Timeline of music in the United States (1880 - 1919)

This is a timeline of music in the United States from 1880 to 1919.__NOTOC__

1880

*George Upton's "Women in Music" is the "first of many articles and reviews by prominent male critics which sought to trivialize and undermine the achievements of what was considered an alarming number of new women composers in the realm of 'serious' classical music". [Hinkle-Turner, pg. 1]
*The Native American Sun Dance is banned.
*John Knowles Paine's second symphony, "In Spring", premiers in Boston, and is "received with unparalleled success". [Chase, pg. 342]
*Gussie Lord Davis has his first hit with "We Sat Beneath the Maple on the Hill", making him the first African American songwriter to succeed in Tin Pan Alley. [Southern, pg. 242]
*Patrick Gilmore's Twenty-Second Regimental Band becomes the first fully-professional ensemble of any kind in the country to be engaged in performances full-time, year-round. [Hansen, pg. 223]

1881

*Henry Lee Higginson forms the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Higginson would personally run the Orchestra for almost four decades.Crawford, pg. 311] cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Overview of Music in the United States|last=Kearns|first=Williams|pages=519-553]
*The Thomas B. Harms music publishing company is established solely to publish popular music, then referring to parlor music.Cockrell, Dale and Andrew M. Zinck, "Popular Music of the Parlor and Stage", pgs. 179 - 201, in the "Garland Encyclopedia of World Music"]
*"Music and Some Highly Musical People: Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, With Portraits", by James M. Trotter is the first revisionist look at the minstrel show, chronicling the "extraordinary breadth of black musicianship". [Darden, pgs. 123-124]
*Tony Pastor becomes an established theater owner on 14th Street in New York City, where he becomes the first person "to bid... for women customers in the variety theater," bringing that field out of "disreputable saloons" and transforming it "into decent entertainment that respectable women could enjoy". [Chase, pgs. 363-364] [Hansen, pg. 233]

1882

*Theodore Baker's "Über die Musik de nordamerikanischen Wilden" is the first scholarly work to study Native American music; [Crawford, pg. 383] [Chase, pg. 395 calls it the "first quasi-scientific treatise on North American Indian music".] [Levine, pg. xxxv] [Nicholls, pg. 28] It is Baker's doctoral dissertation, on Seneca music, at the University of Liepzig. [Crawford, pg. 383]
*The Fisk University Jubilee Singers become the first black choir to perform at the White House, at the invitation of President Chester A. Arthur. [ [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/06/20080617-10.html President Bush Honors Black Music Month] ]
*A chorded zither called the autoharp is patented in the United States.Seeger, Anthony and Paul Théberg, "Technology and Media", pgs. 235 - 249, in the "Garland Encyclopedia of World Music"]
*Rev. Marshall W. Taylor's "Plantation Melodies, Book of Negro Folk Songs" becomes the first collection of spiritual, put together by an African American. [Darden, pg. 126]
*The Bethany Oratorio Society is formed in Lindsborg, Kansas, where a famous annual Easter performance of Handel's "Messiah" is shown today. [Burk, Meierhoff and Phillips, pg. 183]
*The Chinese Exclusion Act greatly limits the immigration of Chinese people to the United States, amid a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment, leading to a reduction in Chinese musical practices.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Chinese Music|last=Zheng|first=Su|pages=957-966]
*Yiddish theatre begins its period of greatest popularity and influence. [Heskes, pg. 86]

