   #copyright

American popular music

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Musical genres, styles,
eras and events

   Music of the United States
   History ( Timeline)
   Colonial era - to the Civil War - During the Civil War - Late 19th
   century - Early 20th century - 40s and 50s - 60s and 70s - 80s to the
   present
   Genres: Classical - Folk - Popular: Hip hop - Pop - Rock
   Awards Grammy Awards, Country Music Awards
   Charts Billboard Music Chart
   Festivals Jazz Fest, Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, Monterey Jazz Festival
   Media Spin, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Down Beat, Source, MTV, VH1
   National anthem " The Star-Spangled Banner" and forty-eight state songs
   Ethnic music
   Native American - English: old-time and Western music - African
   American - Irish and Scottish - Latin: Tejano and Puerto Rican - Cajun
   and Creole - Hawaii - Other immigrants
   Local music
   AK - AL - AR - AS - AZ - CA - CO - CT - DC - DE - FL - GA - GU - HI -
   IA - ID - IL - IN - KS - KY - LA - MA - MD - ME - MI - MN - MO - MP -
   MS - MT - NC - ND - NE - NH - NM - NV - NJ - NY - OH - OK - OR - PA -
   PR - RI - SC - SD - TN - TX - UT - VA - VI - VT - WA - WI - WV - WY
   The first major American popular songwriter, Stephen Foster
   The first major American popular songwriter, Stephen Foster

   Even before the birth of recorded music, American popular music had a
   profound effect on music across the world. The country has seen the
   rise of popular styles that have had a significant influence on global
   culture, including ragtime, blues, jazz, rock, R&B, doo wop, gospel,
   soul, funk, heavy metal, punk, disco, house, techno, salsa, grunge and
   hip hop. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse,
   supporting a number of regional styles like zydeco, klezmer and
   slack-key. The appeal of these styles lies in their supple, energetic
   rhythms, their appealing vocal lines, and in many cases their symbolic
   associations with the plight of the underprivileged.

   Distinctive styles of American popular music began to emerge early in
   the 19th century, and in the 20th century the American music industry
   developed a series of new forms of music, using elements of blues and
   other genres of American folk music. These popular styles included
   country, R&B, jazz and rock. The 1960s and '70s saw a number of
   important changes in American popular music, including the development
   of a number of new styles, including heavy metal, punk, soul, and hip
   hop. Though these styles were not popular in the sense of mainstream,
   they were commercially recorded and are thus examples of popular music
   as opposed to folk or classical music.

Early popular song

   The earliest songs that could be considered American popular music, as
   opposed to the popular music of a particular region or ethnicity, were
   sentimental parlor songs by Stephen Foster and his peers, and songs
   meant for use in minstrel shows, theatrical productions that featured
   singing, dancing and comic performances. Minstrel shows generally used
   African American musical instruments and dance, and featured performers
   with their faces blackened, a technique called blackface ^ . By the
   middle of the 19th century, touring companies had taken this music not
   only to every part of the United States, but also to England, Western
   Europe, and even to Africa and Asia. Minstrel shows were generally
   advertised as though the music of the shows was in an African American
   style, though this was often not true.
   Sheet music cover for "Dandy Jim from Caroline" by Dan Emmett, London,
   c. 1844.
   Enlarge
   Sheet music cover for " Dandy Jim from Caroline" by Dan Emmett, London,
   c. 1844.

   Black people had taken part in American popular culture prior to the
   Civil War era, at least dating back to the African Grove Theatre in New
   York in the 1820s and the publication of the first music by a black
   composer, Francis Johnson, in 1818. However, these important milestones
   still occurred entirely within the conventions of European music. The
   first extremely popular minstrel song was " Jump Jim Crow" by Thomas
   Rice, which was first performed in 1832 and was a sensation in London
   when Rice performed it there in 1836. Rice used a dance that he copied
   from a stableboy with a tune adopted from an Irish jig. The African
   elements included the use of the banjo, believed to derive from West
   African string instruments, and accented and additive rhythms ^. Many
   of the songs of the minstrel shows are still remembered today,
   especially those by Daniel Emmett and Stephen Foster, the latter being,
   according to David Ewen, "America's first major composer, and one of
   the world's outstanding writers of songs" ^ . Foster's songs were
   typical of the minstrel era in their unabashed sentimentality, and in
   their acceptance of slavery. Nevertheless, Foster did more than most
   songwriters of the period to humanize the blacks he composed about,
   such as in "Nelly Was a Lady", a plaintive, melancholy song about a
   black man mourning the loss of his wife ^.

   The minstrel show marked the beginning of a long tradition of African
   American music being appropriated for popular audiences, and was the
   first distinctly American form of music to find international acclaim,
   in the mid-19th century. As Donald Clarke has noted, minstrel shows
   contained "essentially black music, while the most successful acts were
   white, so that songs and dances of black origin were imitated by white
   performers and then taken up by black performers, who thus to some
   extent ended up imitating themselves". Clarke attributes the use of
   blackface to a desire for white Americans to glorify the brutal
   existence of both free and slave blacks by depicting them as happy and
   carefree individuals, best suited to plantation life and the
   performance of simple, joyous songs that easily appealed to white
   audiences ^.

   Blackface minstrel shows remained popular throughout the last part of
   the 19th century, only gradually dying out near the beginning of the
   20th century. During that time, a form of lavish and elaborate theatre
   called the extravaganza arose, beginning with Charles M. Barras' The
   Black Crook ^ . Extravaganzas were criticized by the newspapers and
   churches of the day because the shows were considered sexually
   titillating, with women singing bawdy songs dressed in nearly
   transparent clothing. David Ewen described this as the beginning of the
   "long and active careers in sex exploitation" of American musical
   theatre and popular song ^ . Later, extravaganzas took elements of
   burlesque performances, which were satiric and parodic productions that
   were very popular at the end of the 19th century ^ .

