Americana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Americana refers to the culture, history and heritage of the United States. Americana is anything that captures the essence of America's values, experiences and collective identity. Symbols of Americana are readily and easily associated with the United States and are likely to evoke feelings of nostalgia for past days of American innocence.
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[edit] Symbols
Americana can also refer to the highly abstract, yet oft-mentioned idea of the "American Experience." Symbols of Americana or the American Experience include the following:
- The music of Stephen Foster, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Richard Rodgers' Slaughter On 10th Avenue, the music of Aaron Copland (notably his Fanfare for the Common Man), and rockabilly; and American art, such as that of Frederic Remington, Grant Wood, and Norman Rockwell, all based on American folk art and fictional characters such as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, The Muppets and The Simpsons.
[edit] Music
In music, Americana is a subset of American folk music, that is perhaps best defined as "classic American music"—ranging in style from roots-based bluegrass to alternative country, gospel, blues, zydeco, and other native forms. One of the main reasons Americana is used to describe such a wide variety of musical genres is because of the diverse range of cultural influences which is called American. For example, traditional Bluegrass instrumentation consists of the banjo which originated on the African continent, guitars from Europe, fiddling styles which have their roots in traditional Irish and other Gaelic fiddling techniques, and yodeling from alpine regions of Europe.
[edit] Americana radio
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Americana is a format in commercial, non-commercial, terrestrial, satellite and internet radio. The Americana Music Association (AMA) has created a chart which documents Americana radio, with approximately 75 Americana radio stations and programs.
[edit] Americana in literature
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Eric Flint's novel 1632 was an experiment in the power of ideas wrapped up in Americana[1] wherein he explores the effect of transporting a mass of people through time — in the case of this series, the small fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia from the United States in the year 2000 to central Germany in the year 1631. The best selling series of novels and anthologies asks the what-if question: "What might history have been like had a typical American town influenced European thought from the time of the earliest days of Christian on Christian religious conflict (The Thirty Years' War) and Imperialism/Colonialism." In other words, with this premise, Flint decided to hold both the Industrial revolution and the American revolution (political and social) 144 years early from a new location in central Germany; the result is mostly very American and the social, religious, and political sub-conflicts and conflicts to European thinking and practices are very informative as to what makes Americans American in thought, words, and deeds, and in contrast, a nifty benefit, presents a thoughtful in depth picture of European thought and attitudes of that crucial time.
As well as Mark Twain's classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court A story about an industrialist sent back to medieval england. The narrator attempts to create america in the past.
[edit] Visual art
In the visual fine arts, Americana usually indicates a concern with the ordinary aspects of historic American culture: carnivals, popular amusements such as side-shows, vernacular typography and signage, old horror movies in the "haunted house" genre, the old West, and the backwoods cultures. It has increasingly veered off into a dark Gothic approach to Americana that was first visualised by U.S. writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury.
[edit] Americana movies
- Hootenanny Hoot (1963) - featuring Johnny Cash, Judy Henske, The Brothers Four, etc.
[edit] See also
- American Studies
- Americana/Lesourdesville Lake Amusement Park
- Australiana
- Canadiana
- Kiwiana (New Zealand)
- Scouting in popular culture
[edit] References
- ^ Flint, Eric (March 2006). "afterword". in Eric Flint (hardcover). Grantville Gazette II. 1632 (1st, Hardcover ed.). afterword: Baen books. pp. 324. ISBN 978-0-4165-2051-1. "pp316: "...which has to do with the way I see this entire story in the first place—and did from the beginning. 1632 was written as much as an American novel as a science fiction or alternate history novel. More precisely, as a novel that fits within that loosely defined literary category known as Americana. In particular, it was written from a desire on my part to make a relatively ordinary small American town the collective protagonist of the story. And then, as the story unfolded, to keep the focus as much as possible on what you might call the level of the common man and woman—understanding that, as the story unfolded, more and more seventeenth-century Europeans would become an integral part of that collective protagonist." (hyper links added herein)"
[edit] External links
- Americana Music Association (Nashville)
- Americana UK - world's biggest alt-country website
- The Danans - UK based Americana band
- Americana Roots - Americana Music News & Resources
- Americana Radio Promotion Independent Radio Promotion for the Americana radio format
- imdb.com - Description of "Hootenanny Hoot"
- Americana Artist J. K. Coltrain (Nashville)
- Jaimie Muehlhausen - Americana indie musician
- Americana Songwriter James Power (New York)
- HickoryWind.org - Americana, Bluegrass, &
- Outlaw Punk Cowboy Show Allternative Country Podcast
- Roots of Rock- website listing new, old artists recording Americana