1893

*Alice Fletcher begins her prolific scholarly career with a study of the music of the Omaha tribe of Native Americans. [Crawford, pg. 396] [Chase, pg. 396] The study, done with the assistance of Francis La Flesche, took ten years to complete.
*World's Columbian Exposition attracts attention to the Chicago ragtime scene, led by patriarch Plunk Henry and exemplified in performance at the Exposition by Johnny Seymour [Southern, pg. 329] and Scott Joplin [Crawford, pg. 539] Violinist Joseph Douglass achieves wide recognition after his performance there, and will become the first African American violinist to conduct a transcontinental tour, and the first to tour as a concert violinist. [Southern, pg. 283] cite web|title=Black String Musicians: Ascending the Scale|author=Caldwell Titcomb|journal=Black Music Research Journal|volume=10|issue=1|month=Spring|year=1990|pages=107-112|publisher=Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/779543|accessdate=May 17|accessyear=2008] The first Indonesian music performance in the United States is believed to occur at the Exposition.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Indonesian Music|last=Diamond|first=Beverly|coauthors=Barbara Benary|pages=1011-1023] At the same event, an ensemble of musicians with a dancer known as Little Egypt, is the first exposure to Middle Eastern culture for many Americans,cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Middle Eastern Music|first=Anne K.|last=Rasmussen|pages=1028-1041] while a group of "hula" dancers leads to an increased awareness of Hawaiian music among Americans throughout the country.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Polynesian Music|last=Stillman|first=Amy Ku'uleialoha|pages=1047-1053]
*Katherine Lee Bates writes "America the Beautiful" at Pike's Peak, Colorado. Though "The Star-Spangled Banner" will be chosen, "America the Beautiful" will be the other major option for a national anthem when it is chosen in 1931. [Clarke, pg. 16]
*Czech composer Antonin Dvorak calls spirituals "all that is needed for a great and noble school of music". [Darden, pg. 7]
*Jane Adams' Hull House in Chicago is the first music school connected to the settlement work. [Burk, Meierhoff and Phillips, pg. 284]
*Philosopher Richard Wallaschek sparks the "origins" controversy when he puts forth the claim that African American spirituals are primarily derived from European music. [Burnim and Maultsby, pg. 11] This will not be solved conclusively until the 1960s, when scholars showed that spirituals were "grounded in African-derived music values yet shaped into its distinctiveness as a direct result of the North American sociocultural experience".Cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Overview|last=Maultsby|first=Portia K.|coauthors=Mellonee V. Burnin and Susan Oehler|pages=572-591]
*The first Chinese opera theater in New York City is opened in Chinatown.
*The murder of Ellen Smith in Mount Airy, North Carolina leads to the composition of "Poor Ellen Smith", set to the melody of "How Firm a Foundation"; the subsequent controversy regarding the trial of Peter DeGraff for her murder leads to the song's spread across the state, so much so that Forsyth County, North Carolina banned the singing of "Poor Ellen Smith". [Erbsen, pg. 134]
*Ruthven Lang's "Dramatic" Overture is presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, marking the first time that institution had performed the work of an American woman composer.Chase, pg. 384]

1911

*Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche publish "The Omaha Tribe", a monograph that documents the music and culture of the Omaha; it is often called the first ethnomusicological work. [Crawford, pg. 399]
*Irving Berlin's "That Mysterious Rag" is the first ragtime song to not revolve around explicitly black lyrical themes. Berlin shifts to describing his work in this style as "syncopated", rather than "ragtime". [Crawford, pg. 546] His "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is "conspiciously representative" of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters, [Chase, pg. 421] and brings about a "brief revival of interest in (ragtime)" despite being the "swan song" of the ragtime era. [Southern, pg. 330]
*Charles Griffes moves away from a German Romantic style and towards a more free-form style that comes to include French, East Asian and other influences. [Crawford, pgs. 555-556]
*The first permanent orchestra is established in San Francisco.Crawford, pg. 581]
*The term "barbershop quartet" comes into usage with the release of "Mr. Jefferson, Lord, Play That Barbershop Chord". [Darden, pg. 135]
*The Victor Gramophone Company hires Frances E. Clark to create educational materials that could be sold alongside recordings, for the purpose of music education.
*Henry Cowell's "Adventures in Harmony" is premiered in San Francisco, an early use of tone clusters in the field of classical music. [Chase, pg. 457]
*Mary Carr Moore compoes "Narcissa", with a libretoo by her mother, Sarah Pratt Carr, which is "very likely the first grand opera to be composed, scored, and then conducted by an American woman". [Chase, pg. 544]
*A private performance of "Treemonisha" by Scott Joplin is the first of an African American "folk opera written by a black composer". [Southern, pg. 222]
*Raymond Lawson becomes the first known African American pianist to perform concertos with a symphony orchestra, the Hartford Symphony. [Southern, pg. 284]
*Victor Herbert's "Natoma" is the first American opera to display "verismo" (realism).
*The United States Army's bandmaster school is founded at Fort Jay on Governor's Island in New York, [http://bands.army.mil/history/default.asp?chapter=16 U.S. Army Bands] ] led by Walter Darmosch and directed by Arthur A. Clappe. [Hansen, pg. 247]

