Early American Music Instruments
When you think about the music of the early colonies, you might imagine young children with pennywhistles or parades of uniformed men with tri-cornered hats playing fifes and drums. While these musical instruments were played sometimes during the history of American music, they were not the earliest American instruments.
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The Earliest Americans
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Native Americans made rattles, drums, flutes and whistles to accompany songs they sang for ceremonies, healing and passing on traditions and stories of heroes and battles. Jamestown settlers brought Jew's harps, tambourines and pipes and tabors.
Puritan and Anglican Practices
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The 17th century Puritans forbade their music to have harmony or accompaniment by musical instruments. Musical instruments were too expensive to be used in the earliest colonial Anglican churches.
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18th Century
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Not until the mid-1700s were pitch pipes utilized to give the beginning pitch for songs. Even then, they were a subject for disagreement among Puritans. The first organ to be installed in a colonial Anglican church was in 1714 in Boston.
Gender Specific
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Women were not allowed to play fiddles or flutes as men were of all social classes. Women with wealthy spouses played the harpsichord or harp. Females of all social classes could play the 10-string English guitar or the 12-string Baroque guitar.
African American Slave Music
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Colonial African American slaves brought the banjer, a stringed instrument with a gourd body, from their West African homeland in the 17th century. They also played handmade drums and reed instruments.
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