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Ancient seasonal rituals are still performed at Iroquoian tribal longhouses, where family groups once lived. In the "Stomp Dance," foot tromping is the only accompaniment to the dance. Performed by Kadega'ohiyaie (Middle of Sky) of the Onondaga-Tuscarora tribes. (FW 4541)
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Colonial New England meetinghouses rang with the sound of fuging tunes and hymns written by self-taught singing masters who went from town to town teaching choral singing. "Amity" was a popular fuging tune written by Daniel Read in 1785. (Old Sturbridge Singers, FW 2377)
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William Billings is generally regarded as the first important American composer. He rejected formal rules of music theory and announced that "Nature herself" would be his guide. "Jesus Wept," now considered a masterpiece of American music, is a canon, or round. (FW 2377)
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"Paddy Lay Back" is sung as a brake windlass chanty aboard the brig Unicorn, on a passage from Boston to Mystic. Sea chanties were work songs that provided a rhythm for the hauling and heaving, and a diversion to ease the tedium of the task. (FW 37301)
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Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, crossing New York from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. An important means of transportation before the railroad, the canal spurred settlement of the western plains. (Pete Seeger, FW 5003)
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Northern Italians in Brooklyn gather in their club to eat, drink, play cards, and sing. A group of fifteen from the Coro Trentino sings the classic Lombardy ditty "Dove te vett, O Mariettina?" in improvised four-part harmony. (FW 34041)
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The Pennsylvania Dutch (from the German "Deutsch," meaning German) are descendants of Swiss Germans who came to Pennsylvania in the 1600's and 1700's in search of religious freedom. George S. Britton remembers the song "Hei Lie, Hie Lo!" from his childhood in Reading. (FW 2215)
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Since the mid-1930's, New York City has been the mecca for jazz--the place to be for performing, recording, and listening. Coleman Hawkins, considered the inventor of the tenor saxophone in jazz music, plays "Leave My Love Alone." (FW 4602)
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Legendary guitarist Arthel "Doc" Watson popularized Anglo-American folk music during the "folk revival" of the 1960's. The folk hymn "Amazing Grace," one of the best-liked Anglo-American religious songs, is also popular in the African American spiritual tradition. (FW 40005)
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Folk singer Jean Ritchie was raised in the Appalachian Mountain region of Kentucky, the youngest in a musical family of fourteen. She learned to play the plucked, or Appalachian, dulcimer from her Uncle Jason. She sings the sad story of "Pretty Polly." (FW 40005)
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Tom Sullivan is the chantyman who leads the chorus in "Strike the Bell," a popular pumping chanty. Pumps are used for drawing water up from the tanks. At the end of a "watch," or work period, everyone is ready to "lay below," or go below decks. (FW 37301)
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The Cumberland Gap is a pass in the Appalachian Mountains at the meeting point of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1775, Daniel Boone marked the "Wilderness Trail" through the gap, leading early pioneers to lands west of the Appalachians. (Pete Seeger, FW 5003)
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Country fiddler Arthur Smith grew up in a musical family in Tennessee. He became a full-time musician in the 1930's, touring, recording, and returning to Nashville every Saturday night for the Grand Ole Opry radio program. Smith plays "Polly Anne."@(FW 2379)
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Bluegrass music is known for its breakneck rhythm, high-pitched vocal harmonies and skilled playing of acoustic instruments, including the 5-string banjo, guitar, fiddle, string bass and mandolin. "Bile 'em Cabbage Down" is played by Stover, Lilly, and Anthony. (FW 40038)
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"Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie" is an unusual blues sung around the Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, where guitarist Elizabeth Cotten was born. She played a standard guitar left-handed, or upside-down. She is best known for her single-string guitar picking style. (FW 40009)
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Descendants of freed slaves living on the isolated Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia retain many aspects of the old slave culture: the Gullah dialect, the spirituals and the "praise house" worship. The Moving Star Hall Singers sing "Remember Me." (FW 40031)
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The fa-so-la's of shape-note singing from Stewart's Chapel in Houston, Mississippi. The hymn "Schenectady" was published in 1844 in the Sacred Harp, a collection of folk hymns written using shapes for notes, allowing those who did not read music to easily learn their parts. (FW 4151)
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The spike-driving song "Let Your Hammer Ring" was recorded at a prison camp in the South. Work songs were originally used to coordinate and to ease the difficult work of slaves and gang laborers. Song leaders improvised stanzas until the job was completed. (FW 4602)
