The history of music in California

I've only just started putting this collection together. It's a topic I'm very interested in, since that's where I live. I have a lot of material collected, but I haven't had time to organize it yet. I hope to get more added to this page as time goes on.

Incidentally, the background image on this page is a photo I took of the Diablo Range, looking eastward from the middle of San Francisco Bay (the wildlife refuge north of Alviso). The little white dots in the foreground are egrets. Unfortunately, the buildings immediately adjacent to the bayshore are not very scenic. The ones further inland are not much better, actually.

Since I took the picture many additional ugly buildings have been built in this area, and the charming little town of Alviso could be overrun. As of early 2002, the economic slowdown has temporarily halted the march of the dot-coms, and Alviso still survives.

Available topics:

Sir Francis Drake: What does this swashbuckling English sea-captain have to do with music? It seems that he was responsible for the first performance of European music in California, as far as I have been able to determine.
The barrel organ at Mission San Juan Bautista: It seems possible that Celtic music may have been first heard in California via mechanical reproduction—College Hornpipe, at least. At any rate, the story of the mysterious barrel organ is quite unusual. More and more information has been emerging, but the story is still far from complete.
Lola Montez and Lotta Crabtree: An Irishwoman poses as a Spaniard, becomes a king's mistress and rules a leading European nation. Then she goes to the California Gold Rush and gives dancing lessons to a little girl, whose Irish dancing eventually makes her a great star of the American stage. The plot of a novel? Actually, this is a true story!

Other sites of interest:

Photographs of the Gold Rush country

California Gold: Sidney Robertson Cowell's collection of folk music in Northern California during the 1930s.

Check out the links page for additional references.

Go to music encyclopedia directory

Go to The Standing Stones home page

Go to the Standing Stones Site Map (listing of the entire contents of this website)

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