´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 2 - Sold on Song - Genres

Country music is rooted in styles and techniques from across the world. It's a glorious mixture of all the forms of folk which were introduced into the US with the migration of peoples from all across the world â€“ English story-songs, Celtic ballads and mythical and gospel hymns to God and the common man, from Europe and beyond.

This music, performed in local, sometimes remote communities, at the turn of the century was also played on instruments from all over â€“ European instruments like the fiddle, and the banjo from Africa, providing a harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment.

Fiddling styles varied from state to state. A Texan would play long lyrical phrases, while a player from Georgia would use short rhythmic bowing. Vibrato (the wobbling pitch typical of classical violin playing) was used sparingly which helped differentiate it from the classical style.

The banjo brought with it a finger picking style which would later be used in guitar playing a way of sustaining chords. It was Earl Scruggs who really put this instrument on a pedestal by his legendary virtuoso performances.

The steel guitar, another instrument almost peculiar to country, was invented in Hawaii in the late 1800s.Through many different versions of this instrument for its first few decades, it later became more or less standardised as a double-necked ten-strung instrument, played horizontally across one's lap, with one hand plucking and the other pitching the notes by placing a steel bar across the strings.

Lyrically country music, much like the blues, was a means to voicing hardship and sorrow, with titles like "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live", lamenting life in the depression-hit dustbowl.

Country was also direct white response to the recording success of the early blues recording artists. Ralph Peer, a scout for the Victor Talking Machine Company, visited Tennessee in an effort to sign up white artists.

He signed The Carter Family, who bought close harmony singing to country, giving it a wider appeal, and the yodelling Jimmie Rodgers, the man who came to be known as the father of country music. Yodelling, a peculiar import from Switzerland, became a popular vocal tool in early cowboy tunes.

The foundation in 1925 of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, a radio broadcast of country performances, caused an explosion of interest in country music. Singers like Roy Acuff became huge stars, and country began to define itself along a number of themes and genres â€“ bluegrass, western swing, honky-tonk.

The advent of rock music eventually infiltrated country's style (in the music of Jerry Lee Lewis, for example), and now artists such as Garth Brooks put on spectacular shows with a full rock band and even brass sections.

Country's strength lays in its simplicity. Defiantly derivative both in its themes and in its harmony, the joke about country music being based on only three chords isn't too far from the truth. The bass lines in country nearly always plod between two notes, a legacy from the old tea-chest basses when poor musicians had to make do with broom-handles and tea-chests as instruments.

Country is fundamentally tradition. The followers of country don't want experimentation of any kind, or the aural dissonance that accompanies it, they want a music of wide-open spaces and big skies, mirroring and celebrating the vast American landscape.


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