Music in Urcea: Difference between revisions

Many cities and regions have distinct styles of music, and many styles have historical associations with certain cities. [[Urceopolis (City)|Urceopolis]] was the early nexus of the recording industry in [[Urcea]], with other nascent genres arising in other cities across the country which have become prominent global recording centers.

"{{wp|Irish music|Traditional music}}", called "river music" in other countries, is a genre of folk music that developed in [[Urcea]]. As opposed to other forms of Urcean music, it is thought that traditional music descends from Urcea's [[Gaelic people|Gaelic]] roots as opposed to other, supposedly [[Latinic people|Latinic]] forms of music. Within earlier kinds of traditional music there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were a small and a large harp, the timpan (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the fife, the flute, a bassoon-type horn, hornpipes, bagpipes, a kind of trumpet, and bones. Several of these instruments fell out of favor for various reasons with the rise of the {{wp|Industrial Revolution}}, when banjos and guitars entered common use for this genre. Modern traditional bands often employ accordions, fiddles, acoustic guitars, electric bass guitars, and other instruments, though modern traditional music is differentiated from many other forms of Urcean popular music by its lack of a full drum kit. Traditional music often employs more overtly nationalist or patriotic lyrics than other genres, but songs about a lost love are also common. Many popular "old time" songs were written for this genre during the [[Second Caroline War|Second]] and [[Third Caroline War|Third]] [[Caroline Wars|Caroline War]]. Though its songs are widely known as classics, it does not have a strong contemporary media presence.

{{wp|Country music}} is a genre of music in Urcea that is thought to have developed from traditional music and developed primarily in rural communities and features lyrics focused on a sense of place or development of a story. In 2019, it was the most listened to genre of music on the radio.

{{wp|Rock music}} is a genre which many music historians view as a development of Urcean country music based on imported musical traditions from [[Sarpedon]] during the [[Second Great War]]. It is distinguished from country and folk traditions by a lack of fiddle and focus on guitars and a heavy driving percussive beat.

Throughout its history, Urceans have been an extremely musical society, embracing not only the Ecclesiastical tradition of {{wp|Gregorian chant|polyphonic chant}} but also folk songs and storytelling. Urcean traditional music was the organic development of these trends, creating a genre and style based on the use of fiddles, harps, accordions, and, later, guitars and snare drums. Urcean traditional music has remained vibrant and retains many of its cornerstone aspects, such as instrument choice and semi-nationalistic themes in its storytelling. It has heavily influenced various modern music genres, such as country and roots music. It has occasionally been blended with styles such as rock and roll and punk rock. Urcea has also produced many internationally known artists in other genres, such as rock, pop, jazz, and blues. The rhythmic and lyrical styles of traditional music have deeply influenced Urcean music at large, distinguishing it from [[Sarpedon]]ian [[Latinic people|Latinic]] traditions.

The earliest record of music in Urcea comes from {{wp|Gregorian chant}} and various other religious arrangements suitable for mass. Rising from the 9th century, polyphonic Church music was the primary and most regular way that the early Urcean people experienced music. Consequently, many people in the Medieval period received their musical training - however basic - to serve in scholas for mass. In most communities, the rural parish was the gateway to the experience of the divine and the experience of music, and many peasants had the opportunity to learn to sing, to carry a tune, and for the lucky few, the ability to learn how to read the earliest forms of musical notation. From the legions of rural peasant scholas came the very first minstrels, or musical entertainers. Minstrels typically traveled around the nearest county, providing entertainment in taverns and, more rarely, at court. These minstrels played instruments like the lyra, wooden flutes, and various other chordophones. Their songs were typically story-based, recounting real world events, such as military campaigns and the lives of various sovereigns, through the medium of musical entertainment. While secular music was typically looked down upon by civilized society, minstrels were tolerated so long as they didn't stray into salacious topics for their music, beginning a long history of "best practices" guidelines for Urcean cultural productions. Many of the songs played and invented by minstrels would become repeated and, in many cases, distorted, by groups of workers singing during the manual labor required of nearly every task in the Medieval period. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set the pace of many activities such as planting, weeding, reaping, threshing, weaving, and milling. Working people and peasants also recounted minstrel songs or original songs at family gatherings and Christian feast days as a way to entertain guests. The songs invented by minstrels were also passed along by oral tradition in this period, retaining some cultural memory of historical events and passing along cultural memory and legends. These early folk songs were rarely recorded in notation, as the need to transcribe and copy songs by hand precluded their preservation; only liturgical and ecclesiastical songs survived in the written medium, given the lengthy time and effort that only monks could provide. Those early songs that did survive were typically transcribed due to the song being widespread, memorable, and about a momentous historical event, such as the Tale of Father Lucás at the Glen, a song about the victory of [[History_of_Urcea_(1214-1402)#Great_Interregnum|King Lucás II at the Battle of Glens Falls in 1401]].

