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Unique American Culture And Blue Ridge Folk Music

The Unique American Culture and Blue Ridge Folk Music

Class:Regional American Culture
When we define American culture, we use “Melting pot” which describes unique characteristic of American culture. Many people from diverse countries are living in America. As they have lived together, they made distinct culture that all of culture each people have is conflated. Above all, the conflated culture makes new culture which has ever existed before so that we regard American culture as “Melting pot”. Thanks to this cultural trait, Americans could create unique their own culture. However in these days, people don’t use “Melting pot” instead, they use “Salad bowl” because people think each culture coexists in the one cultural bowl rather than they are melted. The reason why I explain these “melting pot” and “salad bowl” culture is because I think the Blue Ridge folk music can be explained by these cultural characteristic. Actually not only Blue Ridge folk music but also many traditional American cultures were formed through the way that many culture was mixed. For example, the celtic is fusion music which is based on traditional Irish music and combined many other music genres from country music and folk music to recent new age. For this reason it is made by using traditional Irish instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin, accordion, and more with various elements of modern music for example electric guitar. The background of the celtic is also due to America’s immigrant history. Because of the potato famine, over half of Irish population emigrated to the U.S or died from 1845 to 1850. There is another example that shows result of immigrant history. Chicano music is mixture of diverse music made by among immigrants in California. Like this American culture has been made by diverse constituents. For this reason, I wonder how Blue Ridge music was conflated with other culture and American’s attitude toward those mixed cultures.
First of all, I...