I have already uploaded several videos about Appalachian music: The first ever video of Appalachian music (1928) | "Doggett Gap" - Bascom Lamar Lunsford ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EVxjnXEEBnU.html Appalachian Ballad Singing (1969) | Dillard Chandler, Dellie Norton, Berzilla Wallin ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-11id9wkfvwI.html Appalachian musician George Landers performs old ballad "The Scotland Man" (c.1960s) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TR-jlH7Qs3A.html I have also restored and uploaded several rare videos of the Appalachian ballad singer and dulcimer player Jean Ritchie (who appears in this video at 4:48): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-phseXZaPoo8.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SCbNTbJKqMI.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-piV-BGDHLF4.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TMBqoeCTcQE.html It's worth noting that I've heard a kind of "yodel" sound in traditional Irish language folk music which is VERY similar to the Appalachian "vocal feathering" heard at 9:44. Listen to this recording from 1930: doegen.ie/LA_1130g2 I also found this Portuguese recording (go to 14:35) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4SU-HpKkSZo.html
@@lady_sir_knight3713 No I haven't, but now you mention it I agree it seems likely that she comes from one of those communities! Sorry for the late response.
I thought the Appalachian music came from the escaped indentured British slaves, mostly Irish with a bit of French. I know gospel music comes from the Scotch and Irish.
Do be aware of placement of text boxes in the same spots where the "pause" video text blocks reading it. Center the text where the cc's usually go, above the progress time bar so we can pause and read your hard scholarship essays, thanks.
There is a great album by Damon Albarn called 'Mali music' I highly recommend to hear African folk. For me the Appalachian sound is very olde English, Scots and Irish, not sure I believe the African link ... all these string instruments really go back to the Greek Lyre
As much as this music represents a history of human suffering in various forms, something truly magical happened when Anglo-celtic folk and West African folk came together.
what a great video :) it's amazing how much is still unknown as to how oral traditions grew and evolved, and how so many different cultures came together like that i really liked the clips of the norwegian dulcimer, the clyde maxwell one and the african mouth bow :)
The area owes much to its remoteness. The decades follwing the Civil War is when Appalachia became a national center of art & culture. Its seclusion spared it from much of the post war changes to the country and the culture flourished.
The southern Appalachians did pick up the banjo from Africa. The northern Appalachians did not use the banjo. Bill Monroe also said that the blues were part of bluegrass. This influence was added to music that came straight from Scotch Irish origins. We "Americanized" it. Lol
I have looked into this and one or two strings strung on a gourd is NOT a banjo. You have to remember that the Arabs were making incursions into Sub-Sahara Africa from centuries and they introduced some writing and other things along their trade routes. Also, the Arabs and Romans had routes by sea along the east coast of Sub-Sahara Africa. The Arabs are a Semitic people. The Israelites (also a Semitic people) had advanced instruments in 1000 BC, as did other "Cradle of Civilization" (the "Fertile Crescent") people groups. Music goes back an awful long way but most just settle for scratching the surface and drawing wrong conclusions.
@JimDeferio You are right. My friend, King David, played a harp and an"instument of ten strings". Lol. I've heard, though, that the word "banjo" is African.
@@philiprose7942 Africa is a continent with many different nations, ethnicities/tribes and races. All of North Africa has historically been white and linked to Europe and the Levant, while the Khoisan (Capoid) and Pygmies occupied much of Sub-Sahara Africa until the Bantu (Negroid or Congoid) Internal Colonization (now referred to euphemistically as "The Bantu Migration") of most of Sub-Sahara Africa. East Africa was a mix of people from the Levant and some who migrated from western Africa. THAT is the problem when saying something is "African" but most people use that expression... Same goes for "Asia" or "Asian". Europe was more racially homogenous though extremely diverse ethnically and culturally.
@@JimDeferio Negroid (less commonly called Congoid) is an obsolete racial grouping of various people indigenous to Africa south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the African Great Lakes in the southeast,[1] but also to isolated parts of South and Southeast Asia (Negritos).[2] The term is derived from now-disproven conceptions of race as a biological category.[3]
The source for "Uncle Joe" as a lyric was probably a caller at a square dance calling "do-si-do" - a dance move derived ultimately from the French "dos a dos" - back to back - to the McCloud tune, and then someone inventing words to sing along - turning do-si-do to Uncle Joe. Brilliant video - I the way you go from source to source showing the links
There are many different variations between Scotish and Irish folk songs. Mcleod's Reel cant be deemed Scottish. It could be Scottish or Irish. A good example I can give is "Come and join the British Army" by the Dubliners. And "If it wasn't for the unions" by Hamish Imlach.
07:43 I wonder why I, a European male from Ukraine, feel this with ma bones and soul. It's rather "proto blues," the blues scale, 12-bar blues. I feel it. FEEL IT.
