Roots Music of Utah by Elaine Thatcher
When people talk about “roots music,” they often think of the American South and its abundance of African-American, white, and mixed-influence music. Or they think of Kansas City jazz or Mexican-American border music or various ethnic musics from around the world. Utah doesn’t immediately come to mind. Yet we have a rich heritage of traditional music in this state, beginning with Utah’s first inhabitants.
Native American Music
The Native American populations of Utah are primarily represented by five tribes: the Navajo, Paiute, Goshute, Ute, and Shoshone. They possess lively traditions of music that go back centuries. In general, Native American music can be classified as sacred or secular. There is some crossover between these genres.
Sacred Indian music fulfills many needs within tribal communities: healing, guidance in life, creating unity within communities, cleansing, honoring, and more. Most tribes do not want their sacred music and traditions cavalierly exposed to outsiders. For this reason, we will focus in this essay on various secular musics, several of which have roots in or relationships to sacred traditions.
In Utah, most Native American music is vocal music accompanied by a drum of some kind. There are a few instruments besides the drum—the Native American flute and the Ute rasp being most obvious examples in Utah. Most Indian music is also intimately tied up with dance. The type of music that is probably best known to non-Indians is powwow music, which has its roots in Plains Indian culture and, according to powwow scholar Tara Browner, in “warrior society dances, reservation-era intertribal dances, Wild West shows and other exhibitions, and postwar homecoming celebrations.” Powwows have become extremely popular throughout Indian country, including in Utah. There are many held in the state, including the Southern Paiutes’ Restoration Gathering in Cedar City, the Northern Ute Indian Pow Wow in Fort Duchesne, the Goshute Pow Wow in Ibapah, various university pow wows, and more. In addition, the Navajo Tribal Fair in Window Rock, Arizona, and the Shoshone-Bannock Festival in Fort Hall, Idaho, draw tribal members from Utah.
Pow wow music is generally divided into northern and southern styles, with the northern style predominating. It is characterized by high falsetto singing and distinctive songs and drum styles. Most pow wows feature several drum groups in which several singers, each with a drumstick, sit around the drum and follow the lead singer who starts off the songs. The lead singer sings a line of the song alone, then the rest of the singers join him (or occasionally her). The music is powerful and hypnotic. Pow wow dancing is divided into gender and stylistic categories in which specific dancers who are dressed for and taught in their own traditions dance. However, most pow wows also include a number of Intertribal dances that are open to anyone. The pow wow announcer lets the audience know what is coming up throughout the event, whether it is a contest round, an intertribal, an honor song, etc.
Another form of music that is common across tribal lines is the hand game song. Hand game is a gambling game in which teams sit opposite one another and pass and hide small markers or sticks made of bone or wood. While passing the sticks, they sing songs that generally are unique to the tribe, team, and family playing. One Ute family documented by folklorists in the early 1990s, the Sireech family, has a large repertoire of songs made and sung only by them. They made a cassette tape of some of their songs some years ago and dedicated it to their mother, who was an avid hand game player. Hand games are usually found at most social gatherings, including pow wows.
In addition to pow wow and hand game music, the tribes of Utah and the region have their own distinctive musical traditions geared to particular tribal dances and activities. The Utes have the Bear Dance, which is a social dance held in the spring to celebrate new life and the passing of winter. According to Ute teachings, the Bear gave the Bear Dance to the people. The singing and dancing, which is ladies’ choice, are accompanied by a rasp, which is said to resemble the sound of the first thunder of spring.
The Navajo also have unique social songs and dances. An extremely popular form of music there is known simply as Song and Dance. The singers sing songs about love and daily activities to the accompaniment of a water drum—a clay pot filled with water and played by one singer. Couples, in promenade position, dance around the room in simple steps known as two-step and skip dance. This music is related to the sacred Enemyway ceremony, but the context of the dance and the words of the songs have been changed. Song and Dance competitions can be found throughout Navajo country, including at the Navajo Nation Fair.
Mormon Music
The most dominant genre of European-American music to take root in Utah is Mormon music, both sacred and secular. The earliest form of identifiable Mormon music was hymns. Emma Smith, wife of church founder Joseph Smith, assembled a book of 90 hymns, at least 50 of which were borrowed from other Christian religions. The rest were written by Mormons and reflected an LDS world view that was fervent and millennialist in nature. The earliest hymns were poems to which people could sing a variety of melodies which were known to them by generic titles (“Park Street,” “Sterling,” and “Captain Kidd,” for example) and specific meters such as Common Meter, Long Meter, and Particular Meter, abbreviated C.M., L.M., and P.M. next to the title of the hymn.
Choral music has become a trademark of contemporary Mormonism, largely due to the reputation of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the encouragement of local congregational choirs by the central church today. Mormon scripture says, “For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.” It is not surprising, then, that music plays an important role in LDS worship and recreation. The Tabernacle Choir had its beginnings in the 1850s as a melding of the old Nauvoo choir and Welsh singers who had joined the church.
