Editing Folklore of the United States (section)

==Folk music==
{{Main|American folk music}}
Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributes to a melting pot. Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th-century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that.{{citation needed|date=January 2019}}

The earliest American scholars were with The American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. Lomax was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s.{{citation needed|date=January 2019}}

The [[American folk music revival]] was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like [[Burl Ives]], [[Woody Guthrie]], [[Lead Belly]], and [[Oscar Brand]] had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music.{{citation needed|date=January 2019}}

===African-American music===
Slavery was introduced to the [[Thirteen Colonies]] beginning in the early 17th century in [[Colony of Virginia|Virginia]]. The ancestors of today's African-American population were brought from hundreds of tribes across West Africa and brought with them certain traits of West African music. This included call and response vocals, complex rhythmic music, syncopated beats, shifting accents, incorporation of hums and moans, which are sounds with no distinct meaning, and a combination of sound and body movements. The African musical focus on rhythmic singing and dancing was brought to the New World, where it became part of a distinct folk culture that helped Africans "retain continuity with their past through music."{{citation needed|date=November 2021}} Along with retaining many African elements, there was also a continuation of instruments. Enslaved Africans would either take with them African instruments or reconstructed them once in the New World. The first slaves in the United States sang work songs and field hollers. However, slave music was used for a variety of reasons. Music was included in religious ceremonies and celebrations, used to coordinate work, and to conceal hidden messages, like when they were commenting on slave owners. African American slave songs can be divided into three groups: religious, work, and recreational songs.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bronner|first=Simon J.|date=2017-03-29|title=Folklore in the United States|url=https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-88|access-date=2021-02-23|website=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature|language=en|doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.88|isbn=978-0-19-020109-8}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Roots of African American Music|url=https://music.si.edu/spotlight/african-american-music/roots-of-african-american-music|access-date=2021-02-23|website=Smithsonian Music|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Digital History|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=6|access-date=2021-04-07|website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu}}</ref>

====Spirituals====
Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became a feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the South. Most slaves were typically [[animist]]s or were a part of some other form of African Religion. To destroy any remnants of African culture or make more people disciples, slaves would be encouraged and taken to church. They became attracted to the grace and freedom that was preached within the church, which was very different from the lives they were living. Slaves would learn the same hymns that their masters sang, and when they came together they developed and sang adapted versions of these hymns, they were called [[Negro spirituals]]. It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs, and field hollers, that blues, jazz, and gospel developed. Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. These songs provided them a voice for their longing for freedom and to experience it. Around the 1840s, slaves knew that in the northern states, slavery was illegal, and some northerners wanted the complete abolishment of slavery. So when they sang about heaven, it was also about possibly escaping north. In the early 19th century the Underground Railroad was developed, containing a network of secret routes and safe houses, and it greatly impacted slaves' religious music. When there was any mention of trains, stations, etc. in spirituals they were directly referencing the Underground Railroad, such as the song "[[Swing Low, Sweet Chariot]]". These songs were designed so that slave owners thought that slaves were only singing about heaven.<ref>{{cite web |title=African American Spirituals |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197495/ |website=The Library of Congress |access-date=25 June 2020}}</ref><ref name="Guion">{{Cite web|last=Guion|first=David|date=2012-06-25|title=Slave music and the Civil War|url=https://music.allpurposeguru.com/2012/06/slave-music-and-the-civil-war/|access-date=2021-04-07|website=Musicology for Everyone|language=en-US}}</ref>

====Work songs====

Work Songs at least had two functions: one to benefit the slaves and another to benefit overseers. When a group of slaves had to work together on a hard task, like carrying a heavy load, singing would provide a rhythm that allowed them to coordinate their movements. When picking crops, music was not necessary, but when there was silence it would be uncomfortable for the overseers. Even though there was a presence of melancholy in songs, Southern slave owners would interpret that their slaves were happy and content, possibly because of their singing.<ref name="Guion"/>

====Recreational songs====

Even if slave owners attempted to forbid things like drums or remnants of African culture, they did not seem to mind them learning European instruments and music. In some cases, black string players would be invited to play to entertain white audiences. Between the week of Christmas and New Years’, owners would give their slaves a holiday. This provided a chance for slave families who had different masters to come together, otherwise, they would not go anywhere. Some slaves would craft items, but masters detested industrious slaves. So most slaves would spend their recreational time doing other things, like dancing and singing. Masters approved of such activities, but they may not have listened carefully to the songs that were performed.<ref name="Guion"/>

