Best American music genre?

[saxitoxin]

Barbershop


Country


Jazz


Hip Hop

[KoolBak]

On this list, I easily vote country.

I believe, however, that we (USA) are credited with The Blues and its baby, Rock 'N Roll as well. Is there a reason these are excluded?

As an aside, the only musical instrument we are credited with I believe is the Banjo Go US!!

[saxitoxin]

On this list, I easily vote country.

I believe, however, that we (USA) are credited with The Blues and its baby, Rock 'N Roll as well. Is there a reason these are excluded?

Well, Blues is included under Jazz as a sub-genre and Rock is too internationalized now to make it to the list.

As an aside, the only musical instrument we are credited with I believe is the Banjo Go US!!

SOUSAPHONE!



CALLIOPE!

[KoolBak]

Blues was around before jazz, I do believe, and is a completely different animal. Agree to disagree.

Country is not too internationalized (or whatever adjective you used) but rock is? I guess we arent discussing american invented genres....I get it now.

So....Country. Barbershop gargles tarter sauce (Sorry Tzorro...just jokin)

[Dukasaur]

It's difficult to say anything bad after listening to one of John Denver's incredible vocals, but honestly "Americana" isn't a distinct genre of music. It's folk and folk-rock, and except for the language and lyrical content is fundamentally the same as German and Czech and Norwegian and Australian folk and folk-rock.

[KoolBak]

Saxi....I hereby deduct 20 Saxi-Bux from your account for fonking this all up

(actually, that would make an excellent country song....)

[saxitoxin]

OK FINE

I've replaced Americana with Hip Hop

[saxitoxin]

Blues was around before jazz, I do believe, and is a completely different animal. Agree to disagree.

Well I thought it's like ...

1920s
Blues + Appalachian Folk = Country
Blues + Ragtime = Jazz

1950s
Country + Jazz = Rock

[riskllama]

no thrash and/or death metal genres? wtf, dude... .

[DoomYoshi]

Blues was around before jazz, I do believe, and is a completely different animal. Agree to disagree.

Well I thought it's like ...

1920s
Blues + Appalachian Folk = Country
Blues + Ragtime = Jazz

1950s
Country + Jazz = Rock

Maybe, I think the first Jazz came from Classical though. I think the first Jazz song was Rhapsody in Blue. Blues was a type of folk music totally distinct.

[saxitoxin]

Blues was around before jazz, I do believe, and is a completely different animal. Agree to disagree.

Well I thought it's like ...

1920s
Blues + Appalachian Folk = Country
Blues + Ragtime = Jazz

1950s
Country + Jazz = Rock

Maybe, I think the first Jazz came from Classical though. I think the first Jazz song was Rhapsody in Blue. Blues was a type of folk music totally distinct.

It was awhile ago, but IIRC from my American Popular Song class in my freshman year, slave work songs evolved into Blues after the Civil War when African-Americans got access to simple folk instruments. Ragtime was a dance hall, small ensemble version of the style of concert marches composed by John Philip Sousa that spontaneously cropped up in New Orleans in the late 19th century. Then Blues and Ragtime merged to form Jazz in the 1920s.

[tkr4lf]

I agree with the llama. Where's the metal?

I voted for hip hop on this crappy list, but would vote metal any day if it were properly included.

Shame.

[DoomYoshi]

Metal is British...

[KoolBak]

Sabbath definitely awarded as the birth of Metal. But we still own Rock as a whole

The Germans have us on Industrial Rock (which I dig).

I like this simple def of Blues / Jazz:

An an inside joke in the jazz & blues circles goes, "A blues guitarist plays 3 chords in front of thousands of people, and a jazz guitarist plays thousands of chords in front of 3 people."

The main focus of jazz music is the dynamics and improvisations of an ensemble, while blues music is usually centered on a single guitar player/vocalist, and the personal lyrical content of the song. Most jazz tunes are purely instrumental, while a blues song always contains lyrics.

Blues music was around before jazz, and can be considered an element of jazz music. However, jazz would not be considered a part of blues music per se.

Now....Saxi posted Hip Hop as an attempt to fine tune the thread. I'll allow a refund of 5 Saxi-Bux.

Not being a listener of that particular style, I was wondering what the difference is between Rap and Hip Hop. Both are credited to New York from the 70's. I found this and would be interested in others' interpretations:

The difference between rap and hip hop from a community message angle is the role of the music in the popular media. Rap is a tool used to express current events and to tell the stories of people within the local community. Hip hop music is used to express hope for the future and to remember the successes of the past.

Fun thread ;o)

[Dukasaur]

Sabbath definitely awarded as the birth of Metal. But we still own Rock as a whole

Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. The Holy Trinity of Heavy Metal are all British.

However, as a counterpoint, American bands like Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly are credited with helping bring about the birth of heavy metal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music#Etymology

The origin of the term "heavy metal" in a musical context is uncertain. The phrase has been used for centuries in chemistry and metallurgy, where the periodic table organizes elements of both light and heavy metals (e.g., uranium). An early use of the term in modern popular culture was by countercultural writer William S. Burroughs. His 1962 novel The Soft Machine includes a character known as "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs' next novel, Nova Express (1964), develops the theme, using heavy metal as a metaphor for addictive drugs: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music".[90] Inspired by Burroughs' novels,[91] the term was used in the title of the 1967 album Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, which has been claimed to be its first use in the context of music.[92] The phrase was later lifted by Sandy Pearlman, who used the term to describe The Byrds for their supposed "aluminium style of context and effect", particularly on their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968).[93]

Metal historian Ian Christe describes what the components of the term mean in "hippiespeak": "heavy" is roughly synonymous with "potent" or "profound," and "metal" designates a certain type of mood, grinding and weighted as with metal.[94] The word "heavy" in this sense was a basic element of beatnik and later countercultural hippie slang, and references to "heavy music"—typically slower, more amplified variations of standard pop fare—were already common by the mid-1960s, such as in reference to Vanilla Fudge. Iron Butterfly's debut album, released in early 1968, was titled Heavy. The first use of "heavy metal" in a song lyric is in reference to a motorcycle in the Steppenwolf song "Born to Be Wild", also released that year:[95] "I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder/Racin' with the wind/And the feelin' that I'm under."