1912

*W. C. Handy publishes "The Memphis Blues", [http://usinfo.state.gov/infousa/life/artsent/sijazz/blues.htm Spotlight Biography: William Christian Handy] ] a song he had written for the mayoral campaign of Edward Hull Crump; [Malone and Stricklin, pg. 45] [cite book|title=Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=Politics|pages=299 - 294|first=John|last=Street] its publication creates "an unprecedented vogue" for blues-styled songs, and made Handy's band the most popular in Memphis. [Southern, pg. 338] Earlier in the year, the first blues texts to be published were Artie Matthews's "Baby Seal Blues" and Hart A. Wand's "Dallas Blues". [Southern, pg. 339] [Some authors, like Upkopodu, pg. 75, call "The Memphis Blues" the first published blues composition.]
*Community dance halls begin to grow more common, as a number of new dances become a part of the American music scene. [Crawford, pg. 546; "Crawford points out that this leads to dancing becoming an integral part of popular music in the United States, and that more than 100 new dances were introduced between 1912 and 1914."]
*The All-Kansas Music Competition Festival becomes the first contest devoted to music in schools. [Hansen, pg. 247]
*Leopold Stokowski becomes the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, becoming well-known for his showmanship.Crawford, pg. 585]
*James Reese Europe presents the first Concert of Negro Music at Carnegie Hall, the first "organized attempt" to showcase African American music for mainstream audiences in New York. [cite journal|journal=The Black Perspective in Music|title=Black Music Concerts in Carnegie Hall, 1912-1915|year=1978| [ages=71-88|volume=6]
*Lydia Parrish begins going to St. Simons Island in the Sea Islands of Georgia, eventually founding the Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia. [Darden, pg. 71]
*Within a week of the sinking of the "Titanic", songs have been composed about the disaster, one being a ballad being sold by a black, seemingly blind, preacher to A. E. Perkins. [Darden, pg. 143]
*Cyrus H. K. Curtis gives the first public recital of organ music in the United States, in Portland, Maine. [Burk, Meierhoff and Phillips, pg. 280]
*George Whitefield Chadwick's opera "The Padrone" is rejected by the Metroplitan Opera on the basis that it was "probably too real to life" in its portrayal of "life among the humble Italians". The opera takes place in "the seamy side of Boston (which) Chadwick was the first to dramatize... musically and realistically". [Chase, pg. 390] It is among the earliest American operas to present its subject realistically.
*John Stillwell Stark publishes "Standard High-Class Rags", a collection of ragtime songs arranged for small orchestra. It will eventually become known as "The Red-Backed Book of Rags", "and as such it (will be) a wellspring of the 1970s ragtime revival". [Chase, pg. 423]
*Helen Hagan becomes the first African American pianist to matriculate from Yale University with a Bachelor of Music, and is also the first to win the Sanford Fellowship. [Southern, pg. 284]
*David I. Martin and Helen Elise Smith found the Martin-Smith School of Music, "one of the most important black musical institutions" of the era. [Southern, pgs. 288-289]
*A series of concerts begin to be held in New York, sponsored by the Clef Club and the Music School Settlement for Colored; these attract large, mixed-race audiences, and inspire other similar concerts in cities around the country. The most remarkable feature is the use of mandolin, banjo and other elements of African American folk culture by the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra. [Southern, pg. 292]
*The first piano-roll recordings of African American performs are made by the QRS company, a subsidiary of the Melville Clark Piano Company. [Southern, pg. 310]

