Celtic Music and Appalachia
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One of the music-industry surprises--and thrills--of 2000 was the extraordinary success of the soundtrack album for the motion picture O Brother, Where Art Thou? The music for the film came from the purest strains of what is often called American roots music--the source of country, bluegrass, and folk music. The resurgence of popularity for that music has been well documented by consumer tastes. The country music segment of the recording business hasn't accounted for less than 10% of the $12.6-billion industry for more than 10 years, and until the advent of hip-hop in the mid-1990s it accounted for nearly 20% of all sales (RIAA). Behind the mass-market success of the music, however, is more than the novelty appeal of the sound. There has always been a subculture of enthusiasts for the music that migrated to North America with its earliest European immigrants. The ballads and folk music of the British Isles, like the people who brought it, became part of the culture of America's first heartland, the agricultural Appalachian region, which was settled by persons of British and Scots-Irish origin.The fact that America's Appalachian region remained relatively remote from the industrializing and urban dynamics of the 19th and early 20th centuries both permitted and demanded that the people who bore the culture would preserve its distinctive musical heritage. From generation to generation music rooted in the Celtic peasant culture of Britain and Ireland nurtured the people of Appa
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of multigenerational involvement in the American musical tradition. Orphaned as a child and the youngest of eight children, Monroe grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky in a family in which music playing was the principal pastime. Head of the household was an uncle named Pen Vandiver, who played the fiddle. Monroe appears to have been more or less assigned the mandolin, which was typically thought of as a supporting rather than lead instrument and which his older brothers made even less prominent by taking out four of his instrument's eight strings.
Although sources of Monroe's biography agree that he left Kentucky in search of a job when the Great Depression hit in 1929, they disagree about how Monroe's career as a musician got started. One version of the story is that he worked for an oil company in Indiana for several years and, with his brothers, got music jobs on the side (Wolmuth 50). Another, more frequently reported, version is that he followed his brothers Birch, a fiddle player, and Charlie, a guitar player, to Chicago and that they were hired for National Barn Dance, touring as Barn Dance square dancers in 1932. They began recording as the Monroe Brothers in 1934, disbanding in 1938 because of family friction. In 1938 B
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Bill Monroe, Grass Boys, Music Life, Erik Erikson, North America, Depression Residents, Bob Dylan, Wexford Street, North America--which, Andy Griffith, country music, traditional music, blue grass, blue grass boys, grass boys, bill monroe, musical tradition, american traditional, folk music, stanley brothers, north america, american traditional music, traditional american music, national barn dance, grand ole opry,
Approximate Word count = 10298
Approximate Pages = 41 (250 words per page)
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