Cultural and Artistic Plurality in America

"I like to be in America," from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is a picture perfect synthesis of cultural and artistic plurality in America.  The composition style used in the film score for this song is reminiscent of both the Spanish Pasadoble and American Jazz.  Syncopation is the rule rather than the exception with it's compound meter wavering back and forth between a solid two and three beat rhythm.  Bernstein has fused the styles together in a very modern way that seems to communicate the tension of the racial conflicts and cultural identity crisis experienced in America at the time.  People just didn't know where they fit in and some people weren't sure these foreigners should fit at all into the American panorama.

The dancing accompanying this number fits into the time period when dance in Hollywood was still an experimental element of film.  While the overall dancing is quite well pulled off, it's certainly not something you would see in a music video today. The precision between dancers is rough and individualized, however revolutionary for the realm of musical film in the 50's.  Highly suggestive of classical dance technique this choreography blends flamingo/Pasadoble dancing with pirouettes and leaps accompanied by sharp hands and heels.

Humanistically West Side Story is a masterpiece interpreting in a variety of ways the confusion and racial tension of the 50's.  It is the definition of syncretism because it melds several different cultural artistic styles together that revolutionized score composition and theatrical dancing on Broadway.  However, it was not the last drama to be packed with heavy handed social and political statements regarding tolerance and immigration.

Icon in American Music

George Gershwin was not your traditional Julliard School of Music snob that grew up hearing music in the professional world his whole life and then because of his family’s money made it big time.  He came from a family of Russian immigrant Jews. 

He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he heard a friend’s violin recital. George went home and on the family piano, purchased for the instruction of his older brother, began to play.  His instructors guided him to attend orchestral concerts. After attending he would go home and attempt to re-create the music he had just heard on the piano.  He studied classical composition technique and method with Rubin Goldmark, avant-garde composer theorist.

George got his start in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley earning $15 a week.  He published his first song, When you want ‘em you can’t get ‘em, When you’ve got ‘em, you don’t want ‘em at the age of 17. From there he went on to compose hit singles, one-act operas, and classic Broadway music that has become part of the American songbook.

George Gershwin has significantly contributed to the style and identity of American Jazz.  He has been considered one of the great names in American music.  The verity of this assertion is evidenced by the fact that even today youth around the country can recognize his work.  Gershwin’s signature has become part of the cultural consciousness in listeners, performers, and composers alike.

The song, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, from Broadway Musical Crazy for You, is characteristic of Gershwin’s style.  It provides a loose framework of basic chords within the harmonic structure of the song, leaving wide license for improvisation on the part of the singer and instrumentalist.  Such music paints a very soft picture that is both alluring and relaxing to the listener.  It plays on the deepest sentiments of American culture about romance, industry, and innovation.

I chose this artist because I find his music to be a great description of American identity.  He captures the feeling of both modernism and postmodernism in that his compositional style conforms to the conventions of academic and classic jazz while at the same time synthesizing the two styles to generate something entirely new, but familiar.  In my opinion Gershwin is the beginning of the uniquely American musical identity.

In trying to replicate his style and get a feel for the music I experienced two things.  The first was that the improvisatory methods that Gershwin intends in his music are very difficult to imitate.  Second was that the music felt very natural to me, almost like the rhythm was part of me, instead of something I had to learn. Further evidence of the place Gershwin holds in American cultural identiy.

Amerian Music

Adagio for Strings – Samuel Barber

I had never heard Baber’s Adagio.  It would be an understatement to say that the piece was extremely moving to me.  Barber has captured the very essence of sorrow.  The music in a very real way gets into your soul and sweeps you up into the long bow strokes of the strings.  It’s as if the music pulls you a long with it.

Sorrow in and of itself doesn’t really go anywhere it intensifies and it gives way.  That is precisely what Barber has accomplished in Adagio for Strings.  The meticulously composed harmonies are hauntingly beautiful, but simplistically repetitive.  Like sorrow, it harmonically stays in one place but pulls at every part of your heart.  The composition calls for parallel motion as the violins move up the cellos move down pulling apart until they relinquish into a compelling melodic unity. A continuous minor rise and fall occasionally giving way to a major resolution.

The commentary throughout the piece did not provide much insight into the foundation of the piece. It really just got in the way. In so many ways this piece of music has to be experienced, it can’t really be explained.  That is precisely what the commentators were attempting to do, explain the power of the music through their personal experience with it.  The chilling dissonance and moving line really say it all.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

Gershwin’s Rhapsody is an American Icon.  It is a brilliant meditation on American ingenuity and vitality.  Gershwin has captured the bravura and idiosyncrasy of being American.  Rhapsody in Blue has condensed the life of an average American in the 1920’s into a matter of minutes.  It tells of the grand moments of triumph in one’s life and the quiet moments of reflection.

The recurring motif’s and random connections between theme’s reflect so much of the American personality.  America is a melting pot of traditions and ideas and that is precisely what Gershwin has shown in his composition.  He has synthesized Academic Jazz, Classical convention, African blues, and Latin rhythms into a masterpiece of plurality that is uniquely its own.

The background information in the audio clip was extremely helpful in putting this work into context.  I thought it did a great job at explaining not only the musical ingenuity and nuance of this work, but why it was important for the time it came from.  The fact that is was written in three weeks is merely a testament to the brilliance of the composer.  Rhapsody in Blue through its vitality and composition effectively paints an accurate picture of what America was what when it was written and what it remains today.

 

His Eye is on the Sparrow – Mahalia Jackson

This song really reflects American spirituality.  While there is a rich diversity of religious belief across the 50 states, this song reflects the concept of a city on a hill that is uniquely a part of American identity.  We believe that God is intimately involved in our lives watching us individually and collectively as a people. 

Mahalia’s rich interpretation of this music is representative of the African community’s contribution to both American religious and musical experience.  The song seems to speak to social change in America both culturally and demographically, as African American’s became an important and prominent thread in the fabric of American society.  The fact that this song was so widely accepted among Americans is strong evidence to support how integrated the United States had become.