Welsh, English, and Scottish people were among some of the earliest converts to Mormonism, and when they came to America, they brought their music with them—not only hymns, but folk songs as well, such as ballads collected by Francis James Child in Great Britain in the late 1800s. Lester Hubbard, who collected folk songs in Utah in the 1930s and ‘40s, found many versions of Child ballads here, such as “Lord Lovell” (Child No. 75) and “Barbara Allen” (Child No. 84). Cowboy songs were also popular in the state and were documented by Hubbard, by Austin and Alta Fife, and others.
However, creativity flourished in the early days of Utah, and many songs about local happenings were written throughout the settlement and later periods. Many are of unknown authorship, but a number of community poets who wrote songs for funerals, church services, public events, and more are known to us. Charles W. Penrose (1832-1925) was one of these. An Englishman who converted to Mormonism, Penrose conducted years of missionary work in the British Isles, and eventually emigrated to Utah, where, among other things, he became the editor of the Deseret News and a counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church. He wrote the popular hymn, “O Ye Mountains High,” with a few harsh words for enemies of the LDS faith. The most belligerent lines were later changed to those shown in parentheses at the request of the president of the church. Penrose agreed.
O ye mountains high, where the clear blue sky
Arches over the vales of the free,
Where the pure breezes blow and the clear streamlets flow,
How I’ve longed to your bosom to flee.
O Zion! Dear Zion! Land of the free,
Now my own mountain home, unto thee I have come—
All my fond hopes are centered in thee.Tho’ the great and the wise all thy beauties despise,
To the humble and pure thou art dear;
Tho’ the haughty may smile and the wicked revile,
Yet we love thy glad tidings to hear.
O Zion! Dear Zion! Home of the free,
Tho’ thou wert forced to fly to thy chambers on high,
Yet we’ll share joy and sorrow with thee.Here our voices we’ll raise, and we’ll sing to thy praise,
Sacred home of the Prophets of God;
Thy deliv’rance is nigh, thy oppressors shall die,
And the Gentiles shall bow ‘neath thy rod. (Thy land shall be freedom’s abode.)
O Zion! Dear Zion! Land of the free,
In thy temples we’ll bend, all thy rights we’ll defend,
And our home shall be ever with thee.In thy mountain retreat, God will strengthen thy feet;
On the necks of thy foes thou shalt tread; (Without fear of thy foes thou shalt tread)
And their silver and gold, as the Prophets foretold,
Shall be brought to adorn thy fair head.
O Zion! Dear Zion! Home of the free,
Soon thy towers shall shine with a splendor divine,
And eternal thy glory shall be.
“O Ye Mountains High” is still in LDS hymnbooks today (with the revised words).
Hymns are probably the Mormons’ greatest and most lasting contribution to Utah music. However, other kinds of songs also appeared. Many Mormons wrote about their own experiences, as George A. Hicks did in his song, “Once I Lived in Cottonwood.” The popular song narrates the difficulties of settling in southern Utah, as a few of its verses show:
I feel so weak and hungry now, there's nothing here to cheer
Except prophetic sermons which we very often hear.
They will hand them out by dozens and prove them by the book--
I'd rather have some roasting ears to stay at home and cook.I feel so weak and hungry now, I think I'm nearly dead;
'Tis seven weeks next Sunday since I have tasted bread.
Of carrot tops and lucerne greens we have enough to eat--
But I'd like to change that diet off for buck-wheat cakes and meat.I brought this old coat with me about two years ago,
And how I'll get another one, I'm sure I do not know.
May providence protect me against the cold and wet;
I think myself and Betsy, these times will not forget.My shirt is dyed with wild dockroot, with greasewood for a set;
I fear the colors all will fade when once it does get wet.
They said we would raise madder, and indigo so blue,
But that turned out a humbug, the story was not true.
Other songs extolled the accomplishments of Mormonism, as in “All Are Talking of Utah,” written by John Silvanus Davis under the pseudonym of “Ieuan.” The song appeared in Davis’s 1868 pamphlet of songs called “The Bee-Hive Songster.” It was sung to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia.”
‘Tis Utah and the Mormons in Congress, pulpit, press,
‘Tis Utah and the Mormons, in every place, I guess;
We must be growing greater, we can’t be growing less,
For all are talking of Utah.Hurrah, hurrah, the Mormons have a name,
Hurrah, hurrah, they’re on the road to fame;
No matter what they style us
It’s all about the same,
For all are talking of Utah.
And “The St. George Temple Builders’ Song,” written by Charles L. Walker, who wrote the words in his journal entry of July 24, 1873, saying that a choir sang it at the meeting held in celebration of the anniversary of the Mormons’ arrival in Salt Lake Valley in July 1847.
Lo a Temple long expected.
In St. George shall stand
By God’s faithfull saints erected
Here in Dixie Land.Halleluyah Halleluyah
Let Hossannahs ring.
