Song Revival, ©2017 CW BAYER
What happened to American Song? Where did it go? How come nobody knows what it is anymore? Hardly anybody plays it? “Melody” is a lost idea? Music now has no lift or swing? Everything is serious and relevant and wordy and down? Where is the happiness and heart?
My American Song Revival compositions reflect my enjoyment of a form that once dominated the nation’s pop recording industry and that is now a curiosity except perhaps to a few hipyoung people and a host of aged retirees. With its equal mixture of British Isles (white) and African American (black) influences, the style tends to enjoy no cultural allegiance in an increasingly divided country.
That being said, this music strikes a nerve in anyone who hears it–summoning up deep associations with the roots of American culture and experience. It doesn’t require explanation to be enjoyed. Still, because the style is both endangered and, in many ways, undergoing a revival, some understanding of the history may help.
Between about 1914 and about 1944, “American” song writing often used a complex approach to harmony/chords and corresponding melody that built on the earlier, traditional style of melody by incorporating harmonic and melodic elements of ragtime and the blues. In its lyric, this style often continued a comic approach dating back to the 1840s or a sentimental approach whose roots were far older.
During the late 60s and early 70s, my generation spent much time listening to older musicians, believing that our parents’ generation–who were conducting a vicious and unnecessary war–had completely failed to keep alive traditional melody on traditional instruments like banjo and fiddle. As we did this, we tended to miss the fact that these old musicians–who had performed prior to WW2– played in both the traditional style and in the newer American style, using ragtime chord changes. For many of us, the “folk revival” tended to disfavor the complex or ragtime style of chord harmonic composition and emphasize the traditional melodies that predated about 1914.
We tended to then incorporate Celtic and British isles elements of traditional music–often losing altogether what–between the mid 1840s and 1960–had been a distinct if subtle difference between traditional American music and its British and Celtic roots. As a result, it is hard to call “traditional” song “American” anymore. Most people hear it as “Celtic”.
A great divide occurred in American society as a result of the Vietnam War. With some exceptions, my entire generation–the baby boomers–in rejected the sentimentality and humor of American popular music as it existed prior to 1960. And, arguably, after World War II, that form had already been in steady decline. By 1965, the folk music revival had begun to divide between the traditionalists who increasingly focused on the rich Celtic past and folk rock that quickly morphed into other kinds of rock music–always rough, strident and socially relevant.
There were always exceptions to this. My generation produced a number of musicians interested in the ragtime related chord based music that defined what became known as “The Great American Songbook”–the body of American popular song created between about 1914 and 1944. My own history with this style dates to the influence of my father and grandfather–Albert Bayer and Harry Bayer, both semi-professional crooners. Harry performed during the 20s in vaudeville-movie houses. As I listened to older musicians playing banjo, fiddle and guitar during the early 1970s, I heard them talk about these two forms–often as open chord (traditional) and closed chord (ragtime) method on the guitar. Through the 1990s, I wrote a number of songs in this style. When my father died in 2002, I made a decision to work on it more. I connected with a clarinet player and we met weekly for many years playing traditional jazz–the instrumental music that used “The Great American Songbook” as its format, adding improvisation and swing.
Some musicians in my generation focused on “swing” or “ragtime” music while emphasizing instrumental techniques. As much as I admire instrumental technique, my interest always lay more in the interplay of lyric and melody in song composition and their conventions. In lyric, I remain fascinated by the role of cliche–timeworn sentiments and phrases. In melody, I am always looking for the energy that lifts the feet–that is rooted in dance as a timed, ecstatic movement. Overall, I find that balancing melody and lyric with these goals makes what is not said just as important as what is said–that allusion and imagery and implied context are everything.
Oddly, I think the love song has become a neglected form of revolution in our largely conformist society. See my essay, The Love Song.
All this is, of course, opposite the post-modern aesthetic with its belief in endless innovation both in content and form. There is now a tendency across the world of American “art” to avoid typical emotions and their associated imagery. In contrast, in entering the world of cliche and time ecstatic movement, I find myself always hoping to move beyond music as a commodity of the moment to something timeless. In a culture that revels in the commodity of the moment, The American Song Revival is both a throwback and, I hope, a restoration of a complex balance that once existed in American music and culture.