Singing rather than instrumental performances grounded Native music making, although drums and other percussion instruments accompanied many songs, as did flutes and whistles in certain regions. Despite this, some broad generalization can be made when compared with non-Native sounds and uses of music. Native American music styles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries remained as diverse as there were tribal communities. Our recognition of its significance to them opens new avenues of historical discovery. Early Americans made music in multiple sites and for diverse ends. Interwoven with an exploration of some of the sounds made by these groups of people, it considers the ways music contributed to their religious, festive, political, and artistic activities. This essay treats some of the particular music making activities of Native Americans, the enslaved, new immigrants, and American-born United States citizens. In all these ways, music symbolized, expressed, and transcended the diversities of early America. Musical acumen and literacy gave the educated elite status, while common folk employed music to express equally as meaningful identities. Music might even provide one’s livelihood. Some worked to music, while others played. Bells pealed to mark the seasons and to call a community to arms. Song might awaken the sacred forces to one’s aid it might also embody profane desires and accompany riotous behaviors. People sang privately to sooth their sorrows and publically to celebrate joyous events. Music held the social order together, but it might also be used to challenge the status quo. Because nearly everyone made music, and because music could be used in any number of ways, the shear variety of sounds and sites of performance preclude easy generalization. Early American music constructed a momentary community of listeners who could create or transcend the young nation’s refashioning social order.ĭescribing this world of early American music challenges any historian precisely because of music’s ubiquitous presence in the lives of all Americans. During an era before recording devices, the ephemeral life of sound resonated solely around those who made it. Music filled an important social niche in the publically lived do-it-yourself world of early America. In an age before broadly accessible commercial entertainment, where one’s routine labors begged for distracting relief, song and dance enlivened life’s tedium.

During the earliest decades of the nation, virtually everyone heard, made, and moved to music. Courtesy Library of Congress Music in the Early American Republic Ann OstendorfĮarly American ears pulsed, lips hummed, and feet shuffled to the multitude of sounds infusing life’s rhythms.

American demons song