As you might be able to tell from the last few weeks, alongside art and Everest disasters, I have quite an interest in music history. Certainly, there’s a parallel universe in which I decided to become an ethnomusicologist (and still struggle with limited job prospects.) As we’ve discussed already, it's clear that America’s melting pot of culture also made the perfect crucible for new innovations in music. Michigan, in particular Detroit, was at the forefront of the creation of many modern and beloved music genres. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Michigan who is unaware of Motown, however, there is certainly an abundance of music history throughout the entire state.
The timeline begins with Indigenous North Americans. Specifically for Michigan, the Eastern Woodlands culture, such as those who inhabited the Dumaw Creek Site in Pentwater, is closely related to their descendants, the tribes of the Anishinaabe people group - Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. Through no small effort and bravery on their part, Native Americans have preserved their traditional music despite centuries of colonization and forced assimilation, allowing scholars to study the features of their music today. Much of this music is reliant on complex rhythms, played on percussion instruments such as drums and shakers. Melodies are arranged in an anhemitonic scale (commonly utilized in the music of Central and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Celtic and other Native American cultures) and played on flutes, whistles and sung, often in call-and-response.
Today, you can find Pow Wows across the state that will feature performances of this traditional music, but there are also several modern Anishinaabe bands who blend traditional music with genres such as rock and metal. Not only is Anishinaabe music far from extinct, but it is ever-evolving and even thriving in niche music circuits.
Some of the first Europeans to come to the Great Lakes were French explorers, and fur-trapping French-Canadians - known as voyageurs — greatly influenced the early years of our state’s music history. Voyageurs brought traditional music from the French countryside, as well as created their own songs to keep time on long canoe travels. Typical instruments included fiddles and simple and imrpovisory percussion, such as hand-drums and spoons. Call-and-response was common as well, as it is in work-songs across many cultures, and if you give the music a listen, it is very similar to Cajun music in Louisiana, a culture with similar French origins. One way you can experience live performances is by attending voyageur reenactments, a hobby I can see my dad picking up when he retires.
Of course, there are also the multitudes of Northern and Central European immigrants, such as the Finnish and Polish, with the latter influencing the polka crazes of the 19th and 20th century. To be fair, I’m not sure the craze has ever diminished in Michigan, judging by the sheer amount of polka records I find at antique shops and estate sales. Migration within the U.S. borders was also a significant factor in how Michigan’s folk music evolved, with Appalachian and Southern laborers coming to answer the call of Michigan’s manufacturing industry. African Americans who came north following the Great Migration during the early 20th century would have a profound impact on jazz and blues in Detroit.
Many traditional folk songs with Michigan origins have to do with the state’s major industries in the 19th century, such as Great Lakes maritime merchantry and logging. Great Lakes maritime music is a close cousin of the usual whaling and sailing shanties that suddenly became popular a couple years ago (I’d like to point out that I listened to Stan Rogers before it was cool), and frequent subjects were that of the Great Lakes’ infamous weather and shipwrecks. Sailors weren’t the only ones to engage in music on the job, as lumberjacks also have a repertoire of songs sung while working or socializing around a campfire at night.
Many of these old folk songs were preserved by Alan Lomax, a famous ethnomusicologist who traveled the United States in a series of country-wide road trips, making field recordings of traditional music for the Library of Congress. He spent several years in Michigan in the 1930s, visiting various communities across the state, all shaped by their different cultural makeup and local industry. By the time he was finished here, he had 250 completed recording discs and eight reels of film, much of it accessible online today.
For anyone wanting to experience this music now, there is no shortage of folk festivals to check out. Locally, Pow Wows are held on Labor Day weekend at the Oceana County Fairgrounds, Hart’s Hispanic Heritage Celebration is typically in September and the Michigan Irish Music Festival is also held in early September in Muskegon. Outside of that, there’s the Hoxeyville Music Festival, Wheatland Music Festival and the Hiawatha Traditional Music Festival. Personally, I can vouch for the folk performances hosted at The Ark music venue in Ann Arbor. Really, there’s no shortage of music in Michigan.
We’ve essentially set the scene of Michigan’s music - a conglomeration of cultures from across North America and Europe, African American and Appalachian migration, and a wide catalogue of work songs. I am now totaling over 800 of my allotted 1,000 words, so let’s save the 1950s and onwards for next week. Afterwards, I am also strongly considering taking deep dives into individual topics, because I really did miss my calling working as an ethnomusicologist for the Smithsonian Folkways recording project. Alas, I was born 90 years too late. But if you’d like to help me play pretend as Alan Lomax, feel free to share your musical knowledge with the Oceana Echo or even come and visit so I can record you singing on my very historic iPhone.