   Like the extravaganza and the burlesque, the variety show was a comic
   and ribald production, popular from the middle to the end of the 19th
   century, at which time it had evolved into vaudeville. This form was
   innovated by producers like Tony Pastor who tried to encourage women
   and children to attend his shows; they were hesitant because the
   theatre had long been the domain of a rough and disorderly crowd ^ . By
   the early 20th century, vaudeville was a respected entertainment for
   women and children, and songwriters like Gus Edwards wrote songs that
   were popular across the country ^ . The most popular vaudeville shows
   were, like the Ziegfeld Follies, a series of songs and skits that had a
   profound effect on the subsequent development of Broadway musical
   theatre and the songs of Tin Pan Alley.
     * "Old Folks at Home" —
          + Popular minstrel songs, such as this one by Stephen Foster,
            formed part of the repertoire of camp bands during the Civil
            War. This performance is by Civil War re-enactors, the 2nd
            South Carolina String Band.
          +

Tin Pan Alley

   Tin Pan Alley was an area called Union Square in New York City, which
   became the major centre for music publishing by the mid-1890s. The
   songwriters of this era wrote formulaic songs, many of them sentimental
   ballads ^ . During this era, a sense of national consciousness was
   developing, as the United States became a formidable world power,
   especially after the Spanish-American War. The increased availability
   and efficiency of railroads and the postal service helped disseminate
   ideas, including popular songs.

   Some of the most notable publishers of Tin Pan Alley included Willis
   Woodward, the Witmark house of publishing, Charles K. Harris, and
   Edward B. Marks and Joseph W. Stern. Stern and Marks were among the
   more well-known Tin Pan Alley songwriters; they began writing together
   as amateurs in 1894 ^ . In addition to the popular, mainstream ballads
   and other clean-cut songs, some Tin Pan Alley publishers focused on
   rough and risqué. Coon songs were another important part of Tin Pan
   Alley, derived from the watered-down songs of the minstrel show with
   the "verve and electricity" brought by the "assimilation of the ragtime
   rhythm" ^ . The first popular coon song was "New Coon in Town",
   introduced in 1883, and followed by a wave of coon shouters like Ernest
   Hogan and May Irwin ^ .

Broadway

   The early 20th century also saw the growth of Broadway, a group of
   theatres specializing in musicals. Broadway became one of the
   preeminent locations for musical theatre in the world, and produced a
   body of songs that led Donald Clarke to call the era, the golden age of
   songwriting. The need to adapt enjoyable songs to the constraints of a
   theatre and a plot enabled and encouraged a growth in songwriting and
   the rise of composers like George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Irving
   Berlin and Jerome Kern ^ .

   Foreign operas were popular among the upper-class throughout the 19th
   century, while other styles of musical theatre included operettas,
   ballad operas and the opera bouffe. The English operettas of Gilbert
   and Sullivan were particularly popular, while American compositions had
   trouble finding an audience. George M. Cohan was the first notable
   American composer of musical theater, and the first to move away from
   the operetta, and is also notable for using the language of the
   vernacular in his work. By the beginning of the 20th century, however,
   black playwrights, composers and musicians were having a profound
   effect on musical theatre, beginning with the works of Will Marion
   Cook, James Reese Europe and James P. Johnson; the first major hit
   black musical was Shuffle Along in 1921 ^.

   Imported operettas and domestic productions by both whites like Cohan
   and blacks like Cook, Europe and Johnson all had a formative influence
   on Broadway. Composers like Gershwin, Porter and Kern made comedic
   musical theatre into a national pastime, with a feel that was
   distinctly American and not dependent on European models. Most of these
   individuals were Jewish, with Cole Porter the only major exception;
   they were the descendants of 19th century immigrants fleeing
   persecution in the Russian Empire, settled most influentially in
   various neighborhoods in New York City ^. Many of the early musicals
   were influenced by black music, showing elements of early jazz, such as
   In Dahomey; the Jewish composers of these works may have seen
   connections between the traditional black blue notes and their own folk
   Jewish music.

   Broadway songs were recorded around the turn of the century, but did
   not become widely popular outside their theatrical context until much
   later. Jerome Kern's "They Didn't Believe Me" was an early song that
   became popular nationwide. Kern's later innovations included a more
   believable plot than the rather shapeless stories built around songs of
   earlier works, beginning with Show Boat in 1927. George Gershwin was
   perhaps the most influential composer on Broadway, beginning with
   "Swanee" in 1919 and later works for jazz and orchestras. His most
   enduring composition may be the opera Porgy and Bess, a story about two
   blacks, which Gershwin intended as a sort of "folk opera", a creation
   of a new style of American musical theatre based on American idioms ^.

Ragtime

   Ragtime was a style of dance music based around the piano, using
   syncopated rhythms and chromaticisms ^ ; the genre's most well-known
   performer and composer was undoubtedly Scott Joplin. The ragged rhythms
   of ragtime are documented to at least as far back as 1886, at Congo
   Square in New Orleans, where African American and Caribbean dances
   mixed in wild celebrations. Author Gunther Schuller sees ragtime as a
   mixture of African elements with the 2/4 pattern of European marches ^
   , while others point to the importance of jigs and other dance styles
   among the music of large African American bands in many northern cities
   during the end of the 19th century. Donald Clarke considers ragtime the
   culmination of coon songs, used first in minstrel shows and then
   vaudeville, and the result of the rhythms of minstrelsy percolating
   into the mainstream; he also suggests that ragtime's distinctive sound
   may have come from an attempt to imitate the African American banjo
   using the keyboard ^ .

   Due to the essentially African American nature of ragtime, it is most
   commonly considered the first style of American popular music to be
   truly black music; certainly, it was also strongly influenced by
   European elements, but ragtime brought syncopation and a more authentic
   black sound to popular music. Popular ragtime songs were notated and
   sold as sheet music, but the general style was played more informally
   across the nation; these amateur performers played a more free-flowing
   form of ragtime that eventually became a major formative influence on
   jazz ^.

Early recorded popular music

   Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph cylinder kicked off the
   birth of recorded music. The first cylinder to be released was " Semper
   Fidelis" by the U.S. Marine Band. At first, cylinders were released
   sparingly, but as their sales grew more profitable, distribution
   increased. These early recorded songs were a mix of vaudeville,
   barbershop quartets, marches, opera, novelty songs, and other popular
   tunes. Many popular standards, such as "The Good Old Summertime",
   "Shine on Harvest Moon", and "Over There" come from this time. There
   were also a few early hits in the field of jazz, beginning with the
   Original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1917 recordings, and followed by King
   Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, who played in a more authentic New Orleans
   jazz style ^.