1913

*The word "jazz" is used in print for the first time, in San Francisco in reference to "speed and excitement" in a game of baseball. [Crawford, pg. 566] The word's first use to describe a genre of music this year as well, in the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) in New York. [Southern, pg. 366]
*The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is formed to take advantage of recent changes in copyright law on behalf of composers of music, specifically by collecting royalties from public performances of music.
*Frances Densmore's research constitutes the most extensive description of traditional Ojibwe music,cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|last=Romero|first=Brenda M.|chapter=Great Lakes|pages=451-460] and the "largest collection ever published from one tribe". [Chase, pg. 397]
*Ragtime is a major part of a brief craze for social dancing, which spurs the rise of two well-known dancers, Vernon and Irene Castle. They work with James Reese Europe, whose band becomes the first African American dance band to receive a recording contract, recording "Down Home Rag" this year. Europe and the Castles are best known for introducing the castle walk and fox trot dances to the United States.Jones, pg. 111]
*The Italian Luigi Russolo publishes "L'arte dei rumori", "in which he (views) the evolution of modern music as parallel to that of industrial machinery", a basis for futurism, a movement "identified with technology and the urban-industrial environment... "seeking to enlarge and enrich the domain of sounds in all categories". [Chase, pg. 449] The foremost proponent of futurism in the United States is Leo Ornstein, who composes "Dwarf Suite" this year; it is the first of his "anarchistic" and highly dissonant pieces. [Chase, pg. 450]
*The "first black theater circuit" is founded by Sherman H. Dudley. It will lead to the creation of the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA). [Southern, pg. 298]
*Robert Nathaniel Dett becomes the first African American director of music at Hampton Institute in Virginia. [Southern, pg. 278]
*James Mundy begins founding community groups in Chicago, and staging "mammoth concerts" at the Coliseum and Orchestra Hall. Choruses led by Mundy and J. Wesley Jones will sing at "all important occasions in Chicago that called for the participation of blacks" into the 1930s, when the duo's choruses attracted wide attention for their rivalry. [Southern, pg. 295]
*Bill Johnson founds the Original Creole Orchestra featuring Freddie Keppard, who become the first African American dance band to make transcontinental tours, on the vaudeville circuit. This band carries the "jazz of New Orleans to the rest of the nation". [Southern, pg. 345]
*Harry Pace and W.C. Handy found the first black-owned music publishing firm. [Moore, pg. xii]
*Thomas Edison forms a disc company, essentially conceding to the new format rather than his long-time business of cylinders. [cite book|title=The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=Cylinders|pages=508-509|first=Andre|last=Millard]
*"Billboard" begins publishing information on the relative success of sheet music for various songs.

1914

*The operetta ends its period of dominating the Broadway stage.
*The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is founded to ensure that composers are paid for performances of their work. [Darden, pg. 199] There are 170 charter members, of whom, six are black: Will Tyers, Harry T. Burleigh, Will Marion Cook, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|last=Garofalo|first=Reebee|pages=705-715]
*W. C. Handy publishes "St. Louis Blues", "the most widely popular and enduring commercial success of all blues songs"Crawford, pg. 538] It will carry "the blues all over the world". [Southern, pg. 338]
*Dance is becoming a major part of social life in New York and other cities, while certain dancers become national symbols, including Vernon and Irene Castle, and Maurice Mouvet and Florence Walton. [Crawford, pg. 547] The Castles' recordings are with James Reese Europe's Syncopated Society Orchestra, the first black ensemble with a recording contract. [Chase, pg. 333] [Southern, pg. 347]
*The Boston Symphony Orchestra hosts the American premier of Arnold Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra", a composition that experimented with atonality and other new elements; the premier scandalized the musical establishment of Boston. [Crawford, pg. 569; "Crawford notes that the event was so controversial that it was still a topic of conversation among the Harvard University faculty in 1919, when Virgil Thomson began studying there."]
*The United States Department of Education declares itself "on a 'rescue mission' for folk songs and ballads, in the belief that they were an endangered species". [Crawford, pg. 604; Quotes in original, cited to Myers]
*R. Nathaniel Dett composes and publishes one of the first "anthemized" versions of a spiritual, specifically "Listen to the Lambs". [Darden, pgs. 134-135]
*The first permanent professional orchestra is established in Baltimore.
*The Hardanger Violinist Association of America is established in Ellsworth, Wisconsin to preserve and celebrate the traditions of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. The Association's main activities are fiddling contests known as "kappleikar".
*Jewish American choirs begin springing up in urban areas across the country, many of them associated with socialism.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Jewish Music|last=Slobin|first=Mark|pages=933-945]
*James P. Johnson publishes "Carolina Shout", the song that will make him famous and launch his career as one of the big composers of Eastern ragtime. [Chase, pg. 423]
*Joseph Douglass becomes the first violinist to record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company, but the results are never released. [Southern, pg. 283]
*Nicola A. Montani organizes the Society of St. Gregory of America to assist in implementing the musical reforms of the "Motu proprio" encyclical issued by Pope Pius X in 1903.
*Tom Brown becomes the first white jazz performer to leave New Orleans to make a career in Chicago. [Souchon, pg. 43]