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The skiffle band was an instrumental group that used homemade instruments like washboards, jugs, kazoos, washtub basses, slide whistles, or woodblocks with a guitar or banjo and a lot of singing. The Mobile Strugglers of Alabama play "Raise a Ruckus Tonight." (FW 2610)
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The Cajuns are descendants of Acadians, French Canadians who settled in Louisiana after the English expelled them in 1755. Cajun music is often played at gumbos and fish parties. The accordion, fiddle, guitar, and Cajun French are heard on "La valse d'amour." (FW 40006)
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The Mississippi Delta has produced one of the most intense styles of blues. The voice is impassioned and dark, accompanied by slide guitar and harmonica. It is the blues at its musical and emotional limit of expression. J.D. Short performs "You been cheatin' on me." (FW 2467)
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New Orleans is considered to be the birthplace of jazz, America's unique art form. Doc Paulin's Marching Band plays "When the Saints Go Marching In." Originally a gospel song, this hymn is now synonymous with dixieland music. Paulin plays trumpet. (FW 2856)
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The "Corn Dance" is one of only two tribal gatherings of the Seminole Indians of Florida. Held in June, after the corn has ripened, it lasts from four to eight days. Traditionally, the new corn was not eaten until after the ceremony. (FW 4541)
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The Key West Junkanoos, African Americans who trace their ancestry to the Bahamas, perform "Sapodilly Limbo." Along with the maracas, saw, bell, claves and conga drum is heard a home-made drum made from a palm tree, in the authentic African style. (FW 4492)
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Sioux tribal religion was given its fullest expression in the "Sun Dance," held at the midsummer full moon. Tribe members assembled to fulfill vows to Wakantanka (Great Mysterious). The U.S. government prohibited the Sun Dance in 1881. (FW 4541)
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Indian people often borrowed songs when visiting other tribes. The Winnebago Indians brought this "Song of Welcome" back to Wisconsin from Oklahoma. The words, translated: "Brother, you are welcome! Come sit at our fireside. Be one of us! Brother, you are welcome." (FW 4541)
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A popular version of the "Hoot Owl" song, known to many Michigan Indian singers in some variant. Sung by Blue Cloud, a specialist in native songs, in traditional Ottawa style. The song is used to teach children dancing. One verse is: "Hoot Owl, I'm afraid of him." (FW 4541)
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Protest movements among Midwestern farmers, struck by severe depression after the Civil War, culminated in formation of the Populist Party in 1891. "The Farmer is the Man" expressed the loss of status suffered by the small, independent farmer. (Gene Bluestein, FW 2132)
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Many people in the northern states west of the Great Lakes are of Scandinavian descent. The "Toiler's Serenade" (Ratayan Serenadi) is a lullaby well-known among the Finns in northern Minnesota, especially the miners on the Iron Grange. (FW 2132)
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The polka and the accordion came to the Midwest with immigrants from Eastern Europe, mostly Germans and Poles. Bill Stimac and Art Moilanen are two Michigan accordionists who performed "Bill's Polka" at the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife in 1987.
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Stanley Baby sings "The Trip of the Bigler," a story of the passage of the schooner Bigler from Milwaukee to Buffalo via three of the Great Lakes--Michigan, Huron and Erie. These songs were used to while away leisure hours aboard ship and in waterfront saloons. (FW 4018)
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Many Southern bluesmen migrated north to Chicago, where they settled on the South Side. They often played at "house rent parties" to help each other get by. A new urban blues style developed in the city. Willie Dixon and Memphis Slim play "Roll and Tumble." (FW 2385)
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Speckled Red developed his barrelhouse style after many years as an itinerant piano player in the roughest clubs and honky-tonks. The music had to be loud and percussive to be heard over shouting voices and clinking bottles. Speckled Red plays "It Feels So Good." (FW 3555)
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Ragtime became popular in St. Louis during the Gay Nineties and was very widespread by the turn of the century. Today it is the nostalgic music of silent movies and player pianos. David Jasen rediscovers ragtime on Fred Guttenberger's 1909 "Kalamity Kid." (FW 3561)
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"Wild Bill Hickok" was a legendary frontier scout in the West. He became a star shooter and the marshall of Abiline, Kansas, a cattle town. Wild Bill was shot dead in a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory during a card game in 1876. (Keith Clark, FW 10003)
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Harry Jackson sings the cowboy classic "Streets of Laredo." Also known as "The Dying Cowboy," this ballad tells the sad story of a "cowpuncher" shot in the town of Laredo, Texas. (FW 5723)
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Western Swing, with its fast driving beat and lively fiddling, is the real dance music of Country. The Johnny Lee Wills Band played the traditional country fiddle tune "Cotton Eyed Joe" at the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife in 1982.