The first documented use of the phrase to describe a type of rock music identified to date appears in a review by Barry Gifford. In the May 11, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone, he wrote about the album A Long Time Comin' by U.S. band Electric Flag: "Nobody who's been listening to Mike Bloomfield—either talking or playing—in the last few years could have expected this. This is the new soul music, the synthesis of white blues and heavy metal rock."[96] In January 1970 Lucian K. Truscott IV reviewing Led Zeppelin II for the Village Voice described the sound as "heavy" and made comparisons with Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge.[97]

Other early documented uses of the phrase are from reviews by critic Mike Saunders. In the November 12, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone, he commented on an album put out the previous year by the British band Humble Pie: "Safe as Yesterday Is, their first American release, proved that Humble Pie could be boring in lots of different ways. Here they were a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-leaden shit-rock band with the loud and noisy parts beyond doubt. There were a couple of nice songs ... and one monumental pile of refuse". He described the band's latest, self-titled release as "more of the same 27th-rate heavy metal crap".[98]

In a review of Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come in the May 1971 Creem, Saunders wrote, "Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book".[99] Creem critic Lester Bangs is credited with popularizing the term via his early 1970s essays on bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.[100] Through the decade, heavy metal was used by certain critics as a virtually automatic putdown. In 1979, lead New York Times popular music critic John Rockwell described what he called "heavy-metal rock" as "brutally aggressive music played mostly for minds clouded by drugs",[101] and, in a different article, as "a crude exaggeration of rock basics that appeals to white teenagers".[102]

Coined by Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, "downer rock" was one of the earliest terms used to describe this style of music and was applied to acts such as Sabbath and Bloodrock. Classic Rock magazine described the downer rock culture revolving around the use of Quaaludes and the drinking of wine.[103] Later the term would be replaced by "heavy metal".[104]

Earlier on, as "heavy metal" emerged partially from the heavy psychedelic rock scene, also known as acid rock, "acid rock" was often used interchangeably with "heavy metal" and "hard rock". Musicologist Steve Waksman stated that "the distinction between acid rock, hard rock, and heavy metal can at some point never be more than tenuous",[105] while percussionist John Beck defined "acid rock" as synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal.[106]

Apart from "acid rock", the terms "heavy metal" and "hard rock" have often been used interchangeably, particularly in discussing bands of the 1970s, a period when the terms were largely synonymous.[107] For example, the 1983 Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll includes this passage: "known for its aggressive blues-based hard-rock style, Aerosmith was the top American heavy-metal band of the mid-Seventies".[108]

[demonfork]

Post-hardcore

[Symmetry]

I only listen to North Dakota post-funk revivalist pop.

[riskllama]

Metal is British...

pretty sure thrash was birthed in the US, death metal certainly was...*shrugs*

[saxitoxin]

Metal is a Rock genre

[Symmetry]

Metal is British...

pretty sure thrash was birthed in the US, death metal certainly was...*shrugs*

All music is from the UK. Just not the bad stuff.

[tkr4lf]

Sabbath definitely awarded as the birth of Metal. But we still own Rock as a whole

Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. The Holy Trinity of Heavy Metal are all British.

Yeah I wouldn't consider any of those three to be metal. Maybe hard rock, but not metal. I get that back in the day they were considered metal, but most metal, at least the stuff I listen to, makes them sound like generic radio rock.

[riskllama]

hmm...i'd have to disagree on Sabbath not being metal, the other two i would not consider metal at all - hard rock, at best.

[Symmetry]

Sabbath definitely awarded as the birth of Metal. But we still own Rock as a whole

Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. The Holy Trinity of Heavy Metal are all British.

Yeah I wouldn't consider any of those three to be metal. Maybe hard rock, but not metal. I get that back in the day they were considered metal, but most metal, at least the stuff I listen to, makes them sound like generic radio rock.

Metal nowadays is kind of a joke to be fair. Old guys like Metallica who are a parody of themselves. New bands that seem like a parody of old bands. Bands that consider increasing the noise to be better that the last noisy band.

It's a fun genre to be in to, but people shouldn't pretend that it's anything but backwards looking at this point.

[riskllama]

agreed. i still love most of the stuff i grew up on, tho.

[DoomYoshi]

Sabbath definitely awarded as the birth of Metal. But we still own Rock as a whole

Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. The Holy Trinity of Heavy Metal are all British.

Yeah I wouldn't consider any of those three to be metal. Maybe hard rock, but not metal. I get that back in the day they were considered metal, but most metal, at least the stuff I listen to, makes them sound like generic radio rock.

Metal nowadays is kind of a joke to be fair. Old guys like Metallica who are a parody of themselves. New bands that seem like a parody of old bands. Bands that consider increasing the noise to be better that the last noisy band.

It's a fun genre to be in to, but people shouldn't pretend that it's anything but backwards looking at this point.

Folk metal is the only genre I still listen to, and even then much more rarely.