UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
"AMERICAN VERNACULAR MUSIC"
MUL 2930 (Spring 2004)
Instructor: Scott Warfield

Class Meetings: TU-TH 10:30 -11:45 am
Location: Colbourn Hall 207e

This web page and its associated links serves as a communications site for MUL 2930 at the University of Central Florida. Posted here are various information pages, assignments, study guides, and links to useful web sites. Students in MUL 2930 are free to print any of these pages for their own use in the course.

Syllabus- Overview of the course, grading policies, etc.

Daily Assignments - A complete list of all specific assignments in chronological order

Instruction Sheets for MUL 2930 out-of-class projects & other assignments

Review Sheets

Useful Supplementary Study Guides

Supplemental and Reserve Items

A list of items used in class and now in the UCF Library for use as supplemental materials.

Web Site for Listen, Fourth Edition

This Publisher-maintained Web site is designed "to help students review key concepts from the textbook through interactive exercises and learning tools. Resources are organized by chapter of the textbook and by content type."

The Enjoyment of Music

A website maintained by W.W. Norton, the publishers of The Enjoyment of Music, to supplement another well known music appreciation textbook. These web pages may provide useful alternative approaches to various concepts and ideas covered in class.

Useful Web Sites for Music

General Music Research Pages

"DW3"

The Classical Music Reference Web Page at Duke University's Music Library. This web site is one of the most extensive such resources in the U.S.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians II

The online version of the most comprehensive music encyclopedia in the world. Only on-campus users and those with a UCF ISP may access it via this link. The 29-volume "hard copy" edition of the NGD 2 is located in the Reference section of UCF Library under the call number: ML100 .N48 2001.

AMG All Music Guide

A web site has a series of web pages for information on nearly every type of music. These include basic biographical and historical information about various performers, as well as general introductions to various styles, and web links to commercial sites for purchasing CDs.

American Music Research Pages

The Society for American Music (formerly "The Sonneck Society")

"Founded in honor of Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, The Society for American Music, a non-profit scholarly and educational organization, seeks to stimulate the appreciation, performance, creation, and study of American music in all its historical and contemporary styles and contexts."

American Music Resource

"AMR is a multi-dimensional source of reference information about all styles of music indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. It is intended to serve efficiently and quickly: text-only. The collection houses over 800 bibliographies, lists and files, and is indexed below by TOPIC (genre and style subdivisions) and SUBJECT (individuals - mostly composers). Some listings also include links to selected Internet resources, as does the NETOGRAPHY."

John Jacob Niles Center for American Music (University of Kentucky)

"The John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, a collaborative effort between the University of Kentucky School of Music, College of Fine Arts, and the University Libraries, is named for Kentucky musician John Jacob Niles. It seeks to provide a comprehensive focus for the research and performance of American music, embracing both vernacular and cultivated aspects of the field, from the early Colonial period through the present, with special emphasis on the indigenous culture of the southeastern United States. The Center's mission is both archival and programmatic. It serves as a repository for primary and secondary research materials and it actively supports the dissemination of scholarly research in American Music."

New World Records - the Recorded Anthology of American Music

"Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975. It is dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies. . . . The company was founded with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation with a mandate to produce a 100-disc anthology of American music encompassing the broadest possible spectrum of musical genres. This set of recordings, together with their extensive liner notes, provides a core curriculum in American music and American studies."

The outstanding and extensive scholarship that accompanies each recording is available on-line through a link at the bottom of the menu to the left on the NWR home page.

Specialized American Music Content Pages


(including many with sound files)

American Memory (Library of Congress)

"American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections." Some noteworthy music pages on this site include:

Psalmody, Shape Note and Related Types of Music

Centre College Exhibition of Music Printing

In 1999, Centre College's Doherty Library exhibted some rare music items from its collection. These include seven early American tunebooks from about 1803-1855. Follow the link to the "List of Books" and then click the name of the compiler/editor for a facsimile and additional information on each item.

