Playing music served to pass the time or relax

Can you think of a time in your life when singing or playing music served to pass the time or relax at the end of a long hard day as folk songs did for early Americans? Have you ever used music to help you pace yourself during a heavy workload as African American slaves did with field hollers and work songs?

Share some of these musical experiences with your classmates and give examples of what type of music was involved.

2. After listening to “Bess, You is My Woman Now” by George Gershwin, compare and contrast Gershwin’s treatment of black Americans with that of Stephen Foster and the minstrel shows.

What do you personally think about these treatments? What role did racial tension play in the development of the music entertainment industry in the United States?

3. Jazz music was America’s most popular radio and dance club genre from the 1920s–40s. In the 1950s, its popularity began to dwindle, even though respect for the genre steadily grew.

Today, jazz music is considered to be the equal in artistry and complexity to classical music, and it has about the same relatively small number of devoted listeners. What do you think caused this shift in jazz from popular to art music?

4.  Do you agree with the following statement: “Many country songs express the inner conflict between pleasure-seeking and the pursuit of religious devotion or wanderlust and the security of home” (p. 175)? Why or why not?