1915

*The Panama-Pacific Exposition is held in San Francisco, and Hawaiian performances lead to unprecedented interest for Hawaiian music, as well as the ukulele and the Hawaiian guitar, which eventually becomes the steel guitar used primarily in country music. The song "On the Beach at Waikiki" is usually credited with sparking the craze.
*Jerome Kern receives his first "major success with a musical comedy", with "Very Good Eddie" with lyrics by Schuyler Greene and a libretto by Guy Bolton, based on a farce written by Phillip Bartholomae. [Chase, pg. 375]
*The score for the film "The Birth of a Nation", composed by Joseph Carl Breil, launches the idea of a written film score being a musical work in its own right. [cite book|chapter=Film music|title=New Grove Dictionary of Music, Volume II: E - K|first=Fred|last=Steiner|coauthors=Martin Marks]
*"Jelly Roll Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton becomes the first published jazz arrangement. Morton, one of the first jazz pianists, [Jones, pg. 146] will come to be regarded as "the first true jazz composer" in that he was probably the first to write down his jazz arrangements in musical notation. [Southern, pg. 382]
*Melville Charlton becomes the first African American to become an associate in the American Guild of Organists. [Southern, pg. 286]
*Marie Lucas' Famous Ladies Orchestra begins performing, soon making Lucas the best known of the "female leaders of syncopated orchestras". [Southern, pg. 349]
*Charles Demuth begins a series of jazz-themed paintings that are a "definitive contribution to the early history of jazz. [Southern, pg. 366]
*Tom Brown forms a white band, Brown's Dixieland Jass Band, for the Lamb's Club in Chicago; this dance orchestra was the first group to "formally introduce the music called jazz or jazz" to white Americans. African American ensembles did not use the word "jazz" consistently until the 1920s. [Southern, pg. 366]
*African Americans begin moving North in large numbers, bring with them their distinctive forms of music. [Southern, pg. 367]
*The founding "Musical Quarterly", with Oscar Sonneck as chief editor, gives musicologists their first "specialized forum" in the country.

