Americana

[Chocolate Shake Man]

The other day I was planning on coming here to and asking about Americana. Since then I discovered, excitingly, that Americana is the name of the new Neil Young & Crazy Horse album. So with that in mind, perhaps I will start a thread with a bit more relevance now. I have become increasingly more interested in music that could be labelled Americana over the years. It seems to me that the definition for the term is a bit open, so I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I think, for example that The Beach Boys are a significant contributor to Americana and they did so in two ways. One way was in a kind of a historical remembrance of Americana like one would find on Smile (Heroes, Cabinessence, Do You Like Worms?). Yet they also, in many ways, discovered new territory in the field of Americana in creating the Californian myth with songs like Surfin' USA and California Girls. So what else might be Americana? Well, in my mind, Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, and Scott Joplin seem to be early forerunners - people who, like Brian with Surfin' USA, helped to construct the field of Americana. I feel too that people like Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, and The Band (despite being mostly Canadian!) are crucial figures in the movement.

So just what do you think Americana is? Who else belongs in this hard-to-define genre? Woody Guthrie? Robert Johnson? Paul Simon? Bob Dylan?

Perhaps too it may help if I point to other mediums. So for example, I think the best literary example of Americana is Faulkner and perhaps his tradition has been picked up in film by the Coen Brothers (in many of their films, but especially O Brother, Where Art Thou).

[Myk Luhv]

Although I've only read The Grapes of Wrath, I should think Steinbeck deserves a place in the list of literary figures. Even if he wrote nothing else, he would deserve such a place.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I thought of Steinbeck too -- absolutely.

I think that Easy Rider works in this category too.

How about other music choices?

[hypehat]

In terms of music, Harry Smith and Alan Lomax are invaluable in terms of exposing blues, mountain music, gospel, prison songs, and so on, to wider audiences - lots of people you mention, such as Dylan, lapped that up and turned it into their own forms of 'Americana'. Maybe it's a crude point, but that's a 'ground zero' of Americana in pop music? Maybe in some respects, that obviously precludes Joplin and Gershwin to an extent. But those two men had huge influence.

[Myk Luhv]

Honestly, I'm not convinced 'Americana' is a useful genre or descriptor (or is as much as any other). It seems more like a term that people have taken to using when they realise, intentionally or not, that folk, blues, country, etc. are in some sense irreducibly linked, that in many cases race was surprisingly not a huge stumbling block. Take for example Howlin' Wolf getting his name from attempting to yodel like Jimmy Rogers, or John Jackson being surprised Uncle Dave Macon was white! To say nothing of the fact that what we know of "blues musicians" is filtered through what was then (as it remains now) popular and profitable: these musicians -- people like Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, or Hank Williams -- had a much wider range of material than just blues (or in Williams's case, country) songs, yet those were recorded the most because they sold the most.

Have you ever read Nick Tosches's Where Dead Voices Gather? It's partially a biography of Emmet Miller, a blackface performer in the late 1920s during minstrelry's downfall whose version of "Lovesick Blues" Hank Williams learned, and a general history of minstrel music and its largely ignored (so thinks Tosches) influence on rock, country, folk, etc. I highly recommend it if you've not read it yet!

Having said all this, I nevertheless think John Fahey needs a shoutout here, even if he wasn't ever as popular as these other musicians -- and however much he might bristle at being included in such a list!

edit: hypehat, I'd include John A. Lomax as well but I agree with you entirely.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Perhaps, then, my use of the term is somewhat incorrect. While I might agree that, say, the stuff from the Anthology of American Folk Music would work under my definition, I'm not entirely sure that, say, Surfin' USA or Do You Like Worms? would work in the same way that you guys are using the term. In many ways, I'm thinking about it more in the sense of either (or both) creation of and reaffirmation of some kind of American mythos. So, for example, I feel like someone like Randy Newman evokes Americana much more when he is using Stephen Foster or, say, ragtime music in his own work. So, again, this could be my fault in using a term that is typically used, as Midnight Special suggested, to describe "folk, blues and country" from say the 1920s through to the 1950s. For me, what I'm thinking of can also include: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Edgar Allan Poe's poetry, Langston Hughes' poetry, the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Springsteen's Thunder Road, etc.

[hypehat]

No, I think you're right in calling something like Surfin' USA 'Americana', as a sort of teenage wide-eyed expression of it - you couldn't write that song in Britain, for instance. And SMiLE is definitely and self-consciously American, as that's what Brian and Van Dyke set out to do. I think Randy Newman's a great example, say, especially on an album like Good Old Boys. It's a big tent, I think, and certainly blues/folk/etc is not the 'most American' music.

What's that quote Van Dyke trips out on occasion? I think it's about Aaron Copland, who said when asked what American music was that is was simply music written in America. I don't think you're wrong at all for ascribing that term to a huge variety of music and literature. Just because the term gets bandied about by lazy writers describing a certain type of music doesn't mean it lacks a greater meaning.

In terms of other authors, Thornton Wilder's Our Town is a great exploration of American life, and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, too. And speaking of Steinbeck, for some reason I find East Of Eden more powerful than Grapes of Wrath. It's intensely moving.

Maybe the term 'Americana', possibly due to the aforementioned lazy applications, seems to be associated with small-town living? Or certainly, more rural or isolated community. You mentioned Fargo, for instance. I should really know more about this, studying American Literature at school, but what makes certain pieces 'American' doesn't come up often. I think they assume we know 

[MyGlove]

Well, Norman Rockwell comes to mind. He was an artist. But as far as music goes you have to include Elvis. He influenced American culture pretty significantly. And on that note, Sam Phillips.