Our very own Lee Zimmerman, who contributes reviews, interviews, and our twice-monthly Bluegrass Beyond Borders column, was recently interviewed by the Library of Congress about his book, Americana Music – Voices, Visionaries & Pioneers of an Honest Sound, published by Texas A&M University Press in 2019.
In their first question, the interviewer asked if Lee could define the term, “Americana Music.”
And he responded…
“Well, that’s an excellent question to begin with. In writing this book, I had to tackle that question because Americana tends to mean different things to different people. Some people think of it as another form of country music and they say, “I don’t like country music.” But I would say that Americana is a very, very wide umbrella, and Americana can encompass roots music, music from the Heartland, R&B, gospel. It’s a very wide umbrella. I would say as well, that Americana’s roots go back to the beginnings of this nation’s history. I mean, to me, Stephen Foster was the essence of Americana. The early settlers who came here and had these songs, for example, from the Civil War—When Johnny Comes Marching Home to The Battle Hymn of the Republic—those were undoubtedly Americana music. So, I think to sum it up, I would say that Americana music is a sound that reflects the essence of our nation’s history and culture.
Now, in a broader sense, Americana has also been adopted and adapted by musicians from other countries. In the UK, there’s a Americana association [Americana Music Association UK]. I do a column for a publication called Bluegrass Today, and the column is called Bluegrass Beyond Borders. That’s a regular column that I do. I look beyond our shores—to England, to France, to Japan, to Australia, and at the musicians that are making music.
I’ll say that how it began, if you really want to look at it, Americana began in the British Isles, in Ireland, in Scotland. When the settlers came over here and settled in Appalachia, they brought those musical traditions with them. So, we can’t say that Americana is strictly an American genre because, like everything, it came from somewhere else. It even came from Africa. The people that came over here on the slave ships brought the banjo. The banjo is an African instrument. So, [Americana] is a very complex and multi-hued form of music, which took its influence and essence from afar, and yet made it something that we can claim here, and which has now been exported overseas.
So, to answer your question, there’s really no succinct answer. There really isn’t. You can see examples of what Americana is now. You look at people like the War and Treaty or Billy Strings, or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In the book, I go back even further to the Everly Brothers and Elvis and Johnny Cash. They were more or less the pioneers of modern Americana, all of those people.
So, it’s a very wide umbrella. When I have friends who say, “I don’t like country music,” I say, “Well, you’re not really listening. You like blues, it’s blues. You like gospel, you like soul. It’s all in the mix in Americana.”
The entire interview is transcribed online.