   Blues had been around a long time before it became a part of the first
   explosion of recorded popular music in American history. This came in
   the 1920s, when classic female blues singers like Ma Rainey, Bessie
   Smith and Mamie Smith grew very popular; the first hit of this field
   was Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues". These urban blues singers changed the
   idea of popular music from being simple songs that could be easily
   performed by anyone to works primarily associated with an individual
   singer. Performers like Sophie Tucker, known for "Some of These Days",
   became closely associated with their hits, making their individualized
   interpretations just as important as the song itself ^.

   At the same time, record companies like Paramount Records and OKeh
   Records launched the field of race music, which was mostly blues
   targeted at African American audiences. The most famous of these acts
   went on to inspire much of the later popular development of the blues
   and blues-derived genres, including Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson and
   Robert Johnson.

Popular jazz (1920-1935) and swing (1935-1947)

   Jazz is a kind of music characterized by blue notes, syncopation,
   swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. Though
   originally a kind of dance music, jazz has now been "long considered a
   kind of popular or vernacular music (and has also) become a
   sophisticated art form that has interacted in significant ways with the
   music of the concert hall" ^ . Jazz's development occurred at around
   the same time as modern ragtime, blues, gospel and country music, all
   of which can be seen as part of a continuum with no clear demarcation
   between them; jazz specifically was most closely related to ragtime,
   with which it could be distinguished by the use of more intricate
   rhythmic improvisation, often placing notes far from the implied beat.
   The earliest jazz bands adopted much of the vocabulary of the blues,
   including bent and blue notes and instrumental "growls" and smears.

   Paul Whiteman was the most popular bandleader of the 1920s, and claimed
   for himself the title "The King of Jazz." Despite his hiring Bix
   Beiderbecke and many of the other best white jazz musicians of the era,
   later generations of jazz lovers have often judged Whiteman's music to
   have little to do with real jazz. Nonetheless, his notion of combining
   jazz with elaborate orchestrations has been returned to repeatedly by
   composers and arrangers of later decades.

   Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", which was debuted
   by Whiteman's Orchestra. Ted Lewis's band was second only to the Paul
   Whiteman in popularity during the 1920s, and arguably played more real
   jazz with less pretension than Whiteman, especially in his recordings
   of the late 1920s. Some of the other "jazz" bands of the decade
   included those of: Harry Reser, Leo Reisman, Abe Lyman, Nat Shilkret,
   George Olsen, Ben Bernie, Bob Haring, Ben Selvin, Earl Burtnett, Gus
   Arnheim, Rudy Vallee, Jean Goldkette, Isham Jones, Roger Wolfe Kahn,
   Sam Lanin, Vincent Lopez, Ben Pollack and Fred Waring.

   In the 1920's, the music performed by these artists was extremely
   popular with the public and was typically labelled as jazz. Today,
   however, this music is disparaged and labelled as "sweet music" by jazz
   purists. The music that people consider today as "jazz" tended to be
   played by minorities. In the 1920's and early 1930's, however, the
   majority of people listened to what we would call today "sweet music"
   and hardcore jazz was categorized as "hot music" or "race music."

   In 1935, swing music became popular with the public and quickly
   replaced jazz as the most popular type of music (although their was
   some resistance to it at first). Swing music is characterized by a
   strong rhythm section, usually consisting of a double bass and drums,
   playing in a medium to fast tempo, and rhythmic devices like the swung
   note. Swing is primarily a kind of 1930s jazz fused with elements of
   the blues and the pop sensibility of Tin Pan Alley ^ . Swing used
   bigger bands than other kinds of jazz had and was headed by bandleaders
   that tightly arranged the material, discouraging the improvisation that
   had been an integral part of jazz. David Clarke called swing the first
   "jazz-oriented style (to be) at the centre of popular music... as
   opposed to merely giving it backbone" ^ . By the end of the 1930s,
   vocalists became more and more prominent, eventually taking centre
   stage following the American Federation of Musicians strike, which made
   recording with a large band prohibitively expensive ^ . Swing came to
   be accompanied by a popular dance called the swing dance, which was
   very popular across the United States, among both white and black
   audiences, especially youth.
     * "Jumpin' at the Woodside" —
          + This is by Count Basie & His Orchestra, a popular swing song
            by a jazz legend.
          +

Blues diversification and popularization

   In addition to the popular jazz and swing music listened to by
   mainstrean America, there were a number of other genres that were
   popular among certain groups of people, e.g. minorities or rural
   audiences. Beginning in the 1920s and accelerating greatly in the
   1940s, the blues began rapidly diversifying into a broad spectrum of
   new styles. These included an uptempo, energetic style called rhythm
   and blues (R&B), a merger of blues and Anglo-Celtic song called country
   music and the fusion of hymns and spirituals with blues structures
   called gospel music. Later than these other styles, in the 1940s, a
   blues, R&B and country fusion eventually called rock and roll
   developed, eventually coming to dominate American popular by the
   beginning of the 1960s.

   Country music is primarily a fusion of African American blues and
   spirituals with Appalachian folk music, adapted for pop audiences and
   popularized beginning in the 1920s. Of particular importance was Irish
   and Scottish tunes, dance music, balladry and vocal styles ^, as well
   as Native American, Spanish, German, French and Mexican music. The
   instrumentation of early country revolved around the European-derived
   fiddle and the African-derived banjo, with the guitar added later.
   Country music instrumentation used African elements like a
   call-and-response format, improvised music and syncopated rhythms.
   Later still, string instruments like the ukulele and steel guitar
   became commonplace due to the popularity of Hawaiian musical groups in
   the early 20th century ^ . The roots of modern country music are
   generally traced to 1927, when music talent scout Ralph Peer recorded
   Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. Their recordings are considered
   the foundation for modern country music. There had been popular music
   prior to 1927 that could be considered country, but, as Ace Collins
   points out, these recordings had "only marginal and very inconsistent"
   effects on the national music markets, and were only superficially
   similar to what was then known as hillbilly music ^ . In addition to
   Rodgers and the Carters, a musician named Bob Wills was an influential
   early performer known for a style called Western swing, which was very
   popular in the 1920s and 30s, and was responsible for bringing a
   prominent jazz influence to country music.

