations like 5XT, KFRU, and KVOO, all out of Oklahoma, which featured western bands like Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys, brought the sound of western music to greater number of Americans."
  5. ^ Early Cowboy Band: "While Gray has long been acknowledged as an important figure, genuine respect for his achievements and acknowledgement of just how influential the Oklahoma Cowboys were has been grudging. This is partly due to the understandable tendency among country music historians to focus chiefly on recordings as a measure of an artist's importance."

[edit] Bibliography

  • Cannon, Hal. Old Time Cowboy Songs. Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0-87905-308-9
  • Green, Douglas B. Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy. Vanderbilt University Press, August 2002. ISBN 0-8265-1412-X
  • Hull, Myra. "Cowboy Ballads". Kansas Historical Quarterly. 8:1 (February 1939) 35-60 (accessed November 29, 2007).
  • Lomax, John A., M.A. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. The MacMillan Company, 1918. Online edition (pdf)
  • O'Neal, Bill; Goodwin, Fred. The Sons of the Pioneers. Eakin Press, 2001. ISBN 1-57168-644-4
  • Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys. Early Cowboy Band. British Archive of Country Music, 2006. CD D 139
  • Quay, Sara E. Westward Expansion. Greenwod Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-31235-4
  • Shirley, Glenn "Daddy of the Cowboy Bands. Oklahoma Today (Fall 1959), 9:4 6-7, 29.
  • Thorp, N. Howard "Jack". Songs of the Cowboys. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908, 1921.
  • White, John I. Git Along Little Dogies: Songs and Songmakers of the American West. (Music in American Life) series, University of Illinois Press, 1989 reprint. ISBN 0-252-06070-9

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