American Song

Get in touch!

In a country based on freedom, equal opportunity, and democracy, you’d think that lessons related to social justice would not need to be re-hashed so often.  But that does seem to be our fate.  And so, in every generation, we’ve witnessed one group after another struggle to claim their own share of the American dream.

Music has had a huge role in raising awareness, unifying people, inspiring empathy, and challenging the status quo in every major social wave of change.  Today, we’re looking at how American music was used, like the trumpets at Jericho, to knock down the walls that separated Hispanic Americans from the promises made to all Americans, beginning in 1776.  In many ways, this is a fight that continues today, and its as true about the Hispanic struggle for justice as it's been for every group in our history.  Hispanics have had a wide range of musical inspirations, including familiar faces such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie, and musical heroes from their own communities.  

Music from the black civil rights struggle was also borrowed, early on.  But the most important parts of the cultural foundations that the Chicano community drew from came from their own Mexican heritage – especially the corrido, which we talked about last month in the Roots of Latin American music episode.  As the revolutionary tide of the 1960s began to swell in American culture, Chicanos started by resurrecting the corrido, and added to it a new, political consciousness, giving air to their grievances and struggles.   Soon, out of the streets, and in the rising youth movement, Chicano rock and roll bands from both sides of the border were filling the radio waves, and encouraging their own people to advance towards a better future.

Welcome to Episode 22, American Song and the Fight for Hispanic Equality.

In This Episode:
Agustin Lira
Azteca
Cannibal and the Head Hunters
Chan Romero
El Chicano
Carlos Santana
Chuy Negrete
Clarence Sonny Henry
The Village Callers
El Jarocho
Thee Midnighters
Freddy Fender
Trini Lopez
Jose Suarez
Los Shakers
Los Lobos
Los Teen Tops
Ozomatli
Richie Valens
Robert DeNiro
Son Jarocho Master Musicians

Get in touch!

Latin music and 'American' music were once considered to be separate and unique. They had distinctly different properties and music labels managed them differently. But not anymore.

Danny Ocean is a singer-songwriter and native of Caracas, Venezuela, and has said “Music is something that transcends beyond any language or nationality…it’s all about being a global artist.”   Latin music has become mainstream - it's no longer a 'crossover' genre.  Today, Latin culture is American culture. Latins are now the largest minority in the United States, and the second largest ethnic group after whites.  

All across Latin America, the cultures that we talked about in episode 4 have combined to create distinct, regional music and dances that have each entertained and inspired the people in their home nations, while also making their way to our homes in the United States and entertaining people across the entire world! Salsa,  mambo, rumba, calpyso,  bomba, latin jazz, samba, batucada, samba de enredo, bossa nova, tango, festejo and lando.  These are the names of the inspired music that came out of the New World once the Spanish, Portuguese, Native Americans, and Africans blended their music and rhythm.  In this episode, we'll hear examples and learn about the artists, and cultures that devoted their lives to this fabulous art!

You're in for a treat!  Enjoy!

In Today's Episode

Tango - La Cumparsita
Ignacio Pineiro - Echale Salsita
El Orquesta Belisario Lopez - El Cimarron
Orquesta Arcano y sus Maravillas - Mambo
Perez Prado - Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
Julian Whiterose - Iron Duke in the Land
 Hubert "Roaring Lion" Charles - Mary Anne
Hary Belafonte - Jump in the Line
BP Renegades Steel Orchestra - Like Ah Boss
Winston "Mighty Shadow" Bailey - Bass Man
Bomba Example
Ismael Rivera - Volare
Plena De Puerto Rico
Tito Puente
Machito _ Ni Chi, Ni Cha
Willy Colon y Ruben Blades - Buscando Guayaba
Rumba Examples:
1.  Yambu
2.  Guaguanco
3.  Columbia
Stan Getz / Luiz Bonfa - So Danco Samba
Candomble Example - Orixa Ossaim
Ernesto "Donga" Dos Santos - Pelo Telefone
Os Oito Batutas - Meu Passarinho
Noel Rossa- Com Que Roupa?
Batucada Bradileira
Ratos e Urubus - Larguem Minha Fantasia
Frank Sinatra / Antonio Carlos Jobim  - The Girl from Impanema
Jorge Ben - Mais Que Nada
Bola Sete - Baccara
Luis Correa - Siete Mujeres
Libertad Lamarque - Yo Soy La Morocha
Carlos Gardel - Mi Noche Triste
Anibal Troilo - Te Aconsejo Que Me Olvides
Pepe Vasquez - Ritmo de Negros
Oscar Aviles/ Arturo Cavero - El Alcatraz
Charango example - Sebastián Pérez
Cajon Example - Maestros del Cajon Peruano
Charagua Example - Son de los Diablos

Get in touch!

In this episode, we shift focus to consider another important cultural vein, brought here by the Spanish, and rising out of the American west and Southwest as well as New York City – and obviously all of Central and South America,  Cuba and Puerto Rico. 