1916

*Harry T. Burleigh arranges a series of spirituals, artistically composed to fit within the Western classical hymn and aria traditions, [Darden, pg. 135] in "Jubilee Songs of the United States of America". He is the first to arrange a spiritual for solo voice, and is also credited with "starting the practice of closing recitals with a group of spirituals".
*Lucie Campbell becomes the music director of the National Baptist Convention's Sunday School and the Union Congress of the Baptist Young People; during her career, she will compose a number of important hymns, including "Heavenly Sunshine", "Something Within", "He Understands, He'll Say 'Well Done'" and "The King's Highway". [Darden, pg. 163]
*Victor Herbert writes the first full-length score for a motion picture, for "The Fall of a Nation". [Burk, Meierhoff and Phillips, pg. 268]
*English folklorist Cecil Sharp begins collecting Scottish and English folk songs in the Appalachians; many of the songs he documents adhere more closely to traditional British music than actual music in Britain.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Overview|last=Rahkonen|first=Carl|pages=820-830] cite book|title=The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=Song Collecting|pages=43-46|first=Paul|last=Oliver]
*The first Lithuanian American song festival is held, predating the first similar festival in Lithuania by eight years.
*A bookstore in New York is opened by Myron Surmach, becoming one of the major institutions of the Ukrainian American music industry. cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Eastern European Music|last=Levy|first=Mark|pages=908-918]
*Irish American music's commercial recording begins in earnest with the work of Ellen O'Byrne DeWitt in Boston. [Gedutis, pg. 149]
*Ernest Bloch comes to America. His subsequent work will mark "the crux of the Hebraic impact in America's art music". [Chase, pg. 472]
*Sherman Clay begins publishing Hawaiian sheet music in San Francisco, greatly improving distribution for Hawaiian music on the mainland, while Ernest Ka'ai publishes a ukulele instruction book, "The Ukulele: A Hawaiian Guitar and How to Play It", the first of many to come throughout the following decade.
*Cecil Sharp begins collecting folk songs from the southern Appalachian region, and is surprised to discover that the "cult of singing (British) traditional songs is far more alive than it is in England, or has been, for fifty years or more". [Erbsen, pg. 13, quote cited to Sharp's diary]
*Charles A. Tindley's "New Songs of Paradise" is a popular work, [Southern, pg. 458] the "first publication of a collection of gospel hymns written by a black songwriter".
*Emma Azalia Hackley becomes one of the first African Americans to record, though the results are never released. [Southern, pg. 282]
*Nathaniel Clark Smith begins his teaching career at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri. He will go on to pioneer the African American "master teacher" phenomenon, in which a public school teacher contributes an "enormous amount of time to developing the skills of talented young people". Smith becomes a local legend, and his students include many of the "leading jazz and concert artists" of the mid-20th century. [Southern, pgs. 289-290; Southern lists Stanley Lee Henderson (Sumner High School), Walter Dyett (Wendell Phillips High School) and Lincoln High's Alonzo Lewis and William Levi Dawson, as those who followed in Smith's footsteps.]
*John Alden Carpenter's "Concertino for Piano and Orchestra" is the first work by a white composer to use elements of ragtime. [Southern, pg. 331]
*W. Benton Overstreet uses the word "jass" (jazz) in reference to the performers he directed for the vaudevillean Estelle Harris at the Grand Theatre of Chicago. [Southern, pg. 366]
*Congress authorizes the creation of a band for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and headquarters companies.
*Westfield, New Jersey is home to the first contest for students on the memorization of recording works ("music memory contests").

1917

*The U.S. Navy appropriates the St. Thomas Juvenile Band, led by Alton Adams; this is the first black band and bandmaster in the Navy. [Crawford, pg. 466] [Southern, pg. 307] [Hansen, pg. 249]
*The Original Dixieland Jazz Band makes the first jazz recordings, [Southern, pg. 366] [Moore, pg. xii] [Jones, pg. 143] though the white band's style is meant for white audiences with little awareness of African American music practices, and the band is unable to impress black audiences or jazz enthusiasts. [Crawford, pgs. 566-567] [Chase, pg. 507]
*English folk song collector Cecil Sharp publishes an anthology of songs from western North Carolina, "Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians", with Olive Dame Campbell; [Malone and Stricklin, pg. 31] this is the "first major scholarly collection of the mountain people's music". [Crawford, pgs. 600-601]
*The October Revolution in Russia leads to political change, soon resulting in state support for professional, virtuoso balalaika orchestras; these groups come to be seen as "role models" by similar groups in the United States.
*The Supreme Court rules that the "public performance of music contributed to the ability of an establishment to make profits even if no special admission was charged for that music".
*With the United States' entry into World War 1, warrior customs among the Plains Native Americans are briefly revived, as many ceremonies and rituals are allowed, after many years of being banned, for the duration of the war.
*Harry T. Burleigh, one of the most prominent African American composers of his time, publishes "Deep River", the first of many classically arranged spirituals.
*George M. Cohan writes "Over There", which will become the most popular song of World War I. [Chase, pg. 374]
*W. Benton Overstreet's "Jazz Dance", popularized by vaudevillean Estelle Harris at Chicago's Grand Theatre, is an early use of the word "jazz" and is used by "more black vaudeville acts than any other song ever published". [Southern, pg. 366]
*The Navy shuts down Storyville, the prostitution district of New Orleans; the result is an exodus of black musicians, who had played in the bars and clubs of Storyville, to cities like Memphis and Chicago. [Southern, pg. 367] Many of the musicians are hired by Northern bands because their style was considered a novelty that is thought to increase an ensemble's commercial potential; the Northerners, however, tended to adopt the "hot", bluesy style themselves.
*Leo Sowerby, bandmaster of service bands during World War I composes "Tramping Tune". [Hansen, pg. 249]
*W. C. Handy's band makes some of the earliest major recordings by African American artists at a session for the Columbia Phonograph Company.