===Folk songs===
The original Thirteen Colonies of the United States were all former [[British possessions]], and [[English culture]] became a major foundation for American folk and popular music. Many American folk songs are identical to British songs in arrangements, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. Anglo-American traditional music also includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks and murder.<ref>Kip Lornell, ''Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States'' (Oxford MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2012), 82-117. {{ISBN|1617032662}}; and Duncan Emrich, ed., ''Anglo-American Songs and Ballads'' (Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1947); available online at https://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/AFS_L12.pdf
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Folk songs may be classified by subject matter, such as: [[drinking songs]], [[sporting song]]s, train songs, [[work song]]s, [[war songs]], and [[ballad]]s.
* [[The Star-Spangled Banner]]'s tune was adapted from an old English drinking song by John Stafford Smith called "To Anacreon in Heaven."
* "[[The Ballad of Casey Jones]]" is a traditional song about railroad engineer Casey Jones and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line, and how Jones remained on board to try to stop the train as Webb jumped to safety.
* "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" (sometimes "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again") is a popular song of the American Civil War that expressed people's longing for the return of their friends and relatives who were fighting in the war. The Irish anti-war song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" share the same melodic material. Based on internal textual references, "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" apparently dates from the early 1820s, while When Johnny Comes Marching Home was first published in 1863. "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" is a popular traditional Irish anti-war and anti-recruiting song. It is generally dated to the early 19th century, when soldiers from Athy, County Kildare served the British East India Company.
* "[[Oh My Darling, Clementine]]" (1884) is an American western folk ballad believed to have been based on another song called Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden (1863). The words are those of a bereaved lover singing about his darling, the daughter of a miner in the 1849 California Gold Rush. He loses her in a drowning accident. The song plays during the opening credits for the highly acclaimed [[John Ford]] movie "[[My Darling Clementine]]". It also runs as a background score all through the movie.
* "[[The Yellow Rose of Texas (song)|The Yellow Rose of Texas]]" is a traditional folk song. The original love song has become associated with the legend that Emily D. West, a biracial indentured servant, "helped win the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution".
* "[[Take Me Out to the Ball Game]]" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game prior to writing the song. The song is traditionally sung during the seventh-inning stretch of a baseball game. Fans are generally encouraged to sing along.

Other American folksongs include: "[[She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain]]", "[[Skewball]]", "[[Big Bad John]]", "[[Stagger Lee (song)|Stagger Lee]]", "[[Camptown Races]]" and "[[The Battle Hymn of the Republic]]".

===Sea shanties===
{{Main|Sea shanty}}
Work songs sung by sailors between the 18th and 20th centuries are known as sea shanties. The shanty was a distinct type of work song, developed especially in American-style merchant vessels that had come to prominence in decades prior to the American Civil War. These songs were typically performed while adjusting the rigging, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the 19th century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together.<ref>{{Citation|title=Early Naval Ballads of England (1841)|date=2019-06-11|url=https://archive.org/details/earlynavalballa00hallgoog|publisher=Printed for the Percy society by C. Richards}}</ref>

They were notably influenced by songs of African Americans, such as those sung whilst manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of the southern United States. The work contexts in which African-Americans sang songs comparable to shanties included: boat-rowing on rivers of the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean; the work of stokers or "firemen", who cast wood into the furnaces of steamboats plying great American rivers;and stevedoring on the U.S. eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean—including "cotton-screwing": the loading of ships with cotton in ports of the American South. During the first half of the 19th century, some of the songs African Americans sang also began to appear in use for shipboard tasks, i.e. as shanties.

Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail.

"Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea chanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad. There are numerous titles of the song including, "Pat Works on the Railway" and "Paddy on the Railway". "Paddy Works on the Erie" is another version of the song. "Paddy on the Railway" is attested as a chanty in the earliest known published work to use the word "chanty", G. E. Clark's ''Seven Years of a Sailor's Life'' (1867). Clark recounted experiences fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out of Provincetown, Mass. c. 1865–66. At one point, the crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-style windlass. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway."

===Shaker music===
{{Shaker music}}
The [[Shakers]] are a religious sect founded in 18th-century England upon the teachings of [[Ann Lee]]. Shakers today are most known for their cultural contributions, especially style of music and furniture. The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services. In Shaker society, a [[Era of Manifestations|spiritual "gift"]] could also be a musical revelation, and they considered it important to record musical inspirations as they occurred. "[[Simple Gifts]]" was composed by Elder [[Joseph Brackett]] and originated in the [[Alfred Shaker Historic District|Alfred Shaker community]] in Maine in 1848. [[Aaron Copland]]'s iconic 1944 ballet score [[Appalachian Spring]], uses the now famous Shaker tune "Simple Gifts" as the basis of its finale.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pollack |first=Howard |title=Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |year=1999 |isbn=0-8050-4909-6 |location=New York, New York |pages=398–399}}</ref>