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4 - “If I Were a Voice”: or, The Hutchinson Family and popular song as political and social protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2012

Charles Hamm
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, Vermont
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Summary

My book Yesterdays was not written as an overview of popular music but as a narrative history of the musical and social origins of a single genre, popular song, which I defined as follows:

  • written for, and most often performed by, a single voice or a small group of singers, accompanied by either a single chord-playing instrument or some type of band, ensemble, or small orchestra;

  • usually first performed and popularized in some form of secular stage entertainment, and afterwards consumed (performed or listened to) in the home;

  • composed and marketed with the goal of financial gain;

  • Designed to be performed by and listened to by persons of limited musical training and ability; and

  • produced and disseminated in physical form – as sheet music in its early history, and in various forms of mechanical reproduction in the twentieth century.

There was no intent of privileging this genre over others. As I pointed out myself, this definition “excludes the music of William Billings, which is for vocal ensemble; Child ballads and other traditional Anglo-American songs, which were transmitted in oral tradition; the band music of John Philip Sousa and the ragtime music of Scott Joplin and others, which is instrumental; all church music, even that for solo voice; most jazz, which is instrumental.” But I emphasized that “the exclusion of these and other kinds of music from this book – except as they exert direct influence on popular song – does not imply that they are less interesting or important than the music dealt with here, merely that they are something different.”

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

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