Re: [Harp-L] Theory, etc. - history of positions

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Harmonica production was too low in the 1860s for harmonicas to have
been very widespread in the US during slavery times. Production wasn't
really large enough until about the 1870s or '80s, which was in fact a
time of great hope for black folks, with African Americans actually
getting elected to State office, until white racists figured out ways
to shut them out of the entire democratic process for the better part
of a century.

The popular image of the harmonica being played by Civil War soldiers
was created by Hollywood screenwriters. They remembered the very real
phenomenon of the harmonica being very widespread during the first
world war of 1914-1918, when annual harmonica production (and
exportation) was well into the multiple millions, and projected that
back to the Civil war scenes they were writing (soldiers gone off to
war, a past era, harmonica). Some folks I know will disagree, but I'm
pretty certain this is a false image. The production and distribution
just weren't there.

While there were harmonicas known to be available in small quantities
in the U.S. as early as the 1830s, they were all-blow instruments and
were handcrafter instruments of some complexity that were clearly
neither widely distributed nor not within the purchasing power of poor
folks like slaves. Here are a couple:

http://www.usd.edu/smm/Aeolian.html

http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=51479&coll_keywords=&coll_package=10088&coll_start=1

You can actually hear the latter one being played.

The pain of being black or green or just plain human in a brutal world
will certainly come out of your horn if you live it, to paraphrase
Charlie Parker, but it's interesting to note that the early African
American blues recording artists played as much in first position as
they did in second, and bent notes up high and down low instead of in
the middle, as opportunity allowed. Second position didn't really come
to dominate until perhaps the 1940s in the Northern urban setting of
Chicago. 

Memphis in the 1930s saw players choosing positions according to the
chord progression. If there was a strong IV chord, they used second
position, where Draw was your home chord and Blow was that other chord
that we call IV. If harmony of a tune was strong on the V side (as in
the common I-vi-ii-V progression known as the salty dog), they used
first position, where Blow was the home chord and Draw was the other
stuff. They may not have known the theory, but they could figure out
what fit the chords by ear, and they chose positions accordingly.

First recording artist in second position? A white southerner.

Use of positions ain't a black or a white thing. And one position is no
more soulful or expressive than another.

Winslow

--- icemanle@xxxxxxx wrote:

> My theory is that the harmonica made it's way across the Atlantic to
> the new world in the mid - late 1800's, civil war times. A very cheap
> instrument to buy and own, it became an allowed instrument of the
> poor black slaves, who were denied their rightful heritage (African)
> and not allowed to bring instruments of their own to retain their
> culture and heritage. The heritage lived on, however, in their
> voices. Singing in the fields expressed their sole's pain at being
> ripped from their mother country. The voice and music had those
> wailin' moanin' flatted 5th's resolving up and down to the 5th (cross
> harp = 4 hole inhale bend, 4 hole inhale). This very inexpensive
> little pocket instrument found its way into the hands of the slaves
> who discovered that their voice inflections could be created on the
> harmonica. Possibly, they didn't know (not being able to read the
> instructions) that you were supposed to EXHALE for the notes to
> create music. Someone inhaled, raised the back half of!
>   their tongue towards the roof of their mouth, and lo and behold -
> MOANIN' sound.
>  
> The rest, as they say, is history.
>  
> The Iceman
>  
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- Marc Spilka <marc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> > Who is credited for inventing cross harp?  i'm assuming it was some
> > old time
> > poor uneducated musician but how the hell did someone come up with
> > the idea
> > of playing a harp a 4th above the tonic key?
> 
> You mean a 5th above the tonic key. C-D-E-F-G, 1-2-3-4-5 (you count
> the
> starting note)
> 
> The origin is lost in the mists of time. Early American instruction
> books dating from the 1870s and 1880s make no mention of it, and the
> very earliest recordings, circa 1900, are in first position. Jump
> ahead
> to the 1920s, with not much harp recorded in between as far as anyone
> knows - and we find recordings of second position playing, starting
> with Henry Whittier, a white rural southerner. Fourth position (A on
> a
> C harp), fifth position (E on a C harp) and 12th (F on a C harp) also
> made appearances during the 1920s.
> 
> So evidently playing a harmonica in a key other that the labeled one
> started very early. Why buy five harp, even at a nickel apiece, when
> one will do?
> 
> Once in a while I have heard the term "cross" or "crossed" used to
> describe playing a diatonic accordion in other than the labeled key,
> so
> the term may be borrowed from accordion - or maybe accordionists
> borrowed from harp players - who knows? Cajun players of the one-row
> diatonic accordion, whose ten buttons have the same note layout as
> the
> ten holes of the diatonic harmonica, commonly play their instruments
> in
> what we call second position. C is the most popular key of box, and
> they usually play it in G.
> 
> Winslow
> 
> 
> 
>  
>
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