Heaven shall echo back our praises,
Christ shall reign as King.Th’ noble task we hailed with pleasure.
Coming from our head,
Brings sa[l]vation, life eternal
For our kindred dead.
Non-Mormon and anti-Mormon songs were also common, and many Mormons as well as nonbelievers sang such songs. One of the best known is “The Ballad of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” author unknown. The song refers to the killing of 120 men, women, and children who were migrating from Arkansas to California. They passed through Utah during the time when paranoia was running high regarding the federal government sending an army to the territory to install a new, non-Mormon governor to replace Brigham Young. The emigrants were murdered by a band of Mormons in southern Utah on September 11, 1857. Arguments have raged ever since about who was to blame for the incident. The version of the ballad shown below places blame on Brigham Young, though some singers alter the words at the end to divert blame away from Young.
Come all you sons of liberty, and to my rhyme give ear.
‘Tis of a bloody massacre you presently shall hear.
In splendor o’er the mountains some thirty wagons came,
They were awaited by a wicked band, oh, Utah bear the blame….When once they had give up their arms they started for Cedar City.
They rushed on them in Indian style, oh, what a human pity!
They melted down with one accord like wax before the flame,
Both men and women, old and young, oh, Utah, where’s thy shame?Both men and women, old and young, a-rolling in their gore,
And such an awful sight and scene was ne’er beheld before.
Their property was divided among this bloody crew,
And Uncle Sam is bound to see this bloody matter through.The soldiers will be stationed through all this Utah land,
All for to find those murderers out and bring them to his hand.
By an order from their president this bloody deed was done,
He was the leader of the Mormon Church, his name was Brigham Young.
We have a number of these songs and ballads from early Utah largely due to the efforts of folklorists who recorded elderly people singing them in the 1940s and 1950s. These collectors were interested in songs as a type of oral literature, so they put their emphasis on the words rather than the music. There are many diaries, newspaper articles, and other accounts that indicate that instrumental music thrived in the late nineteenth century in Utah as well. However, little remains in the way of documentary evidence to tell us what that music sounded like.
We know that violins were commonly played in the territory, and that Brigham Young encouraged musical performance. At least sixty Utah towns had community brass bands during the territorial period (1847-1896), with most of them in existence in the latter part of that period.
A fortuitous discovery in the 1970s sheds a good deal of light on instrumental music. What has come to be known as “The Parowan Manuscript” was found by a homeowner in his attic in Rockville, Utah, and was passed on to folklorist Hal Cannon. Mark Jardine, a fiddler who played with Cannon in the Deseret String Band at the time, played through some of the tunes in the handwritten manuscript. Jardine said, “a lot of the music in there was written by people who were the original pioneers sent to Parowan, Utah … it became very obvious as [I was] playing through these tunes that they weren’t square-dance tunes. They weren’t what you would think of as American fiddle tunes. There was lots of British Isles type of tunes, lots of Scandinavian feeling tunes.” Jardine points out that many of the tunes were written by a Scandinavian immigrant named Lars Mortensen, and his tunes have a decidedly Scandinavian sound to them.
Other Immigrant Music
It is likely, then, that much Utah music of the territorial period was colored by the national origins of the musicians who played it. In the early part of the twentieth century, Utah was home to a well-known labor songwriter named Joe Hill, or Joseph Hillstrom, who had been born in Sweden. Hill was a member of the International Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, and got a job in the mines in Park City. He became a popular member of the Swedish communities of Sandy and Murray, Utah, largely because of his ability to play Swedish songs.
Among families that emigrated to Utah in the mid-1800s, it seems that most songs that were not in English did not survive the transition to American culture. In Carbon County, a center of coal mining in Utah, where Italian immigrants came in the early 1900s to work in the mines, the Italian-American Nick family maintains music as a tradition. However, as folklorist Steve Siporin notes, the Nick family changed their repertoire from the traditional Calabrian songs of their home village to more universally accepted Neapolitan popular songs that non-Italian-speaking audiences could relate to. Siporin points out that the tradition of singing remained strong, but the repertoire changed to accommodate the family’s new circumstances in a small Utah town.
African-Americans have been in Utah from the earliest settlement days. Today there are black churches in Salt Lake and Ogden, where gospel choirs, small ensembles, and soloists perform music in celebration of their faith.
There are many newer immigrant groups maintaining their traditional musics in Utah. Mexicans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and other groups have opportunities to publicly perform their music and dance at such events as the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Living Traditions festival, which takes place every May. American society today has changed over recent decades so that diversity is more valued than it once was. While immigrants are encouraged by circumstances to learn English and become more “American,” there are also institutions and people who support holding onto traditions from the old country. As a result, our musical palette is much more diverse than it once was, and families may be able to maintain their musical heritage more easily. Our roots music of all stripes will live on.
Essay with citations 
(Note: This essay by Elaine Thatcher explores the roots music of Utah and the ongoing impact it has had on our state to this day.)