   Rhythm and blues (R&B) is a style that arose in the 1930s and '40s, a
   rhythmic and uptempo form of blues with more complex instrumentation.
   Author Amiri Baraka described early R&B as "huge rhythm units smashing
   away behind screaming blues singers (who) had to shout to be heard
   above the clanging and strumming of the various electrified instruments
   and the churning rhythm sections ^ . R&B was recorded during this
   period, but not extensively and was not widely promoted by record
   companies, who felt it was not suited for most audiences, especially
   middle-class whites, because of the suggestive lyrics and driving
   rhythms ^ . Bandleaders like Louis Jordan innovated the sound of early
   R&B. Jordan's band featured a small horn section and prominent rhythm
   instrumentation and used songs with bluesy lyrical themes. By the end
   of the 1940s, he had produced nineteen major hits, and helped pave the
   way for contemporaries like Wynonie Harris, John Lee Hooker and Roy
   Milton.

   Christian spirituals and rural blues music were the origin of what is
   now known as gospel music. Beginning in about the 1920s, African
   American churches featured early gospel in the form of worshipers
   proclaiming their religious devotion (testifying) in an improvised,
   often musical manner. Modern gospel began with the work of composers,
   most importantly Thomas A. Dorsey, who "(composed) songs based on
   familiar spirituals and hymns, fused to blues and jazz rhythms" ^ .
   From these early 20th-century churches, gospel music spread across the
   country. It remained associated almost entirely with African American
   churches, and usually featured a choir along with one or more virtuoso
   soloists.

   Rock and roll is a kind of popular music, developed primarily out of
   country, blues and R&B. Easily the single most popular style of music
   worldwide, rock's exact origins and early development have been hotly
   debated. Music historian Robert Palmer has noted that the style's
   influences are quite diverse, and include the Afro-Caribbean " Bo
   Diddley beat", elements of "big band swing" and Latin music like the
   Cuban son and " Mexican rhythms" ^ . Another author, George Lipsitz
   claims that rock arose in America's urban areas, where there formed a
   "polyglot, working-class culture (where the) social meanings previously
   conveyed in isolation by blues, country, polka, zydeco and Latin musics
   found new expression as they blended in an urban environment" ^ .

1950s and 60s

   The middle of the 20th century saw a number of very important changes
   in American popular music. The field of pop music developed
   tremendously during this period, as the increasingly low price of
   recorded music stimulated demand and greater profits for the record
   industry. As a result, music marketing became more and more prominent,
   resulting in a number of mainstream pop stars whose popularity was
   previously unheard of. Many of the first such stars were
   Italian-American crooners like Dean Martin, Rudy Vallee, Tony Bennett,
   Perry Como, Frankie Laine and, most famously, the "first pop vocalist
   to engender hysteria among his fans" Frank Sinatra ^. The era of the
   modern teen pop star, however, began in the 1960s. Bubblegum pop groups
   like The Monkees were chosen entirely for their appearance and ability
   to sell records, with no regard to musical ability. The same period,
   however, also saw the rise of new forms of pop music that achieved a
   more permanent presence in the field of American popular music,
   including rock, soul and pop-folk. By the end of the 1960s, two
   developments had completely changed popular music: the birth of a
   counterculture, which explicitly opposed mainstream music, often in
   tandem with political and social activism, and the shift from
   professional composers to performers who were both singers and
   songwriters.

   Rock and roll first entered mainstream popular music through a style
   called rockabilly, which fused the nascent rock sound with elements of
   country music. Black-performed rock and roll had previously had limited
   mainstream success, and some observers at the time believed that a
   white performer who could credibly sing in an R&B and country style
   would be a success. Sam Phillips, of Memphis, Tennessee's Sun Records,
   was the one who found such a performer, in Elvis Presley, who became
   one of the best-selling musicians in history, and brought rock and roll
   to audiences across the world ^ . Presley's success was preceded by
   Bill Haley, a white performer whose " Rock Around the Clock" is
   sometimes pointed to as the start of the rock era. However, Haley's
   music was "more arranged" and "more calculated" than the "looser
   rhythms" of rockabilly, which also, unlike Haley, did not use
   saxophones or chorus singing ^ .
     * "Good Rockin' Tonight" —
          + This is by Elvis Presley and is one of the most popular songs
            of the rockabilly era.
          +

   R&B remained extremely popular during the 1950s among black audiences,
   but the style was not considered appropriate for whites, or respectable
   middle-class blacks because of its suggestive nature. Many popular R&B
   songs were instead performed by white musicians like Pat Boone, in a
   more palatable, mainstream style, and turned into pop hits ^ . By the
   end of the 1950s, however, there was a wave of popular black blues-rock
   and country-influenced R&B performers gaining unprecedented fame among
   white listeners; these included Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry ^ . Over
   time, producers in the R&B field turned to gradually more rock-based
   acts like Little Richard and Fats Domino.

   Doo wop is a kind of vocal harmony music performed by groups who became
   popular in the 1950s. Though sometimes considered a kind of rock, doo
   wop is more precisely a fusion of vocal R&B, gospel and jazz with the
   blues and pop structures ^ , though until the 1960s, the lines
   separating rock from doo wop, R&B and other related styles was very
   blurry. Doo wop became the first style of R&B-derived music "to take
   shape, to define itself as something people recognized as new,
   different, strange, theirs" (emphasis in original)  ^ . As doo wop grew
   more popular, more innovations were added, including the use of a bass
   lead vocalist, a practice which began with Jimmy Ricks of The Ravens ^
   . Doo wop performers were originally almost all black, but a few white
   and integrated groups soon became popular. These included a number of
   Italian-American groups like Dion & the Belmonts and Frankie Valli &
   the Four Seasons, while others added female vocalists and even formed
   all-female groups in the nearly universally male field; these included
   The Queens and The Chantels ^ .

