American primitive guitar is a
fingerstyle guitar
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of guitar picking, playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with ...
music genre
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. Genre is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometim ...
, developed by the American guitarist
John Fahey in the late 1950s. While the term "American primitivism" has been used as a name for the genre, American primitive guitar is distinct from the
primitivism art movement.
Development
John Fahey used the term "American primitive guitar" to describe the style of composition he developed in his releases from the 1950s onwards. Fahey employed traditional
country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to accompany vocals, on solo guitar, in combination with nontraditional harmonic and melodic material. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, other musicians would become associated with the genre, including
Leo Kottke. The style is similar to some forms of
20th-century classical music
20th-century classical music is Western art music that was written between the years 1901 and 2000, inclusive. Musical style diverged during the 20th century as it never had previously, so this century was without a dominant style. Modernism, i ...
(particularly Minimalism), and the
classical music of India. Besides Fahey, other notable representatives of this genre include
Kottke,
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho (born Daniel R. Robinson, Jr., August 31, 1940 – February 28, 1986) was an American acoustic guitarist, pianist and singer.
Biography
Basho was born in Baltimore, and was orphaned as an infant. Adopted by the Robinson family ...
, Bob Hadley, and
Peter Lang,
who released recordings on Fahey's
Takoma Records label.
In the 1970s and 80s, some of the musicians of the genre have integrated
new-age guitar techniques and have come to be broadly categorized into the
New Acoustic genre. Potentially because the new age guitarist
William Ackerman cited Fahey, Basho, and Kottke as influences, critics began to associate Fahey with
new-age music
New-age is a genre of music intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management to bring about a state of ecstasy rather tha ...
. Fahey himself rejected any influence upon or responsibility for the genre, referring to it derisively as "hot tub music" and feeling that any association with New Age meant that he had failed as an artist.
Peter Lang, a guitarist associated with the genre, described American primitive guitar, writing: ". . . The New Age people call it Folk; the Folk people call it New Age, but it is really neither. It's transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string band music of the '20s and '30s, however much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as 'American Primitive' after the 'French
Primitive' painters, meaning untutored."
See also
*
New acoustic music
*
Folk baroque
References
External links
John Fahey and American Primitivism: Nick Schillace's Master's Thesis The Cosmos Club. American primitive guitar. Washington City Paper.
{{Folk music
20th-century music genres
American folk music