 A few things have struck me as I’ve been putting my thoughts together for these next few episodes.  Of course, the first thing is that – just like in earlier genres that we’ve talked about – the music we hear today has gone through a long journey of changes.  Second, like jazz and the blues, the music often gives voice to the frustrations and struggles Latin Americans have experienced while hacking and carving out their own rightful place in America.

 In this episodes, we’ll explore the origins of Latin music, – not just in the United States, but on a wider level, across most of the New World.  When the Spanish and Portuguese came to the New World, they brought European music traditions with them, including the influences from several hundred years of Moorish occupation of Southern Spain.  They were coming to a land that had already been hope to millions of Native Americans - stretching from the Bering Strait to the southern tip of Argentina - and the people that lived here had their own musical traditions that made their way into Latin music.  African slaves also brought their rhythms.  Like we've seen in American music, African traditions would have an enormous impact on music that would develop over centuries.

This is a fascinating musical journey -  I’m so excited to share it with you!

In Today's Episode:

Gypsy Kings - Una Amor
Ancient Consort Singers - Serenisima Una Noche
Spanish-Arabic Music of Andalucia
Flor De Un Dia
Djembe tribal drumming
Native American Flute with Tribal Drum
Jorge Reyes - Native American (Mexico) Music
Traditional Inca Music Being Played in Cuzco
Los Monjes del Monasterio de Silos - Gregorian Chant
Gloria Missa de Los Angeles - JUan Bautista Sancho - 18th Century California Mission Music
Zephyr -El Cantico del Alba - A Choir of Angels II:  Mission Music
Charles Lummis Wax Cylinder - Corrido de Leandro Rivera
Lydia Mendoza - Mal Hombre
El Vez - Rock and Roll Suicide/ If I Can Dream

Get in touch!

In our July, 2021 episode on the first generation of folk music, “Folk Music Stood for America”, we talked about how the music was swept up in the major social movements of the day, especially the socialist/ American Communist party movements which gathered speed because of events like the Great Depression and the Dustbowl.  

The second revival of the 1960’s also had its own causes; the war in Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Women’s  movement primarily.  The ‘60s was the era when all the WWII war babies grew up.  Highly idealistic, they wanted to seize the moment in history and change the world for the better.  Raised in the suburbs of the concensus-driven fifties, and living under the palatable fear of the Cold War, with Eishenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex ringing in their ears, seeing their classmates ship off to Vietnam, and shipped back home in body bags, they’d grown cynical about their parent’s generation and demanded change NOW.  

Folk music was the soundtrack to their rebellion; you could hear it played on college campuses all over America.  Many of the musicians matched that idealism note for note.   That’s the theme of today’s episode, Folk Music Played the Changes in American Society.

 Artists Featured in This Episode
Tom Paxton
Richie Havens
Peter, Paul & Mary
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bob Dylan
Phil Ochs
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Get in touch!

The 1960’s  were a period of massive social change and tension all over the country – all over North America in fact - because we have to include Canada, too.  The conditions were just right for a whole group of passionate, inspired, and gifted young singers and songwriters to lift their voices.    They came from many different American communities; Jewish immigrants, First Nations people, Americans, Canadians, African Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians, from the cities and from the heartland.  All of them had a message to share with their generation, and a desire to build a better world.

This episode is about a number of these artists, and the legacies they’ve left behind.  Many of them are still with us today, and a few of them still create new music.    Welcome to today’s episode, 1960’s Folk Music:  How the Fire Spread. 

Artists Featured in this Episode
Fred Neil
Dave Van Ronk
Karem Dalton
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Leonard Cohen
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Brothers & Curry
Bob Dylan
Simon & Garfunkel
Paul Simon
Joni Mitchell

Get in touch!

Happy New Year and welcome to season two in the American Song podcast series!  It's been a bit since we last got together.  I hope you all are doing well. 

In both the first and second folks waves, many of the musicians were heavily influenced by the times and events that lived in.  During the first folk revival, the most important social issues included the Great Depression, and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.  In different ways, both of these catastrophes laid waste to the dreams and scrapped together  fortunes of the hard-working American people.  Overseas, political revolutions had overthrown ancient monarchies, the latest one being Russia’s Romanov dynasty where powerful winds of change had driven the half starved and long-neglected Russian peasants to revolt, and whose actions were spurred on by ideologues like Marx and Lenin. 

The second folk revival that started in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was, again, another social movement bent on change, but this time, the causes were different.  The 1960’s have been romanticized in a lot of ways.  It’s difficult today to still feel the thrill, and electric charge of what Beatlemania must have been like, or to experience the ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ pitched emotions that led to student riots and slain college students at Kent State, but they were very real.  Folk music was at the heart of it all.  Just like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie had demanded better treatment for workers, and economic assistance to America’s poor, the second folk revival rallied people behind Civil Rights, Equal Rights for women, and an end to the war in Vietnam war.   A chorus of new musicians, were inspired by, and in turn inspired social change.  Brave young kids, like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Barry McGuire, and  Joan Baez – as well as a few old-timers from the first wave - gave voice to a new generation of Americans who dreamed of better things and better days.

