Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz

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The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to

Jazz AgeRon Briley

a

a Sandia Preparatory School, Albuquerque

Version of record first published: 07 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Ron Briley (2010): The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz Age, Popular

Music and Society, 33:1, 107-108

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007760903478564

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Book Reviews

The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz Age

JEFFREY J. NOONAN

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008

ISSN: 978-1934110188

239 pp., $50.00 (cloth)

As Jeffrey J. Noonan, classical guitarist and associate professor of music at Southeast

Missouri State University, acknowledges in his introduction to The Guitar in America,the guitar is usually interpreted as a folk instrument, “its repertoire an oral tradition,

its heroes and heroines unschooled troubadours who used their instruments, as

Woody Guthrie used his, to fight fascism, as well as racism, sexism, colonialism, and

commercialism. In this history, the guitar, an equal opportunity instrument, was a

social and cultural leveler” (3). Instead, Noonan focuses his history of the guitar in

late 19th- and early 20th-century America upon professionally trained musicians who

studied and performed formally composed pieces. He perceives the guitar as a

cultivated instrument of upper-class European origins. It is a long way from “guitar

hero,” but Noonan’s study certainly broadens our appreciation of this unique

instrument which enjoys a place in the concert hall as well as around the campfire.

In the post-Civil War period, the guitar, according to Noonan, replaced the more

expensive piano as a symbol of respectable music for the lower middle class. The

status and place of the guitar was challenged in the 1880s by the banjo, although the

latter instrument’s association with minstrel shows made it unacceptable to many

members of the bourgeoisie. Banjo manufacturer Samuel Swaim Stewart insisted that

the banjo was an instrument for and developed by whites rather than African

Americans. Stewart also maintained that the banjo should replace the guitar, which

was old-fashioned, difficult to play, and of foreign origins. Nevertheless, many

Americans continued to perceive the guitar as the more cultivated instrument.Manufacturers such as Stewart thus attempted to associate the banjo with the

guitar, and music publishers and manufacturers combined a trio of “plectral”

instruments into the BMG (guitar, banjo, and mandolin) movement. In order to

encourage this musical innovation in both the concert hall and middle-class parlor,

the music industry used trade journals, such as S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal

(Philadelphia) and Crescendo (Boston), to promote the BMG movement nationally

from the 1880s into the 1920s. Noonan’s work is based upon a detailed study of these

trade publications, leading the musical historian to conclude, “Although late in the

twentieth century the guitar became an instrument of the social outsider, these

ISSN 0300-7766 (print)/ISSN 1740-1712 (online)DOI: 10.1080/03007760903478564

Popular Music and Society Vol. 33, No. 1, February 2010, pp. 107–138

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magazines confirm that during the BMG era the guitar was a middle-class instrument

used to instill and reinforce the cultural and musical values of America’s mainstream”

(22). The BMG trade publications consistently sought to associate the movement with

white progressivism, but many of the leading performers and composers reflected a

more diverse audience and culture. Justin Holland was an African Americancelebrated for his method books, while Spanish-born Luis T. Romero captivated

concert halls in Boston.

Perhaps the most acclaimed American guitarists of the early 20th century, however,

were William Foden and Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, “the grand lady of the guitar.”

While the popularity of Olcott-Bickford demonstrated the appeal of the guitar to

young middle-class women, the classical style preferred by Foden and Olcott-Bickford

eventually led to a split within the BMG movement and its waning influence upon the

American musical scene. The more popular strain in the movement turned toward

amplification and jazz, while more classical players preferred the influence of

European guitarists such as Andrés Segovia. Thus, Noonan concludes that the BMG

movement failed to reconcile the gap between popular and elite musical tastes.

Noonan’s volume is written in a clear fashion, easily accessible to the general reader

as well as the trained musician. The Guitar in America is well researched in the pages of

the BMG trade journals, and the volume includes numerous illustrations from these

publications. In the final analysis, Noonan acknowledges that his approach is greatly

influenced by the father of American music history, Oscar Sonneck, who insisted that

American music must be interpreted as the intersection between art and commerce.

While the guitar as rebel symbol seems to challenge the primacy of this relationship,

many folk and rock guitarists have attained considerable commercial success andrewards. Noonan’s work certainly does not supplant the outsider image of the guitar

rebel, but it suggests that the history of the guitar is more complex than often

portrayed in popular culture.

R ON BRILEY

Sandia Preparatory School, Albuquerque

q 2010 Ron Briley

Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian AmericaMIMI THI NGUYEN and THUY LINH NGUYEN TU (Eds)

Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2007

376 pp., $84.95 (cloth); $23.95 (pb)

Popular culture has proven to be a vexing point of reference for Asian-American

scholars concerned with the role of media in shaping discourses of identity, national

belonging, and cultural memory. Since US popular culture has been openly hostile

(although more often simply indifferent) to Asian-American subjects, much space has

been devoted to supporting the work of Asian-American artists, writers, filmmakers,

108 Book Reviews

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Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz