“Segregation of Sound” by Miller

-There was a shift in music in the South, the Southern Embrace of Commercial Music
a white man named Charles Peabody made the earliest Blues music found which surprises me In 1903, he published a description of what he had heard in the Journal of American Folklore.one of his biggest hits was a recreation of a minstrel show song, I find it interesting that it is referred to as a “bully song” in the book
-Folk music was supposed to be pure and untouched since the people making it were living in rural areas and unplugged from the rest of the country
Folk music is any kind of music that speaks to a specific community and is not marketed to people outside of it
-Pop music made its way into southern culture during this time in the 1900s
Commercial Pop was big with Black and White Southerners and had nothing to do with race by then
The Railroad expansion helped expand the reach of Commercial Pop to the south
*Publishing
-In 1881 T. B. Harms publishing house in NY center of pop music publishing in U.s
-Then other companies started hiring writers and artists for cheap to create songs that they would own completely
-There was a railroad circuit from state to state for musicians to travel playing their music ‘‘Railroadin’ Some’’ lyrics’ circuitous route
Henry Thomas was a popular railroad musician
-Leadbelly-a term that is used in cowboy/western shows that depicts a man as being a murder/serious criminal (low down Leadbelly), which is my understanding of this term
Now that I have read this book I know that Leadbelly was a man’s name who was a singer in the South was going to jail for murder
-Country music-cowboy songs
Roosevelt and Wendell believed that Lomax had uncovered evidence of the past living in the present. Cowboys on the shrinking frontier, isolated from the ubiquitous, self-conscious music of the modern marketplace, had preserved the ancient art of ballad-making. Their physical and social isolation had enabled them to create music that spoke to a deep, fundamental ‘‘human rhythm’’ and truth.∞
This makes the point that elements of the past do appear in music today, which goes for all genres
-This book discusses travel, finances, and culture of that era and goes into details about how major cities were changed by them ex: NYC and Texas
I’m assuming they thought this background info was important for the reader to better understand the reasoning for the creation of the music but I think that point may have been lost with the in-depth history lesson, to me it is unhelpful. I do like that Miller included lyrics from songs
I feel like I’ve heard most of the key points of this book in class and learned more from the lecture than from reading this book
I think this book does have clever chapter titles and subtitles that grasp the reader’s attention but I think it is its purpose is to be utilized by people who are researching the history of music but it is not for exploring the history of the digital past