1918

*Henry Cowell, an ultramodernist, while working under Charles Seeger, writes "New Musical Resources", and "important compositional and theoretical primer".Haskins, Rob, "Orchestral and Chamber Music in the Twentieth Century", pgs. 173 - 178, in the "Garland Encyclopedia of World Music"]
*Charles N. Daniels' "Mickey (Pretty Mickey)" is one of the first pieces of music written expressly for a film, for the movie of the same name starring Mabel Normand.
*The Native American Church, which uses many musical elements in its services, including peyote songs, is formally incorporated.
*The first permanent professional orchestra is established in Cleveland.
*The Million Dollar Theater is opened in Los Angeles, eventually becoming one of the premier avenues for Spanish language performances in the Western hemisphere.
*A Kansas woman named Nora Holt becomes the first African American to complete a Master's Degree education in music, from the Chicago Musical College. [cite web|title=A Moment in Time|url=http://www.kshs.org/features/feat297b.htm|publisher=Kansas Historical Society|accessdate=February 12|accessyear=2008|month=February | year=1997]
*The Pace and Handy Music Company music publishing, a firm for African American composers, co-owned by W. C. Handy, relocates to New York and becomes a leading local institution. [Gates and Appiah, pg. 918]
*Charles Tomlinson Griffes' "Sonata for Piano" is considered his "most original... most complex and ambitious work", and a "powerfully creative and consistently conceived work that (stands) as a peak for neo-Romantic expression in American music for piano". [Chase, pg. 350-351]
*"Shanewis" by Charles Wakefield Cadman is the "most notable" of the Native American-themed operas then popular; it will run for eight shows in two seasons, setting a new American record for opera. [Chase, pg. 545]
*James Reese Europe's band for the 369th Infantry is the only African American military band of World War 1 sent on a special mission to perform for troops on leave in Aix-les-Baines. The band performs throughout the area, and is very well-received. [Southern, pg. 353] The band popularizes ragtime in France. [cite book|title=The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=Tour|pages=567-568|first=Dave|last=Laing|coauthors=John Shepherd]
*E. F. Goldman organizes the "first American competition for serious concert band work". Percy Grainger and Victor Herbert serve as judges. [Hansen, pg. 251]
*North Dakota and Oklahoma become the first states to sponsor band contests. [Hansen, pg. 251]
*Congress, on the suggestion of General John J. Pershing, authorizes the creation of twenty additional bands for the duration of World War 1. Pershing also increases the size of bands to allow for full instrumentation, setting the standard lineup for future military bands, relieves bandsmen of all non-musical duties, and establishes a band school at Chaumont in France. [http://bands.army.mil/history/default.asp?chapter=17 U.S. Army Bands] ]
*The first attempt to cross-promote a song and film comes from 'Mickey", a film whose title song, "Mickey", is written by Charles N. Daniels. [cite book|title=The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=The Film Industry and Popular Music|pages=499-504|first=Jeff|last=Smith]

