Music History and Its Influence on America

Music is present in every culture’s past, present, and future. It has been around since 500 B.C. and was especially important in the Elizabethan Era. There were reinventions of music as it was widespread and popular. Without this essential time in history, modern music may have been completely different from what we have today. This era brought new uses for music, styles of compositions, new instruments, and the uprising of popular composers.

European stream influenced American Pop Music on Melody, harmony and verse structure. Church hymns was first influenced by European. William Billings and Lowell Mason are two great examples. The church music they composed had some instinct features that are similar to European Music, such as strong melodies, four-part singing and chord progressions.

Historical events and conditions in the 1940s affected music. Several events happened in the 1940s. Music was a popular topic in the 1940s. Music was affected by umpteen things in the 1940s. There are plenty of other popular topics in the

I think the music and musical instruments expresses national identity in Europe because there are different styles of music according to where they are from in Europe. And different countries have different types of instruments. For example the bagpipes in Scotland. Many people recognize music with pipes to be from Scotland or Ireland. Spain has flamenco and Russia has their balalaika. They all express their nationality and where they are from. The countries in Europe have different types of musical styles that are distinct to their own country and culture.

Many artists were drafted into service to fight the wars and killed. Because of the political movements in Italy and Germany, some composers fled their native lands mainly to the United States. Those composers found the employment in American colleges and schools of music (Zorn and August 2006). The changes in the commercial aspect of music distribution along with new means of music communication occurred in this period. There were many organized concert series in large and small urban centers. Music for motion pictures became one of the important music outlets. Yet writing music for the new musical genre, films was on the periphery if the musical mainstream, films reached the biggest number of audience. Begging in the first half of the twenties century, recordings and radio became a big deal. Those were heard in all kinds of surroundings; at home, the market, the office, the factory, the playground, and even the sports field (Wold, Martin, Miller, and Cykler 1990,

The adoption of Western music inspired new ways of viewing music and resulted in a transformation of Chinese music. It prompted “Chinese composers to either fuse Western music with traditional sounds or turn their back on traditional Chinese music [because they Westernized] their music modeled on the perceptions that Western music equates with modernization” (Lau 90). Additionally, because many traditionalists feared that traditional Chinese music would gradually disappear due to the modernizing Western music, “they began to focus on promoting Chinese music as a way to counteract the encroachment of Western culture and music. But they did it in a 'modernist' rather than preservationist sort of way. Many musicians experimented with new ways of composing music and modernizing traditional instruments” (Lau 92).

How has migration, and subsequent contact between diverse people in urban America, led to innovation in American music?

The roots of modern american rock and roll music, are firmly planted in Africa. As the native Africans were torn apart from their family’s and brought to the new world their lives were immediately and drastically changed forever. Finding themselves immersed in a completely new environment with a foreign culture, they thankfully persevered and carried on with their own traditions and most importantly to this paper, musical ones. Most American slaves originated from Western and Central Africa. The West Africans carried a musical tradition rich with long melody lines, complicated rhythms (poly rhythmics) and stringed instruments CITATION. The West Africans music was also strongly integrated into their everyday lives. Songs were preformed for religious ceremonies and dances and music was often a

Music has evolved too many different forms that we recognize today. We trace this development throughout time. Beginning in the middle ages, we have seen advancement from the Gregorian chant all the way to the Jazz of the 20th century. The current events, politics, religion, technology and composers can shape musical eras during time. Here I will look at the middle ages, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and twentieth century periods. I hope that a better understanding can be reached to why, when, where and who are the reasons for musical evolution.

Europe was not the only part of the world that experienced change in music. The United States also began a change in music that drastically improved the way we listen to, compose, and disperse music. Before the 1960s, there was an increase in different types of music that displayed characteristics much different from the nineteenth century and beyond. People began to play with tone, timing, rhythm and much more.

According to one of the friars from Mission Soledad, Native Americans had “a fondness for every kind of music” (Geiger and Meighan 1976:135). This was not exclusive to this mission as many of the padres from the Geiger and Meighan reading said that the natives had an inclination toward music. This enthusiasm for music gave the padres an opportunity to use this to their advantage as the natives would be more willing to learn and adopt European music compared to other European ways. But even with this seemingly perfect opportunity, the padres faced many difficulties in simply teaching the natives even though all of them had studied music and sung in choirs prior to coming to the New World. They were simply “not professional musicians,” according to the padre from mission San Antonio (Geiger and Meighan 1976:135). Because of this lack of experience or proper training, many padres were less skilled at teaching and found

As the popularity of black artist started to build, especially in America, new variations of gospel and R&B developed; forming soul and funk. Were in the past, black musicians were ignored by the record companies, because they were not part of the music business model.

There are many elements that led to the expansion of music in the 20th Century. In some ways these elements were all linked to each other and it is difficult to say what events or ideas triggered the huge development of music. For example, World War I and II in the first half of the century lead to the rapid development of technology and communications as well as, eventually, political and social freedom, all aspects which have created changes and growth. The great advances in technology were in part responsible for globalism, although nationalism was also partly a product of the wars. The advent of the Great Wars also produced great emotion.

The history of American music begins with a fundamental process of exchange through all different social lines, where diverse cultures meet, and mix. Music has and always will be defined as sounds that are arranged in a particular pattern that are played to be meaningful and pleasurable. The chronology of music began in the Medieval period, when chanting was introduced into the Church. Music has then moved its way through many stages: renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and leading up to 20th century American music. American 20th century music is made up of a diverse number of styles that are reflected by cultural traditions and the era’s of the past. Immigrants from Spain, France, England, Germany and Ireland all contributed and brought their own unique styles to the forefront, hence creating American music. African Americans created influential musical traditions that include rhythm and improvisation that were later combined with European traditions and other indigenous music.

Music plays a significant rule in our lives. It’s a melody and rhythm we live in. It plays a very essential rule in our day to day to life when it comes to expressing feelings, passing time and for other uses as well. Though we in general may not think about how music has changed so much in the past few decades we must acknowledge the fact todays music is the outcome of the various change in the past. Today’s majority of music we hear is what we define as more as a “westernized” music. Considering other cultures in the world, a huge impact of western music is seen within them. Westernization and modernization are two different words with different meanings and they have two different impacts on a society. Modernization is used to define the improvements and show a progressive transition from one stage to another. Westernization is the concept of being influenced by the customs and techniques of the western society and reflecting them in a non-western culture. This essay will discuss furtherly about the impact of the western society on music cultures of North India and Korea by looking from both the positive and negative point of this impact.