American primitive guitar
Could the title of this page be corrected? American Primitivism is not the same thing as American Primitive Guitar. Although often confused in recent years, the two have nothing do do with one another an John Fahey, Leo Kottke and a few of the others listed here played American Primitive Guitar and none have anything to do with American Primitivisim which was comprised of visual and sculptural art forms. This page is actually an early start to a documentation of American Primitive Guitar, which is the music genre started by John Fahey in the late 1950s.
Fahey composed and recorded avant-garde/neo-classical compositions using traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to accompany vocals. Other famous early proponents were Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho and Peter Lang who all played at one time or another on Fahey's Takoma Records label. In recent years musicians of American Primitive-style guitar also can be categorized to broader New Acoustic genre.
Quotes
". . . The New Age people call it Folk; the Folk people call it New Age, but it is really neither. It's transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string band music of the '20s and '30s, however much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as 'American Primitive' after the 'French Primitive' painters, meaning untutored."[1]
"...Fahey suggested the idea of joining similar themes, and exploring both time and space. He also wanted me to try using dissonance and minor tunings. Maybe the biggest thing he put into me was the idea that a major part of music exists in the space between notes and chords."[2]
Notable proponents
- John Fahey
- Leo Kottke
- Peter Lang
- Robbie Basho
- Max Ochs
- Harry Taussig
- Mark Fosson
- Michael Gulezian
- Terry Robb
- Glenn Jones of Cul de Sac (band)
- Steffen Basho-Junghans
- Jack Rose
- James Blackshaw
- Ben Chasny
- Sir Richard Bishop
- Bill Orcutt
- Andrew Stranglen
- Charlie Schmidt
- Pat O'Connell
- Bob Hadley
- Mike Salovich
- Andy Abbott
- Mariano Rodriguez
- Mandrax Icon
- Norberto Lobo
- Daniel Bachman
- Mariano Rodriguez
- Jerry Hionis
- Matt Sowell
- Jim O'Rourke
- Chuck Johnson
- Don Bikoff
- Adam Hurt
- Loudon Wainwright III
- Wayne Lopes
See also
References
- ^ "Peter Lang on American Primitive Guitar". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-27.
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