Real country music DOES NOT have drums in it.

American country music is made with instruments found in the country, traditionally the fiddle and guitar. To the extent other instruments are used, the music has left its roots, and has become "pop" or "dance" music.

Discuss.

i wouldn't call country "dance music" at all, I call country "crap music"

People dance around a huge dance floor, and the drummer whacks the snare all night long so they can step their steps. But it's once removed from back-porch country music.

Loretta Lynn's new stuff certainly has drums. Ok, maybe Faith Hill-style stuff is more towards pop, but I don't think it would be right not to allow a genre some evolution. It becomes obsolete.

We all have our own opinions, and country is just one of MANY genres I like.

If that's not country...

Drums means something to bang on, more common than a banjo.

--IMM

:hi:

But that would be "Western Swing," right? Certainly within most people's definition of country, but not the authentic roots music. It had come to town.

Not what the Monroe boys intended, but that sure is country. I love a good pedal steel.

BTW, I'm from NYC and I have no business telling anybody what country is, I just remember the old "boppers" vs. "moldy figs" arguments about what is jazz.

--IMM

"country" music, or whatever we would call it. I don't know if the steel guitar on the Hank Williams recordings had pedals or not, but it was amplified. The modern pedal steel can do lots of crazy things, especially with electronic signal processing.

Country....rock...R&B...

The commercially successful "artists" more or less present shiny product that's vaguely familiar and easy to listen to, covered with treacle-like production values. There's no authenticity to any of it.

with drums, we would have to look at something with African roots, such as jazz, Cuban or South American music. Irish folk forms have the bodhran, but curiously it didn't translate into American country music. The drums came into country when the dance halls were in flower.

The, I guess it was referred to as "Hilly Billy" music, was derived from Irish folk, and even older ballads.

I was lamenting the other day how rock has lost any semblance of authenticity. In reality, it was a type of folk music. It was a blend of country, blues, cajun, and all kinds of other styles, but I can't hear any of it any more.

I think somewhere along the way it became a distorted combination of "popular" muzak and stuff people made when they tried to make high "art" out of it.

In many ways...Particularly bluegrass. Look at the recent success of Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, the popularity of O'Brother Where Art Thou, Allison Kraus, etc.

But, I agree...Much of it is just pop nowadays.

became more edgy and challenging. Just merge the blandest aspects of country music into a pop format, and you've got an unlimited market of vaguely racist white people with a nostalgia for an agrarian America of their imagination.

that music. It's so awesome.

If you love that soundtrack, check out this band:
Reeltime Travelers (http://www.reeltimetravelers.com)

I saw them open for Ralph Stanley (he is on the O'Brother soundtrack "O Death") about a month ago. Amazing!

Another fun old time band is "High on the Hog" from Colorado.

This type of music just naturally haunts me somehow. My mom's family is from the Tennesee hills so I figure that's why :)

I agree, it just sets something off in me. I want to get up and start "clogging" or something.

We've been in the south so long it must be imprinted on our DNA by now, in my family...

use drums.. bodhrans and others.. But for whatever reason, bodhrans, pipes, and whistles fell by the wayside as the Scots and Irish came over here. They picked up banjos and other instruments in their place.. even washtubs and brownstone jugs. And I say, hey, it's all to the good. Make music on whatever is handy. :)

Go one just say it....what you WANNA say is "Jungle music" you biggoted bastard!

;-)

Is that considered drums?

--IMM

For some reason, drums were never a white folk instrument in early America, but bones and spoons were used for persussion.

The "Swinette" is a traditional instrument invented at the turn of the century,

by poor southern farmers who could not afford musical instruments.

You simply stretch two horse hairs across a hog's ass and pick it with your teeth!

http://www.markfair.com/wanted.html

I believe they used drums.

Today's "country" is just bad pop. It totally sucks. Give me some old country or bluegrass ANY day of the week.

Drums are common instruments, easy to make. 'Real' country music might have them.

However, instruments that plug into the wall... electric guitars, bass, pianos, accordians, pipe organs... are not part of 'real' country music.

introduced at the Grand Ole Opry, just as when drums were first used. "Real" country music could have used drums, but I believe that drums were seen by the early Appalachian creators of this music as a "foreign" or maybe "African" thing. They even stayed away from the Irish drum.

on some of the Sun Records recordings he made?

from the country music "biz," although many people think of him as country.

