History of Contemporary Music and Culture 1

Course Description

This course is the first in a series of three that examines the history and culture of contemporary music in North America. This course surveys the roots and stylistic development of contemporary music from the mid-19th century to the early 1940s including minstrelsy, Anglo-Celtic and American folk music, African-American work songs and spirituals, Tin Pan Alley popular music, marches and the various ballroom dance crazes, ragtime and early jazz, the blues, hillbilly music, Broadway musicals and early sound film, gospel music, western swing, and big band swing.