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Imagery & Stereotyping Explained |
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How some people try to distance themselves from these images |
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| Before
the invention of recording technology, and for
about three decades thereafter, songs were popularized
through the publication and distribution of sheet
music. In the United States, beginning about 1885,
the sheet music industry was centered in an area
of Manhattan that came to be known as "Tin
Pan Ally," possibly because of the cacophony
of sound that would emanate from the various piano
parlors throughout the neighborhood. Tin Pan Alley
was originally a specific place, West 28th Street
between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. To be able
to hear the music, it had to be played by the
consumer, usually on the piano, and accompanied
by a vocalist. The photograph to the right was
taken in 1898 and depicts such a scene. It seems
logical to assume that the ability to read and
play music was for more prevalent then than it
is today. Sheet music was enormously
popular in the early Twentieth Century. It was
often loaned to family and friends, as evidenced
by the practice of the owner writing his name
on the cover. Around the end of the Nineteenth
Century, sheet music began to use artwork on the
front covers of their publications, greatly increasing
the appeal and collectibility of the product.
The commercial availability of recorded music
began in the late Nineteenth Century in the form
of cylinders, and then with one-sided flat discs
that spun at speeds of 78 revolutions per minute
or more. The popularity of these recordings would
eventually bring about the decline and fall of
the sheet music empire, but not until the 1940s. |
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| In the search for suitable subject matter,
writers in Tin Pan Alley created a genre of music called
the Indian Intermezzo. These instrumental works were
written as interludes between larger pieces of music
that made up a musical score for an opera or play. Accompanied
by beautiful sheet music cover artwork, these Indian
Intermezzos and other stand-alone instrumental pieces
embraced the noble savage stereotype, especially the
Indian Princess, and further romanticized the American
wilderness that has only recently become part of American
history. The Native American, in his natural, unspoiled
habitat, was as much a part of the mythic American past
as the virgin forests and the vast expanses of the Great
Plains. |
 = lyrics
 = sound |
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