Parade's Musical Influences
Below are four of the artists, songs, and styles that Jason Robert Brown credits as his inspiration for Parade's musical style.
Charles Ives
Born in 1874 in Connecticut and son to the North's youngest bandmaster in the Civil War, Charles Ives displayed great musical talent at a young age. He began composing at age 13 and was an established church organized by his mid-teens. Ives' works draw from traditional Americana and particularly the music of the Civil War, but he also takes inspiration from European styles. He is known for early experimentation in tone clusters and polytonality in music.
When writing the music of Parade, Jason Robert Brown took inspiration from Ives' work and style. Said Brown:
The place is wrong— Ives is a famous New Englander. But his sense of adventure, of the American spirit, what American music should be, I thought he represented what 1913 might have been about, musically. There was all this kind of bursting at the edges, ragtime was just coming out, and at the same time there was still all of the old European tradition, and people singing parlor songs around the piano. So there was all of these kinds of things garbled together and mixing and starting to become a music of their own.
Here is Ives' "The Fourth of July" score
Alan Lomax, "Sounds of the South"
Like Ives, Alan Lomax found his career in studying and archiving folklore and folk music through work with his father, John Lomax, who served as the head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress beginning in 1933. Lomax's ethnographic archival research centered on traveling the country and recording folk songs and folk singers. Through collaboration with Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, he came to realize the importance of documenting the stories behind music and performance as well as the song itself.
After enduring the difficulty of having leftist political associations in the time of the "Red Scare," Lomax made his famous "Southern Journey" from 1959-60, where he recorded well-known blues and ballads as well as lesser-known African-American spirituals, work songs, and drum-and-fife songs. This collection became known as "Sounds of the South," from which Jason Robert Brown drew inspiration for the songs of Parade's African-American characters, particularly "Feel the Rain Fall" and "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'."
Here is "I Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down," sung by a prison work gang.
Fiddlin' John Carson
A native Georgian born in 1868, "Fiddlin'" John Carson is today widely regarded as the first modern country music singer. His music was broadcast on radio and recorded for phonograph as early as 1923.
Carson appears as a character in the original script of Parade. The historical Carson, acting in protest to Gov. Slaton's commutation of Frank's sentence, played his "Ballad of Little Mary Phagan" on the steps of the capital for hours. Additionally, in 1923 he recorded "The Grave of Little Mary Phagan."
Here is Vernon Dalhart performing "Little Mary Phagan."
(In a fun musical theatre connection, "The Ballad of Little Mary Phagan" is set to the tune of the folk song "Charles Guiteau," which Stephen Sondheim—a major influence on Jason Robert Brown in general—used in part to write "The Ballad of Guiteau" for his musical Assassins)
"There is a Fountain Filled with Blood"
"There is a Fountain..." is the most famous hymn of poet William Cowper. He wrote the hymn, which centers on the saving power of Christ's blood, at the height of a deep depression. Today, the song is used by several Protestant Christian faith traditions, including Baptist, which Mary Phagan was. It is recommended by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada to be sung at communion and/or during the Lenten season. However, there is evidence of its use at baptism ceremonies as well.
Brown uses the text and melody of the hymn in its entirety in Parade, interweaving it with his own "It Don't Make Sense," a reflection on the loss of Mary Phagan by her friends and family.
Here is "There is a Fountain..." performed by Selah