   The 1950s saw a number of brief fads that went on to have a great
   impact on future styles of music. Performers like Pete Seeger and The
   Weavers popularized a form of old-time revival of Anglo-American music.
   This field eventually became associated with the political leftwing and
   Communism, leading to a decline in acceptability as artists were
   increasingly blacklisted and criticized. Nevertheless, this form of
   pop-folk exerted a profound influence in the form of 1950s folk-rock
   and related styles. Alongside the rather sporadic success of
   popularized Anglo folk music came a series of Latin dance fads,
   including mambo, rumba, chachachá and boogaloo. Though their success
   was again sporadic and brief, Latin music continued to exert a
   continuous influence on rock, soul and other styles, as well as
   eventually evolving into salsa music in the 1970s.

Country: Nashville Sound

   Beginning in the late 1920s, a distinctive style first called
   "old-timey" or "hillbilly" music began to be broadcast and recorded in
   the rural South and Midwest; early artists included the Carter Family,
   Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers, and Jimmie Rodgers. The
   performance and dissemination of this music was regional at first, but
   the population shifts caused by World War II spread it more widely.
   After the war, there was increased interest in specialty styles,
   including what had been known as race and hillbilly music; these styles
   were renamed to rhythm and blues and country and western,
   respectively ^. Major labels had had some success promoting two kinds
   of country acts: Southern novelty performers like Tex Williams and
   singers like Frankie Laine, who mixed pop and country in a
   conventionally sentimental style ^ . This period also saw the rise of
   Hank Williams, a white country singer who had learned the blues from a
   black street musician named Tee-Tot, in northwest Alabama ^ . Before
   his death in 1953, Hank Williams recorded eleven singles that sold at
   least a million copies each and pioneered the Nashville sound.
     * "Cold, Cold Heart" —
          + This is perhaps the best-known Hank Williams song, covered by
            numerous other singers.
          +

   The Nashville sound was a popular kind of country music that arose in
   the 1950s, a fusion of popular big band jazz and swing with the
   lyricism of honky-tonk country ^ . The popular success of Hank
   Williams' recordings had convinced record labels that country music
   could find mainstream audiences. Record companies then tried to strip
   the rough, honky-tonk elements from country music, removing the
   unapologetically rural sound that had made Williams famous. Nashville's
   industry was reacting to the rise of rockabilly performer Elvis Presley
   by marketing performers that crossed the divide between country and
   pop;  ^ . Chet Atkins, head of RCA's country music division, did the
   most to innovate the Nashville sound by abandoning the rougher elements
   of country, while Owen Bradley used sophisticated production techniques
   and smooth instrumentation that eventually became standard in the
   Nashville Sound, which also grew to incorporate strings and vocal
   choirs ^ . By the early part of the 1960s, the Nashville sound was
   perceived as watered-down by many more traditionalist performers and
   fans, resulting in a number of local scenes like the Lubbock sound and,
   most influentially, the Bakersfield sound.

   Throughout the 1950s, the most popular kind of country music was the
   Nashville Sound, which was a slick and pop-oriented style. Many
   musicians preferred a rougher sound, leading to the development the
   Lubbock Sound and Bakersfield Sound. The Bakersfield Sound was
   innovated in Bakersfield, California in the mid to late 1950s, by
   performers like Wynn Stewart, who used elements of Western swing and
   rock, such as the breakbeat, along with a honky tonk vocal style ^ . He
   was followed by a wave of performers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard,
   who popularized the style.

Soul

   Ray Charles
   Enlarge
   Ray Charles

   Soul music is a combination of R&B and gospel which began in the late
   1950s in the United States. Soul music is characterized by its use of
   gospel techniques with a greater emphasis on vocalists, and the use of
   secular themes. The 1950s recordings of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and
   James Brown are commonly considered the beginnings of soul music.
   Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the
   style, and as Peter Guralnick writes, "it was only with the coming
   together of Burke and Atlantic Records that you could see anything
   resembling a movement" ^ .

   The Motown Record Corporation in [[{Detroit Michigan]] became
   successful with a string of heavily pop-influenced soul records, which
   were palatable enough to white listeners so as to allow R&B and soul to
   crossover to mainstream audiences. An important centre of soul music
   recording was Florence, Alabama, where the Fame Studios operated. Jimmy
   Hughes, Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander recorded at Fame; later in
   the 1960s, Aretha Franklin would also record in the area. Fame Studios,
   often referred to as Muscle Shoals, after a town neighboring Florence,
   enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and
   producers who worked in Memphis also contributed to recordings done in
   Alabama.

   In Memphis, Stax Records produced recordings by soul pioneers Otis
   Redding, Wilson Pickett and Don Covay. Other Stax artists such as Eddie
   Floyd and Johnnie Taylor also made significant contributions to soul
   music. By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James
   Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to expand upon and abstract both
   soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. Guralnick wrote that more
   "than anything else... what seems to me to have brought the era of soul
   to a grinding, unsettling halt was the death of Martin Luther King in
   April of 1968" ^ .

1960s rock

   The first of the major new rock genres of the 1960s was surf, pioneered
   by Californian Dick Dale. Surf was largely instrumental and
   guitar-based rock with a distorted and twanging sound, and was
   associated with the Southern California surfing-based youth culture.
   Dale had worked with Leo Fender, developing the " Showman amplifier
   and... the reverberation unit that would give surf music its
   distinctively fuzzy sound" ^ .

   Inspired by the lyrical focus of surf, if not the musical basis, The
   Beach Boys began their career in 1961 with a string of hits like "
   Surfin' USA". Their sound was not instrumental, nor guitar-based, but
   was full of "rich, dense and unquestionably special" "floating vocals
   (with) Four Freshman-ish harmonies riding over a droned, propulsive
   burden" ^ . The Beach Boys' songwriter Brian Wilson grew gradually more
   eccentric, experimenting with new studio techniques as he became
   associated with the burgeoning counterculture.