The 18th century saw the emergence of a fused theatrical-court style, emphasizing the high technical excellence and virtuosity of the composer with some room for improvisation within the piece. The Court-Theater Style is widely considered to be the birthplace of the modern solo. Unlike the 17th century's court music, however, this new "higher-end" form of music was available for limited public consumption. Due to the saturation of musicians in and around [[Urceopolis (City)|Urceopolis]], it no longer became possible to survive on patronage, and many newly organized groups of musicians began to play for the price of admission to relatively small concert grounds. The commercial success of such endeavors lead to a significant boom period in the 1700s-1730s of public musical expression for profit. The audience were typically urban [[Social class in Urcea|privilegiata]] and the concerts were often priced in such a way that they were unaffordable for the nascent working class and peasants, but through this point in Urcean history it was the most democratized music had ever been. A considerable deal of public theater and open space construction occurred in the first three decades of the 18th century, making so-called "audience music" even more viable, and the trend spread throughout other cities in Urcea. Having a much larger audience than courtiers, and having music for ears outside of the top refined optimates made an immediate impact on the kind of music being played, as Court-Theater music changed rapidly in the first half of the 18th century in order to appeal to the wider audiences. While the virtuosity and apprentice-master relationship of court music was retained, these first popular audiences much preferred more solos during pieces, leading to a kind of resurgence of the previous century's theater music. The "audience boom" came to an end with the beginning of the War of the Caroline Succession, however, as the time for audience music was replaced with church attendance duty for novenas for the benefit of the cause of Urcea and the Apostolic King. During the war, proto-folk songs sung by soldiers in camp took on new forms, incorporating the regional diversity of Urcean soldiers called to service of the King. These proto-folk songs, in turn, began to inform the traditional music style played outside of the battlefield by the army fife-and-drum core, as the two "original" Urcean musical genres continued to influence each other despite the historiographical divergence imposed on them during the 1600s.

Beginning in the late 1900s and 1910s, there began a renewed interest in what became known as "old-time" music, which could best be described as a mix of popular songs from the mid-to-late 19th century as well as obscure folk songs from rural parts of the country, but not truly "traditional music", which remained a separate genre. Historians and scholars have theorized the rise of interest in this music came as a consequence of the restoration of King [[Patrick III of Urcea|Patrick III]] and the memory of the bloodshed of the [[Red Interregnum]]. According to these historians, Urceans - especially middle-aged ones - pined for the nostalgic idyll of simpler times during the [[Aedanicad]]. The invention of the phonograph and rise of the Urcean recording industry made these songs viable, and in the 1910s the phenomenon of "songhunters" - individuals who would go to the rural parts of Urcea to discover old folk songs in order to obtain the rights to the music - sprang up. Old-time music became enormously popular and commercially viable. The advent of radio lead to further widespread popularity of the genre in the 1920s through mid 1930s. Sometimes called "country music", emerged as a dominant cultural and commercial form of music during the early radio era, though during the same time traditional pop styles imported from the rest of [[Levantia]] became popular.

Rhythm and blues music developed from foreign blues music in the mid 1930s and early 1940s and the influence of [[Sarpedon]]ian and [[Audonia]]n music, which soldiers of the [[Royal and Imperial Army (Urcea)|Royal and Imperial Army]] became exposed to during the [[Second Great War]]. The short period of time in which rhythm and blues was popular lead to a decline and sharp regionalization of "old-time" or country music, which became primarily associated with rural regions of Urcea, especially those areas associated with frontier [[Ómestaderoi]] culture. Traditional pop went into severe decline in the 1940s as the ongoing Great War lead to renewed interest in traditionally Urcean styles of music that accompanied a new wave of nationalism.

The influence of country and traditional music blended with rhythm and blues to develop an entirely new form of music in the 1950s which some historians have referred to as Rockabilly or "the King's Rock" since it was a uniquely Urcean sound distinguishable from other countries. The new rock styles quickly supplanted what remained of traditional pop, and beginning in the 1960s "new pop" took its place, heavily influenced by the backbeat driven "King's Rock" sound. Since that point, a mix of rock and mainstream pop exists alongside country music as the most popular genres in the country, though some have noted rock music to be in decline since the end of the 20th century, particularly going in a more indie direction as country music has displaced it in many parts of society.

The popularity of country has also inspired an indie movement in that genre as well, and "insurgent country", a style similar to bluegrass, has become popular since the mid-2020s. Insurgent country seeks to reclaim the sound and heritage of Urcean traditional music and the initial "old-time" music genre in an effort to undo the dominance of what is perceived to be the "corporate sound", which incorporates electronic and pop elements.