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Music History

Music History

Date: Sep 30 2002

Intro

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Music has been a part of people’s lives for all of time. Since the first human was able to tap her foot, music has been an important part of our existence. Tanis recently purchased a book about music’s role in United States history. It’s called the American Music Treasury and it documents the most important American songs of the past 500 years.
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Dialog

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Tanis

Tanis

Miguel

Miguel

Tanis:   Miguel, I’m so excited.

Miguel:   Why?

Tanis:   I, I got the coolest new music book.

Miguel:   What is it?

Tanis:   Well, it’s actually a book of American folk songs. I was really interested in, um, knowing some of the old songs from our, our country’s history. I like music like that. So, uh, I got this book so I that I could learn to play them on the piano and my husband could play them on the guitar.

Miguel:   That sounds sweet. So, it has, like the lyrics and the music and then, does it also give like historical background or something?

Tanis:   Yeah. That’s one of the neatest things about this book. It basically goes through, um, from, you know, the 1600’s on ‘til about, like, maybe the early 1900’s. And they have like the most popular song of, of each era, or later on, each year almost. But, um, you can really trace, like, the history of the country through the songs that were popular at the time.

Miguel:   So, give me an example. Like, what’s one of the songs you’ve learned so far?

Tanis:   Well, they have it kind of divided into different, uh, sections in American history. And one of them is, like, the, the section is all about the big wave of immigration that came to the country in the 1800’s. And so, there are all these Irish songs that were really popular, um, in the years following, like, the Potato Famine when we had so many Irish immigrants come over.

 

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Discussion

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – I LOVE MUSIC! I have to get this book. I’m really excited to learn more about music’s relationship to American history. After I read this book, I’m going to search for similar books about the music of other culture’s. It will be fun to compare, for example, the musical history of Japan and Zaire to the music of the U.S.
If you’re a serious music fan, I suggest you check out this book and others like it!
Rock on,
Migs

 

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