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The legendary Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins began his career while still a boy in the country, in the small farming area around Centerville, Texas. He was a brilliant guitarist and a warm, loose singer. "Bad Luck and Trouble," a classic country blues, was recorded in Houston. (FW 40019)
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For frontier women, life was at best difficult: work was hard, utensils primitive, pleasures few. Romantic illusions of gallant cowboy heroes vanished in the face of actual frontier conditions. "The Texian Boys" warned of these harsh realities. (Hermes Nye, FW 10003)
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The "Buffalo Dance" is connected with the dependence of the Plains tribes on the bison for a livelihood. The buffalo was a walking commissary, supplying the Indian with food, clothing, tools, housing, and fuel. Performed in Tulsa, Oklahoma by the Kiowa tribe. (FW 4541)
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The forced removal of the Seminole Indians to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, took place from 1836 to 1840. In the "Song of Removal" are these sad words:  "They are taking us beyond Miami, beyond the Caloosa River, to the end of our tribe, to an old town in the west." (FW 4541)
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Norteno, music of the Texas-Mexico border, knows no borders when it comes to influences: German and Polish, African by way of Colombia, Mexican, Mestizo, Indian. "La Adelita" is a popular polka played by button accordionist Ben Tavera King and guitarist Frank Corrales. (6527)
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There is probably no sound in America so nostalgic as that of a train whistle at night. It is a siren song for distant places and a sickness for home, a theme expressed in simple, homely eloquence in "900 Miles," sung by Cisco Houston. (FW 2013)
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The hymn "Come, Come Ye Saints" has become the theme of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The solacing refrain "All is well" renewed and sustained the faith of the Mormons during their difficult journey west. (Lalovi M. Hilton, FW 2036)
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Nesters, men who settled and "proved" government claims, produced a type of song in which they sang, often humorously, of the trials and problems they faced. "Bent County Bachelor" is a rollicking example of a nester's lament from Bent County, Colorado. (Sam Hinton, FW 10003)
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In the "Canvas Dance" the singers carry a canvas, each one pulling it tight with one hand and striking it with the other to produce a rhythmic accompaniment. The Flathead of Montana traditionally performed the dance before the departure of a war or hunting party. (FW 4541)
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Mexican Corridos are stories told in song, usually news stories with embellishments. "Corre, Corre, Maquinita!" (Run, My Little Locomotive) tells the story of Francisco "Pancho" Villa, the legendary Mexican bandit chieftain. (Cancioneras de Los Santos, FW 913)
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In the Apache "Devil Dance," masked dancers impersonate mountain-dwelling supernaturals in a struggle between good and evil. The Evil Spirit is overcome finally by four Medicine Men. The dance is performed during the girls' puberty rite, a major ceremonial. (FW 4541)
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To Native Americans, the eagle has always been a sacred bird of super- natural powers. The "Eagle Dance," widely practiced among the Pueblos of the Southwest, is presented by two dancers wearing feathered headgear and long feathered wings. (San Ildefonso, FW 4541)
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Because of dry desert soil, rain is of primary concern in Pueblo religions. During the monotonous, repetitive "Rain Dance," the forces of nature are compelled by the tireless stamping of feet to bring together the water in the sky and form rain clouds. (Zuni tribe, FW 4541)
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During the nine-day "Night Chant," or Yeibichai (Grandfather of the Gods), children are initiated into the ceremonial life of the tribe. The hypnotic power of the music is cumulative as an endless profusion of Yeibichai songs follow one another throughout the night. (FW 4541)
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The Papago hold their most important communal ceremony in July. The Saguaro cactus fruit is boiled into a thick syrup and fermented. Drinking of the liquor "tiswin" symbolizes the saturation of the earth with rain. Songs of rain and growth accompany the ceremony. (FW 4541)
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The Peyote Cult, or Native American Church, is a blend of Christian beliefs and Indian rituals. A central feature of the night-long service is the eating of the peyote, the seed pod of a cactus identified with the Supreme Being, which induces an ecstatic trance. (FW 4541)
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In preparation for the Eskimo "Inviting-in Feast" (Aithukaguk), a head man announces his intention to hold a feast and sends a messenger forth to invite other villages. The songs are rehearsed for weeks in preparation for the event. (FW 4541)
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The totem pole is an ancestral tree carved with the figures of many clans. The Wolf is a significant emblem of West Coast tribes that is identified with hunters. Chief Billy Assu of the Nootka, a Wolf tribe, sings the "Wolf Song." (FW 4541)
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When gold was discovered in California in 1849, people from every corner of the United States gave up their normal pursuits to travel west in search of fortune. Many of the prospectors headed for the fabled Sacramento Valley. Logan English sings "Sacramento." (FW 10003)
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The vast timber forests of Washington and Oregon help to make lumber a leading industry in the area. "The Frozen Logger" is a humorous song about a bawdy lumberjack that achieved widespread popularity in the Northwest. (Cisco Houston, FW 2042)
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The pahu is the wooden sharkskin drum of Hawai'i, a sacred instrument of power. "Kau ka hali'a i ka manawa" is a mele ka'i, a prayer chant accompanying a processional dance. Sung by descendants of the hula pahu (drum dance) tradition of Samuel Pua Ha'aheo. (FW 40015)
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To celebrate the Golden Jubilee of her 50th year of reign, Queen Victoria of Great Britain sent a young lamb as a gift to the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1887. "Nopu Talala-a" is a hula olapa, or festive dance, performed in celebration of the occasion. (Tom Hiona, FW 4271)
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Japanese Americans in Hawaii make up the largest ethnic group on the islands. Utai is a 12th to 15th Century narrative vocal art used in the Noh Plays of Japan. The Hawaii Kita Kai Group performs Utai, part of the "Hagoromo" Noh play. (FW 8885)
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