American Primitive guitar and raga guitar.
American primitive is a style of guitar which emerged starting in the 1950’s with Elizabeth Cotton and John Fahey. It was known as “primitive” a term inspired by the French impressionist painters. Primitive refers to developing an unconventional style and taking a non-academic path of study with the art form. The American Primitive style blends folk and blues into primarily instrumental compositions. The finger picking style evolved to blend the dissonance from blues, the fingering of folk music and a flavoring of Indian classical music.
American Guitarists John Fahey, Elizabeth Cotton, Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, and Peter Walker inspired the newly emerging renaissance of this guitar style. This American Primitive style of guitar also involves a number of English guitarists John Renbourne, Bert Jansch, Davy Graham and Michael Chapman’s solo guitar pieces are prime examples. The various musicians each made unique contributions to the development of this diverse style, each with their own emphasis on folk, blues, ragtime and raga.
Today there are more Guitarists influenced by or playing in the American Primitive style then ever before. It has reached into the avant-garde, folk, blues, jazz, ragtime, new age, world and fusion music. Artists sometimes referred to as the new American Primtivists Jack Rose, Steffen Basho-Junghan, Daniel Bachman, Glenn Jones, Ben Chasney, Sir Richard Bishop, Steve Gunn, Alexander Turnquist, Bill Orcutt, Paul Metzger have all advanced the style in their own unique direction.
The most striking feature of this movement was not the integration of folk and blues which lays its foundation but the new integration of classical Indian musical structure known as the raga into the compositions, often called American raga or folk raga. Ravi Shankar was responsible for introducing many Americans and Europeans to Indian raga. As one of India’s greatest musicians his story is essential to the American primitive movement and its fusion with raga.
Ravi Shankar was born in April 7th 1920. He was born in a privileged family and studied music and arts from a young age. His Father and brother both moved to Paris in the 1930’s and Ravi soon followed. He went to school and studied in Paris where he began to play music publicly at the age of 13. He was instrumental in building the bridge between European and Indian music. In 1956 Ravi Shankar released his American debut album “Three Ragas”. He was a teacher to American guitarist Peter Walker, George Harrison of the Beatles, Phillip Glass and Anoushka Shankar (his Daughter) amongst others.
Ali Akbar Khan is known as one of the greatest sarod players in Indian history. His first 12″ LP arrived in 1955, that same year Yehudi Menuhin, world class classical violinist, invited Khan to play at MOMA in New York. He would later play at the concert for Bangladesh with George Harrison and his brother in-law Ravi Shankar. Peter Walker would study with Ali Akbar Khan for a brief time.
In 1957 Elizabeth Cotton was playing a primarily blues style which laid the foundations for the coming American primitive movement. Elizabeth Cotton played in an unique style and had many instrumentals which blended folk and blues. Her influence on the coming generations of guitar players has been greatly under appreciated.
John Fahey was the most notable guitarist to develop the New American style with a recording in 1959 under the name Blind Thomas later that year he would record “Blind Joe Death” both were later reissued on his own Takoma Records in 1964. Takoma Records became a label which brought this new guitar sound into the public attention. Many of the tracks on these albums were unique in picking style and in composition bring together folk and blues.
1963 Davy Graham released his debut album “The Guitar Player” and the following year released the classic “Folk, Blues and Beyond.” Davy Graham like Fahey blended folk and blues into intricate finger picking patterns.
Davy Graham – Folk Blues and Beyond
1963 Sandy Bull releases “Fanstasias for Guitar a