He married into the Carter Family for cryin' out loud!

Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley who recorded in Memphis. I'll bet the Carters thought of themselves just as singers, not country musicians.

In fact they were responsible for saving a lot of the old songs from extinction.

The No drums rule was always an artificial imposition Nashville made on country music. Even they gave it up eventually.

that Nashville was trying to maintain the purity of the music by banning drums. Nowadays, they literally couldn't survive without the drum set, because pop music demands it.

recall if the Cape Breton fiddle music or the other Canadian folk traditions used drums, but I think not. I'm sure the native people of what is now Canada must have had skin drums, just as the US Indians did.

at work this guy was playing this really old country music. After about two hours I was like "play something with some tanjed drums in it!" But I always try to ask, from people who say they either hate or love country music - what makes music "country"? And I have never gotten a good answer.

For example THIS is country :-).

keymaker

playing a very simple back-beat with a brush on a snare. And with a 4/4 walking bass for the dance floor. This was 1961, the golden age of country dance halls. "Country and Western" was the official title of the genre, and I suggest that it's about as much drums as could legitimately fit into that category.

I've just played 'Move It On Over' (1947) by Hank Williams which has a similar effect. BBC Radio recently http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/r4musicdoc">broadcast an interesting analysis of Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock" in which they concluded that it was more or less a copy of 'Move It On Over" and that therefore the Rock'n'Roll revolution was really attributable to Hank Williams!

keymaker.

Generally speaking, it also doesn't have brass--though one glaring exception is Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."

Country music is about anyone playing along with anything they happen to have. If you happen to have had a drum, then you were more than welcome to play alone.

*

music. IMHO.

If the latter, I'd agree with you.

Country is only partly determined by its instruments, there is also the form, "white man's blues," which plays a far larger role in determining what makes country.

Folk music, on the other hand, is not likely to have drums, not the Ludwig variety anyway.

some good discussion out of it. I think the evolution of "country" music, whatever that may mean, has much to do with the idea of stars, fans, and hit records: in short, pop. Country music is tailor-made for popularity, because it's a simple form that doesn't demand much from the listener and offers limitless stories about people's lives. Folk music fits the same criteria, but the difference seems to be that folk music hews to its roots and almost purposely avoids popularization. Another key element is dancing, I think. American folk music has little to do with dancing, except for quaint sorts of square and round dances found in limited communities, while "country" music is cranked out for nightclubs throughout the Heartland.

In any case, I agree with the posters who wrote that modern "country" music in nothing more than the blandest pop product for the masses. There's almost no real artistry in it, in my view.

American folk music, in its most popular form, has gotten away from that and it's kind of a shame. The aspect that it was something that was a part of people's everyday lives and celebrations was what made it 'folk' in the first place. The communal aspect was important.

Only the real ol' time mountain music did not use a drum. Thats mostly 'cause we made do with a jug or washtub bass when needed. Drums at that time were to hard for a hillbilly to come by, and/or pack around to dances.

In that time the instruments mostly used were banjo, mandolin, auto harp, harmonica, jews harp, dulcimer, guitar, and of course the Tennessee chicken or fiddle if you will.

For those interested you can go here and find some great ol' time music. This is original stuff from the 20's and is the exact music Oh' Brother was trying to emulate. Theres also some blues and a bit of jazz and modern acoustic mixed in, but theres some awesome stuff non the less.

In this list you will find the original recording of Cripple Creek known as Shootin' Creek, the original recording of the ballad Pretty Polly, and Jolie Blon, or Green Back Dollar known as Dark Hollar.

Check them out it's free legal downloads as the music is all public domain. I highly recommend it.>

http://www.archive.org/audio/audiolisting-browse.php?cat=174&PHPSESSID=86918d17d5a0c24c0b76a317379c3e13

Signed to Sun as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, their first single, "Cry, Cry, Cry," became a moderate country hit. After the two sided smash "So Doggone Lonesome" b/w "Folsom Prison Blues," the group had their first major pop/country hit with Cash's own "I Walk the Line" in 1956. The group appeared on the Louisiana Hayride in December 1955, becoming regulars, before graduating to the Grand Ole Opry in July 1956. They subsequently achieved major pop/top country hits with "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and "Guess Things Happen That Way" in 1958. That year the group became Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three with the addition of W.S. Holland, one of country music's first drummers.

http://www.history-of-rock.com/johnny_cash.htm

RL