Fasola Home Page (Shape Notes)

"This site is a starting point to help you find information related to the tradition of Shape Note or Sacred Harp singing. While most of these materials relate to the largest surviving branch of this tradition, The Sacred Harp, we also include information about New Harp of Columbia, Southern Harmony, Christian Harmony, Harmonia Sacra traditions, as well as the West Gallery tradition from the British Isles."

Broadside Ballads

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads

The Bodleian Library of England's Oxford University holds over 30,000 ballads from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community. Although this collection consists primarily of items from the British Isles, there are some American Broadsides, which can best be found by browsing for the names of larger American cities.

University of Glasgow Broadside Ballads

Digitised examples of broadside ballads from 19th-century Scotland. The University also has a small collection of broadsides and similar documents related to crime and punishment.

Glasgow Broadside Ballads (Murray Collection)

A collection of broadsides associated specifically with Glasgow. Use the index to locate images.

Folk and Traditional Music

The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection (Southwest Missouri State University)

"The Max Hunter Collection is an archive of almost 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs, recorded between 1956 and 1976." The archive includes numerous sets of variant performances, many with complete texts and sound files.

Sheet Music and Parlor Songs

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music (Johns Hopkins University)

"The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music is part of Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University. It contains over 29,000 pieces of music and focuses on popular American music spanning the period 1780 to 1960."

Stephen Foster

The PBS website for the film, Stephen Foster, in The American Experience Series. Includes background information on Foster, images, sound files, and a transcription of the film's entire narration.

African-American Music

AFRICAN MUSIC

Dancedrummer

An excellent web site devoted to the teaching of West African drumming styles. Includes excellent links to the use of music in Anlo-Ewe Culture, an explanation of the traditional rhythms used in Ewe drumming (click on the individual instruments to hear examples), and a "virtual drum museum" (choose an instrument and then click on the command to the left for an explanation of its playing technique and function in the ensemble).

African Music Encyclopedia

A general reference website devoted to African music (with an emphasis on current popular styles).

Cora Connection

A website devoted to the West African stringed instrument used by Mali Griots (storytellers) and others.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC

Important Dates in African-American History

George W. Cable, "Creole Slave Dances: The Dance in Place Congo"

Published in The Century (Vol. 31, Nr. 4 [February 1886] pp. 517-532), one of America's most widely read, general circulation publications in the nineteenth century.

Cable's article is one of the most important descriptions of pre-Civil War slave music-making and dancing in New Orleans' "Place Congo." The original article has been digitized and is available at this link through Cornell University's "Making of America", a "digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction." Simply click on the page numbers to view the scanned article.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Negro Spirituals" (1867)

Published in the Atlantic Monthly (Vol. 19, Nr. 116 [June 1867] pp. 685-694), another widely read American periodical of the nineteenth century.

One of the first descriptions of spirituals published after the Civil War. Higginson was a colonel and commander of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment of freed blacks who fought for the Union in the Civil War. This version of the Higginson's article is part of the University of Virginia's American Studies' Hypertexts. Another copy of this article is also available (without the soundfiles and other supporting documents) in Cornell University's "Making of America" digital library.

Slave Songs of the United States (1867)

An electronic edition of the first publication of black spirituals in the post-Civil War era. The site, established and maintained by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Documenting the American South project includes the entire text, along with scanned facsimiles of the music texts from the original volume.

Fisk Jubilee Singers

Home page of the Original "Jubilee Singers" at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the very first of the "Freedman's Schools. Use the menu at the left to access additional information about the singers and their history, and some sound files of their recordings.

Jubilee Singers

The PBS website for the film, Jubilee Singers, Sacrifice and Glory, in The American Experience Series. Includes background information on the principle characters, and a transcription of the narration.

negrospirituals.com

A web site with general information and background on sprituals.

Minstrelsy

Blackface Minstrelsy 1830-1852

A web site maintained at the University of Virginia that includes a Gallery of Images, sound files of Minstrel Songs, Minstrel Texts, Contemporary Notices & Reviews, Contemporary Articles & Essays, Newspaper Advertisements, and more.

