Country music.
country music is a type of folk music in North America. Despite its considerable age, this "rural music" (as the name implies) still finds a lot of listeners.
The vast majority of Russian youth associate Russian folk song with old women and old men singing to accompaniment. Country folk music in the US competes with pop music on about the same level.
Country music. A bit of history.
Country music is a variety of North American folklore. It includes both the songs of the cowboys of the Wild West, and the music of the white settlers who left the Old World in XVII - XVIII centuries. Acoustic guitar, violin and mandolin are the foundational instruments of country music. Under the influence of musical Negro culture, the banjo and are also widely used here.
Songs and ballads in the country style tend to stick to the themes of rural folklore. The most common themes of such songs are unhappy love, hard working days and loneliness.
The poet Harlen Howard, who wrote many hits in this style, said about country music that it consists
"of three chords and truthfulness."
The main styles of country music are:
- western swing based on Dixieland principles and arrangements;
- bluegrass;
- country and western, describing the life of the Wild West.
In the fifties of the twentieth century, country, along with gospel and rhythm and blues, contributed to the creation of rock and roll and rockabilly.
Russian country music performers. Group "Corn".
The Corn group is perhaps the most famous country music group. The group received its official status in 1986. Although the history of the group began in the seventies, with the student ensemble "Ornament".
In 2000, as part of the Hawaiian beat group, I happened to play in the Moscow Ku-Ku club near the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station. The musicians of the "Corn" group were directly related to this club. I well remember that the club was very stylishly decorated in the spirit of the saloon of the era of the Wild West.
And who does not remember the wonderful song "Sing, Vasya!". At one of our student parties, one of the participants used a lot. He could no longer get up, and he couldn’t sleep because of us. Since we were quite noisy, and the radio yelled at full volume. Finally, he pleaded, "Don't make noise!" And the radio at that moment sang to him in response:
“But no one thought to make noise, Vasya sang, because you can’t not sing!”
After that, of course, we fell to the floor in hysterical laughter.
Country music in the work of the beat-group "Hawaiians".
country music was also reflected in the work of the Hawaiian beat group. And in a rather non-standard and unusual way. We can say that it was with country music that the history of this wonderful band began.
In June 1995, Oleg Knizhnik, the future leader of the Hawaiians, called me. He offered to record fourteen country songs, which he wrote in five days. I agreed immediately after listening to the songs. That's how good they were.
None of us really knew how to play back then. Yes, and the opportunities for recording were very modest. We had only two Soviet-made microphones. We put these microphones on the table and sat around them. And they wrote it down like this. And the resulting album was called "Good Man", after the title of one of the songs.
On the recording we used maracas, a harmonica and three acoustic guitars. One of the guitars was connected to an amplifier and used instead of a bass guitar or a slide guitar. It turned out wild, but cute.
The themes and harmonies of the songs were very close to the origins of country music. You can draw a conclusion about this already by the titles of the songs: “Cattle death”, “Cossack”, “American dream”, “Field mouse gobbled up the whole crop”, “Fur coat-oak-country”, “In Kentucky”, “Ride me, dad, on a horse" and the like. However, for true connoisseurs of country music, these songs looked like obvious banter and mockery. Basically, they were. But for us to perform these songs was a real pleasure. Too many of them turned out to be fun and positive.
In the student environment of our city, this recording was a great success. And in the fall of the same 1995, Oleg wrote eleven more similar songs: “In our chicken coop”, “Goose George”, “Grizzly Bears”. The latter, according to Oleg, is written in the style of "country chaos". The album was called "Oh, I'll trample!"
In the second album, a duet was even recorded, where my own sister acted as a singer. The song was called "You walk me home." In one of the verses of this song, on behalf of the male character, the following words sounded:
“I’ll give you a corncob, don’t think that this is a transparent hint!”.
It was with these records that the history of the Hawaiian beat group began. The name, by the way, was invented during the recording of the first album. We associated our musical delights with the performance of Captain Vrungel and Fuchs in the Hawaiian Islands. Therefore, on the cassette with the recording it was written: “Semyon Fearless and the Hawaiian trio”.
Subsequently, we quite seriously exploited these songs. Ours sounded especially good on. And our audience has always accepted these songs with a bang.