European American Musics in the Global Diaspora

Music is central to diasporic experience, creating an inextricable link between homeland and host land through sound. Its vast array of genres offers numerous methodological possibilities that challenge traditional approaches to diaspora studies.

Students will gain insight into Euro American Musics, an array of traditions brought over from Europe by European colonists. The collection will highlight piano music, songs, choral pieces and European composers.

European Instrumentation

European instruments and musical styles have made an enormous contribution to music across the world. Today’s global musical landscape often blends instruments originating from Europe with those derived from African or Indian sources.

During the Renaissance, wind instruments became closely associated with nobility. Palace inventories and pictorial records attest to an impressive collection of shawms and straight metal trumpets (buisines). Additionally, commoner groups like town pipers and choirs regularly utilized wind instruments in ceremonial settings.

European musicians began making more inroads into America during the 19th century as transport technologies improved, spreading their influence even more widely. Piano works and songs composed by prominent nineteenth-century composers whose editions could easily be published here proved particularly influential on audiences here; today these compositions continue to inspire students as part of American repertoires such as blues and jazz. Church hymns that borrowed heavily from European models also had an effect on later forms of American popular music like blues and jazz.

Military Drums

Before megaphones existed, the drum served as a vital means of communicating orders on the battlefield. Drum beats would signal retreats, advances at double quick pace and charging bayonets among other things.

Military side drums or snare drums are iconic instruments characterized by rope-tension hoops, wooden shells and animal skin heads – and typically used to beat with sticks.

Military corps typically feature snare drums as the core instrument; other key members include fifes, bass drums, cymbals and single tenor drums – usually led by a drum major.

Although most army bands no longer feature a corps of drummers, the Swedish Army still employs one in the Life Guards King’s Guard Battalion.

Interweaving of European and African Musical Styles

African music has long been an integral component of African culture, used both during rituals and to increase group participation. Furthermore, it serves to preserve tribal history, art, and philosophy.

As slaves were brought to America, their musical traditions from Africa were preserved as well as adding fluid vocal style and highly developed rhythm into European songs and instruments.

Manu Dibengo and Cesaria Evora were two artists renowned for blending different musical styles together into what has come to be known as Makossa and Morna genres of music.

Traditional African musical forms frequently employ call and response, polyrhythm and hocketing (the rapid alternation of short groups of notes between voices, instruments and timbres), in a conversational style which encourages audience participation; repetition serves as its organizing principle to build upon for improvisational elements.

American Composers

Symphonies were not particularly popular among colonists, yet light European music (such as medleys, potpourris, dances and quadrilles) as well as early American songs and choral pieces flourished greatly. Additionally, an entire class of composers made their living by transcribing European melodies for American singers and pianist players.

Some, like the tunesmiths of New England in the 1840s, established an independent style from Europe’s more acclaimed models; others (such as James Reese Europe) pioneered pre-jazz ragtime syncopated styles now widely revered.

Miklos Rozsa was one of the most versatile composers ever, earning Oscars for scores such as Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947) and Ben-Hur (1959). His film scores included Spellbound, A Double Life and Ben-Hur. He wrote across almost all genres imaginable – orchestral works to Broadway musicals; even setting three Walt Whitman poems to music (voice and piano works demonstrating both his European training as well as an American sensibility). Furthermore, his symphonies contain both conventional as well as non-conventional elements.