History of country music

Country music (its history, origin and development)

To trace the history of country music and its early influences we really ought to go back to 1492, when our country was first discovered by Europeans. When Europeans first came to the land which would later be the United States, they brought their own culture, which included their own music. The early settlers set the tone for country music even though their musical preferences were very far from what the music evolved into towards the 19^th century.

The original settlers in the northeastern part of the United States were Puritans, sever Protestants who had left Europe to seek religious freedom. Many were from northern European countries and were outcasts in their original countries. As such, they were tightly knit in their communities and expressed relatively homogenous attitudes, especially in their musical activates. They had strong religious beliefs, and their musical tastes reflected conservative religious attitudes. Two of their guiding principles, a belief in original sin and an avoidance of sensual pleasure, translated musically into a preference from simplicity of melody, harmony, and rhythm.

The religious hymns that these settlers brought from Europe had simple one-line melodies. The message of the words was considered more important than the music itself. Quite often, the congregation repeated them afterward, a practice called lining-out. These hymns were regular in music form, made up of four equal phrases consistent with the word organization. There were of course exceptions to this rule; irregular tunes were learned by the congregation as being the fight presentation of particular hymns. This oral tradition influenced country music, which was at first primarily an aoral art form.

Both the subject matter and the musical material of early Protestant hymns had an influence on all American popular music, and the strong Puritan roots of early American colony life are a continuing influence in the United States. The basic tendencies of this music as well as the religious attitudes were shared by German and French settlers in the United States whenever those settlers were of the conservative Protestant types.
It should be understood that Protestant settlers, whether they settled in Massachusetts or in Appalachia, all brought to the United States a relatively homogenous world view as influenced by their religious beliefs. This fundamentalism of spirit is a continuing influence in country music and should be understood as one of the earliest influences n American Life.

It cannot be doubted that early settlers sang secular music as well, and these secular songs have been documented various writings on early American life. Although the subject matter of these songs is quite different from that of Protestant hymns, the musical content is fairly similar. The song forms are made of equal-length phrases and they usually divide into two and four unit groups. Various Europeans dance forms were important in the United States – the sarabande, the basses dense, the jig, and others.

There was some migration to the United States by other groups of settlers with different religious and philosophical attitudes, for instance, the French and Spanish Catholics who settled in the New Orleans area and the Irish Catholics who settled in the Boston.

In the South (which is the primary focus for early country music) most of the population growth took place near the ocean or major rivers; it was only in the middle of the 18^th century that small encampments began to develop in the hills of the Appalachians and other such areas. Up until those rural developments, the South was largely like the north except for climate. Even in the early 18^th century, the North was becoming industrialized. Although the South had textile and tobacco production quite early in the history, it was basically agricultural because of the climate. While people in Northern settlements had do beat back the rigors of the climate. 

In 18^th Century settlements began to appear in more rural environments and its as from these environment at country music came, primarily because these people became isolated from urban settlements and retained many of the roots of early American attitudes. This is not to say that the rural southerner is a throwback, but simply to state that people who lived in small communities separate from large cities developed homogenous cultural attitudes. Since they were not influenced by the rest of the world, the kind of attitudes and music they produced were a mirror of their culture.

BRIEF SURVEY OF SOUTHERN FOLK SONGS         

The folk music of the South in the 16^th century and 17^th centuries were the same as the North and was primarily religious in nature. The Puritan ethic, which dominated the South as well as the North, maintained a tight hold on nonreligious music from the perspective that the singing of anything other than psalms or humans was considered bad for human nature.
The black slave population developed its own musical forms – field hollers, cries and work songs. Undoubtedly, such musical developments also occurred in white civilization. In the south, especially since the southern economy was early tied to agriculture, English ballads were popular in the South; the greatest evidence of this is the writings about performances of the balled opera in the 18^th Century southern towns. A particularly southern style of folk music started in a way that was similar to that which occurred in the North; from ballads and narrative songs that were particular to an ethnic group (such as Irish, British, German, French or African) or to a certain location. Although there are notable examples of retention of original song types in the South, it was probably in the process of the melding of two or more ethnic types that a true southern style evolved.
By the 19^th Century the south had three districts type of songs that would ultimately make up- 

1)Southern folk music

1)     2) Ethnic folk songs

2)      3)Afro-American songs

3)      A nostalgic white music in the 19^th century parior style

These three types of folk songs ultimately came together to form a uniquely Southern style of folk music.