GOD BLESS YOU FOR THIS !!!!! JUST AS I SUSPECTED !!!!!! APPALACHIAN MUSIC CAME FROM POOR , SUFFERING PEOPLE WITH AN UNQUENCHABLE thirst for SOMETHING MUCH BETTER ......🌅🌅🌅
Lowland Scottish and Northern English were the main influences (those are the regions the "Scots-Irish" mostly came from before settling Northern Ireland.)
I've listened yodel in Japanese(arr) Irish music when I was 16 y.o. I felt something strange like"why yodel...??" but suddenly make a sence why the composer selected and used it. I guess he knows background and connections of music.
Absolutely amazing! I had no idea of all the musical connections and overlap of different peoples and cultures that became Appalachian music. Incredible! Thank you for your thorough research and wonderful presentation!
It is based on the lyre and no doubt on other instruments mentioned in the Bible. The ancient Israelites had a whole assortment of musical instruments from stringed instruments to horns and flutes. Ancient Israel and their next door neighbors, the Phoenicians, sailed to numerous places (the Phoenicians even went for tin up to the British isles BC (Before Christ). Look it up yourself. This video barely scratches the surface of music history and it is wrong about American Indian and African influences. You have to go back much farther...
NOBODY IN THIS WORLD WILL BE ABLE TO CONVINCE ME THAT BLACK AFRICANS did not have anything SUBSTANTIAL to do with APPALACHIAN MUSIC : BORN AND RAISED IN NEW ORLEANS , AND STICKING TO MY GUNS .... LONG LIVE BLUEGRASS !!!!!
Musicologist and composer, Howard Goodall, who has done music documentaries for PBS, and who has done numerous music documentaries for the BBC, says that the blues had its origin in Celtic music and he can prove it. His documentaries, except one which you have to pay for, are still available, I think, on RU-vid for free.
Honestly the theory that native americans influence in a sorta way in the appalachian singing makes me feel proud of being a mixed race guy. Native american culture DID have influence in american culture.
And as a guy that's not Native it makes me upset that this is so hard for people to accept. It should be logical. Like of course. African European Native Those are the people that were there, only logical that the music had influence from them.
The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The j*w had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day. Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck. I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their tongues or their virtuosity at lying. Gradually I began to hate them
This is typical Afrocentric propaganda as usual. The folk music is in most cases basically directly from the European source, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Africa. The old folksong collectors found very old European folk songs there directly passed down over generations. The instruments are all European. And even the 'banjo' has little to do with a gourd and a stick, is actually European guitar technology with a superficial resemblance to primitive African instruments that are incapable of playing European folk.
I love that this video is educating people to the reality of how new folk forms emerged in North America via cultural exchange, and in so doing, is making you very upset. Because of your comment, I'm going to spend tomorrow finding ways to foster multiculturalism in my community, and there's nothing you can do about it.
If you think that American (especially Appalachian) folk sounds anything like European folk you must be tone deaf. Yes, there are ballads and sometimes melodies that are transmitted from Europe. But that doesn't account for everything in a musical style. Also holy shit, African banjos are not "gords and sticks;" they're complex instruments with drone strings and goatskin resonators. It's these two innovations that African slaves brought to the Americas. Plus guitars are not even European but were developed in the Middle East and brought to Europe by the Moors...i.e., North Africans.
@geniewiley4217 you are being ridiculous. There a re literally hundreds of Scottish and English ballads that date back to 17th and 18th centuries that are found in appalachia.
Lol bluegrass didn't come from Africa. Not everything comes from Africa Lol The banjo would be based off the Chinese Pipa. Bluegrass/folk instrumentation has greater connections to China than anywhere else. But, I'm an ethnomusicologist, I see what I do. And the fact there's a folk Chinese counterpart for every bluegrass/folk instrument used haha Violin-erhu Banjo-pipa Guitar-gushin[?] "Chinese guitar" Mando- smaller gushin Bass- bass erhu[has a name like buhu] Actual ancient/early instruments, not modern constructs. Fun stuff. Ancient China influenced a lot back then, just like Ancient Greece.
@@TheFolkRevivalProject What's ironic or really unexpected is I went to his channel and he's a far left political ideologue. I really didn't expect that.
@@anthonypuccetti8779 The British folk tradition has a very strong influence on the Appalachian tradition to be sure; but listen to appalachian music; there are sounds and elements entirely alien to British folk music, that's African influence, you don't need to be a purist with regard musical traditions, it's immature and silly.
This video shows a bunch of different folk traditions but you all seem to be hung up on the one that has to do with Black people, I wonder why that is? Anyway, apart from the instrumentation (which is a major part of the timbre of Appalachian music and structures it's harmonic and melodic content), the rhythmic style of Appalachia is clearly African and deeply contrasts with that of the British Isles. I'm guessing most of the people who are butthurt over a Black person shown playing a banjo here either don't play an instrument or haven't listened to African folk traditions.
People need to understand that black slaves weren't put into the Appalachian areas. It is mountainous region without sugar plantains. The black population went there and mixed without prejudice.