Welcome to season two in  the American Song Podcast series; today’s episode, “The Second Folk Revival – A Passing of the Torch.”

Featured Artists in this Episode
Bob Dylan
Woody Guthrie
the Kingston Trio
Bill & Belle Reed
Joan Baez
Steve Allen and Jack Kerouac
Bonnie Dobson
Simon & Garfunkel
Max Yasgur

Get in touch!

If there’s an over-riding theme across the last several episodes, it is that music can be whatever we say it is.  In this third and last episode on this theme, we’re talking about Musique Concrete. It’s the name applied to a one of the most radical descriptions of music ever imagined. 

Think of this music like you do when you think of abstract, visual art.  For instance, Picasso’s Guernica.  There aren’t too many people that think of that painting as traditionally beautiful, but there is a shocking, provocative, stirring power to it. The same holds true with this challenging music.

With musique concrète, (French: “concrete music”), natural and mechanical sounds were captured or created using new inventions, the tape recorder, and later the computer and the synthesizer.   Sounds can either be used in their natural forms, or they could be processed and changed and then combined with other sounds to create a montage.   Other traits that define musique concrete include randomness, and the discard of the traditional composer-performer roles.  Sounds can be looped, played backward, sped up, slowed down, cut short or extended.  Their natural pitches could be varied, echoes could be added and so on. 

As I did with episodes 14 and 15, I'm also going to show you how these really bizarre ideas eventually made their way into our current popular music scene.  Musique Concrete has made an impact in jazz and rock, too.   This is fun stuff!

In This Episode:
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henry
John Cage
Harry Partch
Karlheinz Stockhausen
The Beatles
Pink Floyd
Industrial bands
Plunderphonics

Get in touch!

In the world of American art music, Minimalism is another push away from traditional music.  It’s earliest beginnings are found in the 1950’s again, with two American composers;  Steve Reich (b.1936) and Philip Glass (b.1937).  Reich, Glass, and another minimalist, John Adams, were all heavily influenced by mid-century popular music.  Together, they’re known as the ‘big three’ in minimalist music.  The founders of minimalist music absorbed a wide range of sonic influences – African rhythms, Indian ragas, bebop, rock and roll to create something startlingly original.   It abounds in film scores, pop albums, jazz riffs, and other forms of more experimental music.

Jazz and rock were influenced by minimalism, too.  Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Pat Matheny all wrote music that show minimalism's influences.  So does the music of Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and Radiohead - just to name a few!



In This Episode:
Steve Reich

Phillip Glass

John Adams

Miles Davis

John Cage

Pat Matheny and Lyle Mays

Brian Eno

David Bowie

Peter Gabriel

Kraftwerk

Tangerine Dream

Radiohead

Get in touch!

The 20th century scientific explosion had been in the works since the Enlightenment, but the rate of change, which had been slow, and adaptable, now came in flashes – like a supernova - and repeatedly,  one major wave after another and in ways that dramatically changed our society; instead of having time to gradually adapt and fold these changes into our ordered lives, our lives were forced to conform instead.

I hope you’re ready for an adventure, because this episode, and actually the next two after this, are going to challenge you.  You see, the music we’ll discover together was written in complete rejection of the basic assumptions about western music.   What’s equally fascinating is what the rest of the music world did with these musical ideas!  

To understand what was happening in America, we have to start away from home, in Europe, in the late 1930’s.  There were a number of European musicians and composers who developed completely new ways of creating, performing, and sharing music that had an equally transformative influence on the music being made in America.

In This Episode
Arnold Schoenberg 
Milton Babbitt
Charles Wuorinen 
Jerrald Goldsmith 
Gerard Schurman 
Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind 
The Beatles
Primus
Dave Brubeck
Bill Evans
John Coltrane
Ornette Coleman

Get in touch!

Newton’s Third Law of Motion;  For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.   I mentioned that rock and music was equal parts music and social movement.  This was a totally new event for music.  In earlier episodes, we’ve seen how jazz was borrowed by the US Government for global PR purposes, and of course, music has always given a voice to the hopes, dreams, hurts, and fears of people everywhere.  But this was something totally different.  Ever since the ‘50s, we’ve never been sure whether art imitates life, or life imitates art.  The most dramatic examples were still in the future, but it started in the 1950’s, and I’ve wondered why then, and not some other time.   Let’s look at the 1950’s together for a few minutes and see if we can’t figure out why that might be.

IN THIS SPECIAL FEATURE

 Bobby Darin
Malvina Reynolds
The Crew Cuts
Charlie Ryan and the Timberline Riders
Chuck Berry
The Silhouettes
Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Sheb Wooley
Danny and the Juniors
Todd Rhodes and His Orchestra, Featuring Connie Allen
The Del Vikings