   The counterculture was a youth movement that included political
   activism, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War, and the
   promotion of various hippie ideals. The hippies were associated
   primarily with two kinds of music: the folk-rock and country rock of
   people like Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons, and the psychedelic rock of
   bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. This movement was very
   closely connected to the British Invasion, a wave of bands from the
   United Kingdom who became popular throughout much of the 1960s. The
   first wave of the British Invasion included bands like The Zombies and
   the Moody Blues, followed by rock bands like the Rolling Stones, The
   Who and, most famously, The Beatles. The sound of these bands was
   hard-edged rock, with The Beatles' originally known for songs that were
   virtually identical to classic black rock songs by Little Richard,
   Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, The Shirelles and the Isley Brothers ^ .
   Later, as the counterculture developed, The Beatles began using more
   advanced techniques and unusual instruments, such as the sitar, as well
   as more original lyrics.
   Joan Baez and Bob Dylan
   Enlarge
   Joan Baez and Bob Dylan

   Folk-rock drew on the sporadic mainstream success of groups like the
   Kingston Trio and the Almanac Singers, while Woodie Guthrie and Pete
   Seeger helped to politically radicalize rural white folk music ^ . The
   popular musician Bob Dylan rose to prominence in the middle of the
   1960s, fusing folk with rock and making the nascent scene closely
   connected to the Civil Rights Movement. He was followed by a number of
   country-rock bands like The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and
   folk-oriented singer-songwriters like Joan Baez and the Canadian Joni
   Mitchell. However, by the end of the decade, there was little political
   or social awareness evident in the lyrics of pop- singer-songwriters
   like James Taylor and Carole King, whose self-penned songs were deeply
   personal and emotional.

   Psychedelic rock was a hard, driving kind of guitar-based rock, closely
   associated with the city of San Francisco, California. Though Jefferson
   Airplane was the only psychedelic San Francisco band to have a major
   national hit, with 1967's "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", the
   Grateful Dead, a folk, country and bluegrass-flavored jam band,
   "embodied all the elements of the San Francisco scene and came... to
   represent the counterculture to the rest of the country"; the Grateful
   Dead also became known for introducing the counterculture, and the rest
   of the country, to the ideas of people like Timothy Leary, especially
   the use of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD for spiritual and
   philosophical purposes ^ .
     * "White Rabbit" —
          + This is by Jefferson Airplane and is one of the most legendary
            songs of the psychedelic rock genre.
          +

1970s and 80s

   Following the turbulent political, social and musical changes of the
   1960s and early 1970s, rock music diversified. What was formerly known
   as rock and roll, a reasonably discrete style of music, had evolved
   into a catchall category called simply rock music, an umbrella term
   which would eventually include diverse styles like heavy metal music,
   punk rock and, sometimes even hip hop music. During the '70s, however,
   most of these styles were not part of mainstream music, and were
   evolving in the underground music scene.

   The early 1970s saw a wave of singer-songwriters who drew on the
   introspective, deeply emotional and personal lyrics of 1960s folk-rock.
   They included James Taylor, Carole King and others, all known just as
   much for the lyric ability as for their performances. The same period
   saw the rise of bluesy Southern rock and country rock groups like the
   Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd ^ . In the 1970s, soft rock
   developed, a kind of simple, unobtrusive and mellow form of pop-rock,
   exemplified by a number of bands like America and Bread, most of whom
   are little remembered today; many were one-hit wonders ^ . In addition,
   harder arena rock bands like Chicago and Styx also saw some major
   success.
   Willie Nelson
   Enlarge
   Willie Nelson

   The early 1970s saw the rise of a new style of country music that was
   as rough and hard-edged, and which quickly became the most popular form
   of country. This was outlaw country, a style that included such
   mainstream stars as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings ^ . Outlaw
   country was very rock-oriented, and had lyrics that focused on the
   criminal, especially drug and alcohol-related, antics of its
   performers, who grew their hair long, wore denim and leather and looked
   like hippies in contrast to the clean-cut country singers that were
   pushing the Nashville sound ^ .

   By the end of the decade, disco, a form of electronic dance music, was
   popular. Disco's time was short, however, and was soon replaced with a
   number of genres that evolved out of the punk rock scene, like New
   Wave. Bruce Springsteen became a major star, first in the mid to late
   70s and then throughout the '80s, with dense, inscrutable lyrics and
   anthemic songs that resonated with the middle and lower classes ^ .

70s funk and soul

   In the early 1970s, soul music was influenced by psychedelic rock and
   other styles. The social and political ferment of the times inspired
   artists like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length
   statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James
   Brown led soul towards more dance-oriented music, which eventually
   evolved into funk. Funk was typified by 1970s bands like
   Parliament-Funkadelic, The Meters, and James Brown himself, while more
   versatile groups like War, The Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire also
   became popular. During the '70s, some highly slick and commercial
   blue-eyed soul acts like Philadelphia's Hall & Oates achieved
   mainstream success, as well as a new generation of street-corner
   harmony or city-soul groups like The Delfonics and Howard University's
   Unifics.

   By the end of the '70s, Philly soul, funk, rock and most other genres
   were dominated by disco-inflected tracks. During this period, funk
   bands like The O'Jays and The Spinners continued to turn out hits.
   After the death of disco in 1980, soul music survived for a short time
   before going through yet another metamorphosis. With the introduction
   of influences from electro music and funk, soul music became less raw
   and more slickly produced, resulting in a genre of music that was again
   called R&B, usually distinguished from the earlier rhythm and blues by
   identifying it as contemporary R&B.

80s pop

   By the 1960s, the term rhythm and blues had no longer been in wide use;
   instead, terms like soul music were used to describe popular African
   American music. In the 1980s, however, rhythm and blues came back into
   use, most often in the form of R&B, a usage that has continued to the
   present. Contemporary R&B arose when sultry funk singers like Prince
   became very popular, alongside dance-oriented pop stars like Michael
   Jackson and female vocalists like Tina Turner and Whitney Houston ^ .

   By the end of the 1980s, pop-rock largely consisted of the
   radio-friendly hair metal bands, who used images derived from the
   British glam movement with macho lyrics and attitudes, accompanied by
   hard rock music and heavy metal virtuosic soloing. Bands from this era
   included many British groups like Def Leppard, as well as heavy
   metal-influenced American bands Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi
   and Van Halen ^ .

