top of page
What is Americana Music?
Americana is a "catch-all term for songs that are influenced, in part, by the indigent, rural, acoustic traditions of the American South."
Including, but not limited to, Blues, Bluegrass, Alt-Country, Old-time, and Folk
Around 2010, this music began making a comeback in the mainstream world of popular music. Bands like Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers became household names, but the music they were playing was quite different from popular music of the day. Music festivals like Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival are selling out every year because of line-ups that feature many of these types of Americana bands.
What contributed to the resurgence of Americana music that started in approximately 2010?
1) Authenticity
2) The Combination of the soundtrack to O' Brother Where Art Thou and the events of September 11, 2001
In the book Country Music Goes to War, Aaron A. Fox tackled the subject of "alternative country" in a chapter titled "Alternative to What?" In the chapter, Fox claimed that this aspect of American culture is partially a result of the soundtrack to O' Brother Where Art Thou as well as the events of September 11th.
Fox argued, "In the United States, alternative country looms large in the current phase of cultural reflection on ‘country,’ vernacularity, and ‘roots’ in the mass media, as the essence of the American national popular has been problematized by all the effects implied by ‘globalization’ and the emergence of a ‘post-industrial’ social order.”
Signifiers of Americana Music:
The Instruments - Guitar,
Banjo, Piano, Fiddle, Mandolin,
Steel-slide, Upright Bass
The Attire - dress shoes/boots,
slacks, white button-up shirts,
vests, fedoras, skinny ties,
suspenders
The Lumineers
Other bands that represented this change:
Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, Grace Potter and The Nocturnals, Of Monsters and Men, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, The Civil Wars, Ben Howard, The Avett Brothers, Trampled By Turtles, The Punch Brothers, Shovel and Rope.
The Avett Brothers
The music is comparable to a feeling, where you "pick up some instruments, write what you feel, sing what you feel, and you can't go wrong."
"It's music that's made and delivered earnestly... It's making something that people think is real."
People searching for this "real" music find Americana appealing because, at it's root, is singer/songwriters who play their own music.
These musicians are writing their own songs and playing the instruments. In an age of auto-tune and over production in the studio, these bands are playing "real" music.
"There is something nice about listening to music where you KNOW that the instruments are being played in real time, by real people." -
Fox explained that the effects of 9/11 created an “obvious outburst of nationalism and cultural nostalgia.” That event, combined with the success of the O’ Brother Where Art Thou album brought the “roots” music to the forefront, giving the American people a comforting experience of nostalgia that they were actively seeking out.
His argument , has value because the cultural revolution of Americana really began to take hold almost a decade later. Within the time between 2001 and 2010, artists that were coming up and discovering their own sound, were influenced by this nostalgia effect.
bottom of page