1919

*Popular bandleader James Reese Europe is murdered; he becomes the first African American honored with a public funeral in New York City. [Crawford, pg. 554]
*Tin Pan Alley publishes songs that spark a fad for blues-like music; these songs include syncopated foxtrots like "Jazz Me Blues", pop songs that were marketed as blues like "Wabash Blues", as well as actual blues songs.Crawford, pg. 562]
*Prohibition begins, driving the consumption of alcohol into secret clubs and other establishments, many of which became associated with the developing genre of jazz. [Crawford, pg. 567]
*The first permanent orchestra is established in Los Angeles.
*Carl Seashore's "Measures of Musical Talent" is a system of assessing musical aptitude that becomes widely adopted but also inspires controversy.
*Merle Evans begins leading the Ringling-Barnum Band, becoming the most famous circus bandleader in the country, especially known for leading the other performers with one hand while simultaneously playing the cornet.cite book|title=The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music|chapter=Snapshot: Four Views of Music in the United States|last=Preston|first=Katherine K.|coauthors=Susan Key, Judith Tick, Frank J. Cipolla and Raoul F. Camus|pages=554-569]
*Canadian-born black composer R. Nathaniel Dett is the first to arrange a spiritual in a classical oratorio, with "Chariot Jubilee".
*Irving Berlin's "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea" is one of many songs from the era that expressed opposition to Prohibition. Other songs, like "Drivin' Nails in My Coffin (Every Time I Drink a Bottle of Booze)" expressed support for the abolition of alcohol. [cite book|title=The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World|chapter=Alcohol|pages=149-152|first=Davidlast=Buckley|coauthors=Dave Laing]
*James Sylvester Scott publishes three rags, "which are among the most demanding of all published piano ragtime": "New Era Rag", "Troubadour Rag" and "Pegasus: A Classic Rag". [Chase, pg. 419, citing William Bolcom]
*George Gershwin's "Swanee", performed by Al Jolson, becomes a "tremendous hit" and Gershwin's "big breakthrough". [Chase, pg. 475]
*The National Association of Negro Musicians is founded, after Nora Holt organizes a black musicians summit in Chicago. [Southern, pg. 312]

References

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first = E.
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title = Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861-1865
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year = 2000
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author = Chase, Gilbert
id = ISBN 0-252-00454-X
publisher = University of Illinois Press
title = America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present
year = 2000
*cite book
author = Crawford, Richard
id = ISBN 0-393-04810-1
publisher = W. W. Norton & Company
title = America's Musical Life: A History
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last=Erbsen
first=Wayne
title=Rural Roots of Bluegrass: Songs, Stories and History
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isbn=0786671378
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*cite book|title=The American Wind Band: A Cultural History|first=Richard K.|last=Hansen|year=2005|publisher=GIA Publications|isbn=1579994679
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last = Koskoff
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publisher = Garland Publishing
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first = James
last = Miller
title = Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977
publisher = Simon & Schuster
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*cite book|title=The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music|first=Allan|last=Moore|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|id=0521001072
* cite book
first = Ronald D.
last = Lankford, Jr.
title = Folk Music USA: The Changing Voice of Protest
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location = New York
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editor = John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke (eds.)
publisher = Continuum
year = 2003
location = London
id = ISBN 0-8264-6321-5
title = Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 1: Media, Industry and Society
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Notes

Further reading

*cite book|year=1881|last=Baker|first=Theodore|location=Liepzig|publisher=Breitkopf u. Härtel|title=Uber die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden|language=German
*cite journal|title=Chippewa Music|volume=2|last=Densmore|first=Frances|year=1913|location=Washington D.C.|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|issue=53|journal=Bureau of American Ethnology
*cite book|editor=Samuel A. Floyd (ed.)|title=Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays|location=New York|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=1990
*cite journal|last=Herzog|first=George|title=Plains Ghost Dance and Great Basin Music|journal=American Anthropologist|volume=38|issue=3|pages=403-419|year=1935
*cite journal|title=The Pan-Indian Culture of Oklahoma|last=Howard|first=James H.|year=1955|journal=Scientific Monthly|volume=18|issue=5|pages=215-220
*cite book|title=Rags and Ragtime|author=David Jasen|coauthors=Trebor Tichenor|location=New York|year=1978|pages=17
*cite book|last=Lomax|first=John Avery|year=1938 (1911)|title=Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads|location=New York|publisher=Macmillan
*cite book|last=Marks|title=Martin|year=1997|title=Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press
*cite book|editor=Helen Myers|year=1993|title=Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies|location=New York|publisher=Norton
*cite book|title=Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development|location=New York|first=Gunther|last=Schuller|publisher=Oxford University Press
*cite book|title=Songs of the Cowboys, by n. Howard ('Jack') Thorp: Variants, Commentary, Notes and Lexicon|location=New York|publisher=C.N. Potter|first=Austin E.|last=Fife|coauthors=Alta S. Fife|year=1966
*cite book|title=English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians|location=London|publisher=Oxford University Press|last=Sharp|first=Cecil J.|coauthors=Maud Karpeles|year=1960 (1924)