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This Introduction situates historically the Cajun community’s position within the broader cultural currents of the United States. The evolution of Cajun instrumentation, the earliest influences acting on the genre—including minstrelsy, showboats, and travelling entertainment—frame this Introduction to Cajun music’s pre-commercial history. This chapter argues that interaction, not isolation, attributed to the vibrancy of Cajun music

Dance culture and the social contexts that shaped Cajun musical traditions through 1950 constitute the primary focus of this study. Cajun musical expression is considered here, in relation to the varied social dynamics acting on the genre, through an analytical lens categorizing musical expression into one of three distinct, but complementary roles within its host community: home music, sung a cappella for pleasure in a domestic setting for friends, family, or personal enjoyment; ritualistic ballad recitations at significant events straddling secular and religious social spheres; and dance music performed at bals de maison (house dances) and later dance halls—a distinctive style that would be exploited commercially in the early 20th century. The contexts surrounding this vernacular American music satisfied the group’s basic needs for self-expression, social interaction, courtship, and entertainment. This chapter concludes that social context is a crucial factor in the Cajun musical equation that ultimately shapes and defines this brand of ethnic cultural expression.

Chapter three examines the various factors that precipitated the commercialization of Indian folk music in the late twentieth century, including the growing economic clout of regional migrants in Indian metropolises and in the diaspora, the technological developments of studio recording and music dissemination, the expanding economic and political influence of regional polities within the federalist democracy, and the broad neoliberal reforms of the 1990s and early twenty-first century. These developments are best observed through the life of Uttarakhand’s most famous and most commercially successful musician, Narendra Singh Negi, whose forty-year career reveals a commitment to developing the “folk element” in his recordings. Like the modernist reformers of Indian classical music, Negi, by his musical activism, reveals a concern for revitalizing Uttarakhandi folk music by borrowing from, reforming, and, when he deems it necessary, replacing low-caste hereditary musicians.

This chapter looks at the idea of the intention of a musical text in the context of music videos and MTV. The ideal appraiser for such musical texts is the collective and not individual as the music videos on MTV appear to be meant to be consumed by a group and not an individual. Collective listening strategies may be as postmodern as non-modernist but their presence and premises certainly emphasize the idealization of structural listening as normative practice. The chapter explores some of the assumptions of the structural listening process and their effects on the study of vernacular music. It also demonstrates that music videos do not match Jameson's modernist model of autonomy, which necessitates a different conceptual framework for the interaction between texts and their appraisal. A brief discussion on the various commonalities in the collective listening process portrayed by MTV in its various programmes such as B&B, Yack Live, 12AV, and TRL is also presented.

This chapter examines the material culture of blackface minstrelsy, and particularly of instrumental dance music in the “creole synthesis,” using evidence drawn from William Sidney Mount's four paintings: Just in Tune (1849), Right and Left (1850), Just in Tune () and The Banjo Player and The Bone Player (1856). Three of the four images in the portraits are most likely of dance musicians (both fiddlers and the bones player), while the fourth (the banjo player) could be imagined to accompany singing but equally likely completes the dance-band instrumentation—fiddle, banjo, and bones representing three-fourths of the iconic ensemble of minstrelsy. All of these works provide confirmation of Mount's expertise in and admiration for the details of African American vernacular music. This chapter analyzes the relationship between Mount's “private” pencil sketching and his “public” oil painting, as well as the complex layers of racial, economic, and political symbolism in his work. It also explores the musical detail of each of the four paintings and their significance to our understanding of the roots of minstrelsy.

This chapter focuses on the Renaissance faire's “immersion theater” or “promenade theater,” performances in which audience members are watching the drama unfold around them, rather than in front of them. It discusses the faire's influence on the arts, especially in the arena of vernacular music; musical activity at the faire during its first decade, as well as the early faire's central musical figures, including Lev Liberman, Billy Scudder, and Robert Shields; the emergence at the faire of a new kind of music that came to be known as “psychedelic folk” or “acid folk”; the faire's contributions to the popularization of Middle Eastern music, dance, and instruments in the American context; how the faire gave rise to klezmer music; the early faire's musical experiments with ethnic music and dance; physical theater, vaudeville, and equestrian jousting as popular performances at the faire; and the so-called “street performers” as an important category of faire performers.

This chapter introduces the “Sweet Thing” scheme through postwar popular music, and defines a scheme as a shared musical structure with predetermined constraints and allowances. The “Sweet Thing” scheme is the result of the intertwining of various musical components of many different sources, some with very deep roots in the past, which penetrated many genres of American vernacular music. With the advent of radio and the phonograph in the early twentieth century—and especially with the widespread circulation of blues, country, and gospel records—the various components of these older forms grouped together and intertwined in different ways, resulting in a number of hybrids and variants. It is this cluster of twentieth-century variants that I call the “Sweet Thing” scheme. Defining its musical characteristics in a way flexible enough to accommodate its substantial variation and exploring the historical sources for its musical attributes are the subjects of this book.

This chapter considers the debate over the definition of “American” music, a complex issue entangling art with patriotism. While American painters and writers had achieved international recognition and consequent acceptance at home, American composers remained largely unappreciated. A few musicians, including Henry Cowell, argued that compositional Americanism was completely unnecessary and virtually impossible at a high level of quality. They agreed that folk or vernacular music was useful only if composers could substantially elevate it as they absorbed it into “art” music. The sudden growth of jazz in the early 1920s suggested another route to “American music.” Henry was troubled by narrow definitions of “American,” so he challenged European and American ignorance of American musical diversity. He often attacked jazz as a criterion for American authenticity. In his introduction to the book American Composers on American Music, Henry tackled the controversy.

This chapter’s central claim is that the notion of freedom, in the context of theology, music, and modernity (1740–1850), is incomplete if it does not address the sacred music of the enslaved people of North America during this period—a population for whom theology, music, and freedom were of enormous personal and social consequence. The central figure in this regard is Richard Allen (1760–1831), who in 1816 founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent black religious denomination in the United States. Allen was born enslaved, in Philadelphia or Delaware, but was able to purchase his freedom in 1783. He had already had a conversion experience in 1777, and once he gained his freedom, he became an itinerant preacher, ultimately settling in Philadelphia, where he preached at St George’s Methodist Church and a variety of venues in the city. In 1794 he led a walkout of black members at St George’s, in protest of racism; and over the course of a number of years he founded Mother Bethel, which would become the original church of the AME. This chapter situates Allen in the development of black sacred music in the US: first, as the publisher of hymnals for his church (two in 1801, and another in 1818); and second, as an important arbitrator between the traditions and performance styles of Protestant hymnody as inherited in the British colonies, and an evolving oral tradition and performance style of black sacred music.