American primitive guitar

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American Primitive Guitar is not the same as American Primitivism, which refers to certain painting and sculptural art forms which arose in the 1890's. Although often confused in recent years, the two have nothing to do with one another and American Primitive Guitar is a music genre which was first originated by John Fahey in the late 1950s/early 1960s which is played on acoustic (but occasionally electric) guitars.

American Primitive Guitar began when John Fahey first composed and recorded avant-garde/neo-classical compositions using traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to accompany vocals. Fahey was joined in the genre by Leo Kottke, Bob Hadley and Peter Lang throughout the 60s and 70s, all of whom played at one time or another on Fahey's Takoma Records label along with uncategorizable artists such as Robbie Basho. A good place to learn about Fahey and American Primitive guitar please can be found on John Fahey's web page.

In recent years, a few of the musicians who had played American Primitive guitar have integrated New Age Guitar techniques and have come to be broadly categorized into the 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

See also

References

  1. ^ "Peter Lang on American Primitive Guitar". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-27. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "Peter Lang on Fahey's influence on his playing". Archived from the original on 12 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-27. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

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