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String Band
A string band is an old-time music or jazz ensemble made up mainly or solely of string instruments. String bands were popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and are among the forerunners of modern country music and bluegrass. While being active countrywide, in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs they are a huge part of its musical culture and traditions, appearing, among others, in the yearly Mummers Parade. History of African American old-time string band music Although African American old-time string bands recorded history is that of the early 20th century, the beginnings of the music started much earlier. Many people once believed that the role African Americans played in the upcoming of old-time string band music was either nonexistent or to interest the Middle Ages or medieval times. The genre of African American folk music actually began with the use of percussion instruments, which were used to create music in form of encouragement to keep the slaves exercising on slave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th-century minstrel show fad, followed by mass production and mail-order sales, including instructional books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but five-string and four-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 20th century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, cowboy music, and country music. By mid-century it had come to be strongly associated with bluegrass. Eventu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballad (music), ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the Call and response (music), call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in Pitch (music), pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffle note, shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove (popular music), groove. Blues music is characterized by its lyrics, Bassline, bass lines, and Instrumentation (music), instrumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lonnie Johnson (musician)
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazz singer, guitarist, violinist and songwriter. He was a pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin and is recognized as the first to play an electrically amplified violin.Herzhaft, Gérard (1979). ''Encyclopedia of the Blues'' Biography Early career Johnson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in a family of musicians. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child and learned to play various other instruments, including the mandolin, but he concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. "There was music all around us," he recalled, "and in my family you'd better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can." In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. He and his brother settled in St. Louis in 1921, where they performed as a duo. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instrument Amplifier
An instrument amplifier is an electronic amplifier that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal of a musical instrument into a larger electronic signal to feed to a loudspeaker. An instrument amplifier is used with musical instruments such as an electric guitar, an electric bass, electric organ, electric piano, synthesizers and drum machine to convert the signal from the pickup (with guitars and other string instruments and some keyboards) or other sound source (e.g, a synthesizer's signal) into an electronic signal that has enough power, produced by a power amplifier, to drive one or more loudspeaker that can be heard by the performers and audience. Combination (combo) amplifiers include a preamplifier, a power amplifier, tone controls, and one or more speakers in a cabinet, a housing or box usually made of wood. Instrument amplifiers for some instruments are also available without an internal speaker; these amplifiers, called ''heads'', must pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Swing
Western swing, country jazz or smooth country is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma, and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.''Stomping the Blues''. Albert Murray. Da Capo Press. 2000. page 109, 110. , The movement was an outgrowth of jazz. The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing; and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound.Wolff, ''Country Music'', "Big Balls in Cowtown: Western Swing From Fort Worth to Fresno", p. 71. La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Music (North America)
Western music is a form of music composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Western music celebrates the Western lifestyle, lifestyle of the cowboy on the open range, along the Rocky Mountains, and among the prairies of Western North America. The genre grew from the mix of cultural influences in the American frontier and what became the Southwestern United States at the time, it came from the American folk music, folk music traditions of those living the region, those being the Appalachian folk music, hillbilly music from those that arrived from the Eastern United States, Eastern U.S., the corrido and ranchera from Northern Mexico, and the New Mexico music, New Mexico and Tejano music, Tejano endemic to the Southwest. The music industry of the mid-20th century grouped the western genre with that of similar folk origins, instrumentation and rural themes, to create the banner of ''country and western music'', whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's Drainage basin, watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky Mountains, Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian mountains. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is , of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the world's List of rivers by discharge, tenth-largest river by discharge flow, and the largest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washtub Bass
The washtub bass, or gutbucket, is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. Although it is possible for a washtub bass to have four or more strings and tuning pegs, traditional washtub basses have a single string whose pitch is adjusted by pushing or pulling on a staff or stick to change the tension. The washtub bass was used in jug bands that were popular in some African American communities in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, British skiffle bands used a variant called a tea chest bass, and during the 1960s, US folk musicians used the washtub bass in jug band-influenced music. Variations on the basic design are found around the world, particularly in the choice of resonator. As a result, there are many different names for the instrument including the "gas-tank bass", "barrel bass", " box bass" (Trinidad), "bush bass" (Australia), "babatoni" (South Africa), "tanbou marengwen" (Haiti) " tingotalango" (Cuba), " tulòn" (Italy), "l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba and the violin family. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos,''The Orchestra: A User's Manual'' , Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandolin
A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled Strings (music), strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin (G3, D4, A4, E5). Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a Family (musical instruments), family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass. There are many styles of mandolin, but the three most common types are the ''Neapolitan'' or ''round-backed'' mandolin, the ''archtop'' mandolin and the ''flat-backed'' mandolin. The round-backed version has a deep bottom, constructed of strips of wood, glued together into a bowl. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or Plucked string instrument, plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either Acoustics, acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or Amplified music, amplified by an electronic Pickup (music technology), pickup and an guitar amplifier, amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone, meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood, with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