   The mid-1980s also saw Gospel music see its popularity peak. A new form
   of gospel had evolved, called Contemporary Christian music (CCM). CCM
   had been around since the late 1960s, and consisted of a pop/rock sound
   with slight religious lyrics. CCM had become the most popular form of
   gospel by the mid-1980s, especially with artists like Amy Grant,
   Michael W. Smith, and Kathy Troccoli. Amy Grant was the most popular
   CCM, and gospel, singer of the 1980s, and after experiencing
   unprecedented success in CCM, crossed over into mainstream pop in the
   1980s and 1990s. Michael W. Smith also had considerable success in CCM
   before crossing over to a successful career in pop music as well. Grant
   would later produce CCM's first #1 pop hit ("Baby Baby"), and CCM's
   best-selling album ( Heart In Motion).

   In the 1980s, the country music charts were dominated by pop singers
   with only tangential influences from country music, a trend that has
   continued since. The 1980s saw a revival of honky-tonk-style country
   with the rise of people like Dwight Yoakam and the new traditionalists
   Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs ^ , as well as the development of
   alternative country performers like Uncle Tupelo. Later alternative
   country performers, like Whiskeytown's Ryan Adams and Wilco, found some
   mainstream success.
     * "Killin' Time" —
          + This song is by Clint Black and won more awards than almost
            any other, including six different categories of the Country
            Music Awards.
          +

Birth of the underground

   During the 1970s, a number of diverse styles emerged in start contrast
   to mainstream American popular music. Though these genres were not
   largely popular in the sense of selling many records to mainstream
   audiences, they were examples of popular music, as opposed to folk or
   classical music. In the early 1970s, blacks and Puerto Ricans in New
   York City developed hip hop culture, which produced a style of music
   also called hip hop. At roughly the same time, Latinos, especially
   Cubans and Puerto Ricans, in New York also innovated salsa music, which
   combined many forms of Latin music with R&B and rock. The genres of
   punk rock and heavy metal were most closely associated with the United
   Kingdom in the 70s, while various American derivatives evolved later in
   the decade and into the 80s. Meanwhile, Detroit slowly evolved a series
   of electronic music genres like house and techno that later became a
   major part of popular music worldwide.

Hip hop

   Hip hop is a cultural movement, of which music is a part, along with
   graffiti and breakdancing. The music is composed of two parts, rapping,
   the delivery of swift, highly rhythmic and lyrical vocals, and DJing,
   the production of instrumentation either through sampling,
   instrumentation, turntablism or beatboxing ^ . Hip hop arose in the
   early 1970s in Harlem, New York City. Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc
   is widely regarded as the progenitor of hip hop; he brought with him
   the practice of toasting over the rhythms of popular songs. In New
   York, DJs like Kool Herc played records of popular funk, disco and rock
   songs. Emcees originally arose to introduce the songs and keep the
   crowd excited and dancing; over time, the DJs began isolating the
   percussion breaks (the rhythmic climax of songs), thus producing a
   repeated beat that the emcees rapped over.

   Rapping included greetings to friends and enemies, exhortations to
   dance and colorful, often humorous boasts. By the beginning of the
   1980s, there had been popular hip hop songs like " Rappers Delight" by
   the Sugarhill Gang and a few major celebrities of the scene, like LL
   Cool J and Kurtis Blow. Other performers experimented with politicized
   lyrics and social awareness, while others performed fusions with jazz,
   heavy metal, techno, funk and soul. Hip hop began to diversify in the
   latter part of the 1980s. New styles appeared, like alternative hip hop
   and the closely related jazz rap fusion, pioneered by rappers like De
   La Soul and Guru. The crews Public Enemy and N.W.A. did the most during
   this era to bring hip hop to national attention; the former did so with
   incendiary and politically charged lyrics, while the latter became the
   first prominent example of gangsta rap.
     * "Follow the Leader" —
          + This song is by Eric B. & Rakim and is sometimes considered
            the peak of the golden age of old school hip hop.
          +

Salsa

   Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean rhythm that is
   popular in many Latin American countries. Salsa incorporates multiple
   styles and variations; the term can be used to describe most any form
   of the popular Cuban-derived musical genres (like chachachá and mambo).
   Most specifically however, salsa refers to a particular style was
   developed by mid-1970s groups of New York City-area Cuban and Puerto
   Rican immigrants to the United States, and stylistic descendants like
   1980s salsa romantica ^ .

   Salsa music always has a 4/4 meter. The music is phrased in groups of
   two bars, using recurring rhythmic patterns, and the beginning of
   phrases in the song text and instruments. Typically, the rhythmic
   patterns played on the percussion are rather complicated, often with
   several different patterns played simultaneously. The clave rhythm is
   an important element that forms the basis of salsa. Apart from
   percussion, a variety of melodic instruments are commonly used as
   accompaniment, such as a guitar, trumpets, trombones, the piano, and
   many others, all depending on the performing artists. Bands are
   typically divided into horn and rhythm sections, lead by one or more
   singers (soneros or salseros)  ^ .

Punk and alternative rock

   Punk was a kind of rebellious rock music that began in the 1970s, as a
   reaction against the popular music of the day, especially disco, which
   was seen as insipid and uninspired; punk drew on American bands
   including the Velvet Underground, The Stooges and the New York Dolls ^
   . Punk was loud, aggressive and usually very simple, requiring little
   musical training to play. Later in the decade, British bands like the
   Sex Pistols and The Clash found short-lived fame at home and, to a
   lesser degree, in the United States. American bands in the field
   included most famously The Ramones, as well as groups like the Talking
   Heads that played a more artsy kind of music that was closely
   associated with punk before eventually evolving into pop- New Wave ^ .
   Henry Rollins, a punk rock musician
   Enlarge
   Henry Rollins, a punk rock musician

   Hardcore punk was the response of American youths to the worldwide punk
   rock explosion of the late 1970s. Hardcore stripped punk rock and New
   Wave of its sometimes elitist and artsy tendencies, resulting in short,
   fast, and intense songs that spoke to disaffected youth. Hardcore
   exploded in the American metropolises of Los Angeles, Washington, DC,
   New York and Boston and most American cities had their own local scenes
   by the end of the 1980s ^ .