The Minstrel Show (U of Stuttgart)

"The following pages were originally written [in English] attending a class on the American Drama of the nineteenth century at the University of Stuttgart, Germany." [author: Jochen Scheytt] Includes many images and several introductory essays.

The Minstrel Show (George Mason U)

A series of three pages with images of minstrelsy and supporting text. [Click the red title near the top of the page to move to the next page.]

Blackface Minstrelsy

A web site that includes "two typical 'Ethiopian dialogues,' both taken from a 19th-century text called Minstrel Gags and End Men's Hand-Book (New York: n.d., Dick & Fitzgerald, Publishers)"

"Mark Twain and Minstrelsy"

A reproduction of an advertisement for a minstrel show and a review of another minstrel show.

Band Music (19th Century)

Old Towne Brass

Old Towne Brass is a modern ensemble, based in Huntsville, Alabama, that performs nineteenth-century band music, primarily of the Civil War era. Note especialy the links at the left of their page to photographs of both original and reproduction brass instruments, and drums, and also pictures of the band in performance.

Vinatieri Archive (University of South Dakota)

A web page devoted to Felix Vinatieri (1834-1891), an Italian immigrant trumpet player who served as bandmaster for George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Dakota Territory. Vinatieri's music manuscripts and other documents form the basis of an important collection of post-Civil War brass band music, which is now held by the University of South Dakota.

John Philip Sousa

A web site devoted to the most famous and influential band composer and conductor in American History. Includes many photographs of Sousa's band and sound clips of his marches.

Willow Grove Park

Willow Grove Park, just outside of Philadelphia, PA, was famous for its summer band concerts by the best touring American bands. This site offers a detailed record of what it was like to hear Sousa's band and others about a century ago.

Blues

The Blue Highway

A web site that includes a general history of the blues, biographical information on important blues performers, and information on current blues performers, recordings, etc.

Blues Lyrics Online

A fairly extensive list of transcribed lyrics from a variety of famous and not-so-famous blues performers.

Living Blues Magazine

The web site of Living Blues, a magzaine published by the University of Mississippi. Use the "Blues Online" link to access other web resources on the blues.

"How to Sing the Blues"

A practical guide for anyone who wants to be a Blues singer.

Ragtime

Ragtime (WNUR-FM)

The "Ragtime" page and links from the History of Jazz Website sponsored by Northwestern University's WNUR-FM radio station.

The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation

The official website of a foundation devoted to the most famous Ragtime composer.

Jazz

The Styles of Jazz "Map"

A set of parallel timelines that shows the various sub-genres of jazz and their interelationships. Many of the indicated sub-genres have active links to web pages with additional information.

The Red Hot Jazz Archive

The Red Hot Jazz Archive is an outstanding web site devoted to the early history of jazz and related styles, and contains biographical and historical information about numerous major and minor figures from the years 1895-1930. There are many sound files of complete recordings by legendary jazz figures, whose recordings are not always easily available elsewhere.

Country Music

Country Music Hall of Fame

Web site of the Nashville museum devoted to country music. Click on "Hall of Famers" to access biographies and other information about the genre's greatest performers. There are links to many other sorts of pages, also.

The Grand Ole Opry

Home page of country music's weekly radio program (and the longest continuously running radio program in the world), with links to broadcast information, the history of the Opry, and much more.

Hank Williams, Sr. (Official Site)

One of many web sites devoted to the performer many consider the greatest male country singer. The site includes a biography and other basic information, as well as links to other Hank Williams web sites.

"A Tribute to Patsy Cline"

A well-made fan's page with extensive information about the performer considered to be country music's greatest female singer.

Gospel

The Gospel Music Association

The home page of the leading professional association for contemporary Christian music (both White and Black). There are links to a variety of resources, including the GMA Hall of Fame.

Rock 'n Roll

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Home web page of the Cleveland, Ohio, museum devoted to Rock 'n Roll. Lots of information on the history of the most popular form of American music in the last fifty years.