   Alternative rock is a diverse grouping of rock bands that in America
   developed largely from the hardcore scene in the 1980s in stark
   opposition to the mainstream music scene. Alternative rock subgenres
   that developed during the decade include indie rock, gothic rock,
   grunge, and college rock. Most alternative bands were unified by their
   collective debt to punk, which laid the groundwork for underground and
   alternative music in the 1970s. Though the genre is considered to be
   rock, some styles were influenced by American folk, reggae and jazz.
   Like punk and hardcore, alternative rock had little mainstream success
   in America in the 1980s, but via the grassroots establishment of an
   indie scene through touring, college radio, fanzines, and
   word-of-mouth, alternative bands laid the groundwork for the
   breakthrough of the genre in the American public consciousness in the
   next decade.

Heavy metal

   Heavy metal is a form of music characterized by aggressive, driving
   rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars, generally with
   grandiose lyrics and virtuosic instrumentation. Heavy metal is a
   development of blues, blues rock, rock and prog rock. Its origins lie
   in the British hard rock bands who between 1967 and 1974 took blues and
   rock and created a hybrid with a heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered
   sound. Most of the pioneers in the field, like Black Sabbath, were
   English, though many were inspired by American performers like Blue
   Cheer and Jimi Hendrix.
   Bon Jovi
   Enlarge
   Bon Jovi

   In the early 1970s, the first major American bands began appearing,
   like Blue Öyster Cult and Aerosmith, and musicians like Eddie Van Halen
   began their career. Heavy metal remained, however, a largely
   underground phenomenon. During the 1980s, a pop-based form of hard
   rock, with a party-hearty spirit and a glam-influenced visual aesthetic
   (sometimes referred to as " hair metal") dominated the music charts,
   led by superstars like Poison, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, and Ratt. The
   1987 debut of Guns N' Roses, a hard rock band whose image reflected the
   grittier underbelly of the Sunset Strip, was at least in part a
   reaction against the overly polished image of hair metal, but that
   band's wild success was in many ways the last gasp of the hard-rock and
   metal scene. By the mid-1980s, as the term "heavy metal" became the
   subject of much contestation, the style had branched out in so many
   different directions that new classifications were created by fans,
   record companies, and fanzines, although sometimes the differences
   between various subgenres were unclear, even to the artists purportedly
   belonging to a given style. The most notable of the 1980s metal
   subgenres in the United States was the swift and aggressive thrash
   metal style, pioneered by bands like Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and
   Slayer.

1990s to the present

   Perhaps the most important change in the 1990s in American popular
   music was the rise of alternative rock through the popularity of
   grunge. This was previously an explicitly anti-mainstream grouping of
   genres that rose to great fame beginning in the early 1990s. The genre
   in its early stages was largely situated on Sub Pop Records, a company
   founded by Kim Thayil of Soundgarden. Significant grunge bands signed
   to the label were Green River (half of the members from this band would
   later become founding members of Pearl Jam), Sonic Youth (although not
   a grunge band they were influential on grunge bands and in fact it was
   upon the insistance of Kim Gordon that the David Geffen company signed
   Nirvana) and Nirvana. Grunge is an alternative rock subgenre with a
   "dark, brooding guitar-based sludge" sound ^ , drawing on heavy metal,
   punk, and elements of bands like Sonic Youth and their use of
   "unconventional tunings to bend otherwise standard pop songs completely
   out of shape" ^ . With the addition of a "melodic, Beatlesque element"
   to the sound of bands like Nirvana, grunge became wildly popular across
   the United States ^ . Grunge became commercially successful in the
   early 1990s, peaking between 1991 and 1994. Bands from cities in the
   U.S. Pacific Northwest especially Seattle, Washington, were responsible
   for creating grunge and later made it popular with mainstream
   audiences. The supposed Generation X, who had just reached adulthood as
   grunge's popularity peaked, were closely associated with grunge, the
   sound which helped "define the desperation of (that) generation" ^ .

   Gangsta rap is a kind of hip hop, most importantly characterized by a
   lyrical focus on macho sexuality, physicality and a dangerous, criminal
   image. Though the origins of gangsta rap can be traced back to the
   mid-1980s raps of Philadelphia's Schoolly D and the West Coast's Ice-T,
   the style is usually said to have begun in the Los Angeles and Oakland
   area, where Too $hort, NWA and others found their fame. This West Coast
   rap scene spawned the early 1990s G-funk sound, which paired gangsta
   rap lyrics with a thick and hazy tone, often relying on samples from
   1970s P-funk; the best-known proponents of this sound were the
   breakthrough rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

   By the end of the decade and into the early 2000s pop music consisted
   mostly of a combination of pop-hip hop and R&B-tinged pop, including a
   number of boy bands and female divas. The predominant sound in 90s
   country music was pop with only very limited elements of country. This
   includes many of the best-selling artists of the 1990s, like Clint
   Black, Shania Twain, Faith Hill and the first of these crossover stars,
   Garth Brooks ^ .
     * "Come As You Are" —
          + This song is by Nirvana, who did more than any other group to
            bring grunge into the mainstream.
          +

International and social impact

   American popular music has become extremely popular internationally.
   Rock, hip hop, jazz, country and other styles have fans across the
   globe. BBC Radio DJ Andy Kershaw, for example, has noted that country
   music is popular across virtually the entire world ^ . Indeed, out of
   "all the contributions made by Americans to world culture... (American
   popular music) has been taken (most) to heart by the entire world" ^ .
   Other styles of American popular music have also had a formative effect
   internationally, including funk, the basis for West African Afrobeat,
   R&B, a major source for Jamaican reggae, and rock, which has profoundly
   influenced most every genre of popular music worldwide. Rock, country,
   jazz and hip hop have become an entrenched part of many countries,
   leading to local varieties like Australian country music, Tanzanian
   Bongo Flava and Russian rock.

   Rock has had a formative influence on popular music, which had the
   effect of transforming "the very concept of what popular music" is ^
   while Charlie Gillett has argued that rock and roll "was the first
   popular genre to incorporate the relentless pulse and sheer volume of
   urban life into the music itself" ^ .

   The social impacts of American popular music have been felt both within
   the United States and in foreign countries. Beginning as early as the
   extravaganzas of the late 19th century, American popular music has been
   criticized for being too sexually titillating and for encouraging
   violence, drug abuse and generally immoral behaviour. Criticisms have
   been especially targeted at African American styles of music as they
   began attracting white, generally youthful audiences; blues, jazz, rock
   and hip hop all fall into this category ^.
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