Music of Kansas

For many decades, Kansas has had a vibrant country and bluegrass scene. The Country Stampede Music Festival – one of the largest music festivals in the country – and the bluegrass/acoustic Walnut Valley Festival are testament to the continued popularity of these music genres in the state. Among current leading country artists, Martina McBride and Chely Wright are natives of Kansas.

The state has also fostered some rock acts – the one that is most associated with the state is almost certainly the band called Kansas. Some famous and pioneering jazz musicians also had roots in Kansas.

The first music performed in the area that is now Kansas was that of the Indigenous peoples who lived there.

The earliest documented music comes after settlement by Anglo-Americans in the 1850s. One of the first musical works relating to Kansas was "Ho! For the Kansas Plains", a song written by James G. Clark in the 1850s, which mythologized the territory as the site of abolitionist battles during the Bleeding Kansas era. A representative lyric was "Ho! For the Kansas plains; Where men shall live in liberty; Free from the tyrant's chains." Along the same lines, some versions of the famous Civil War marching song "John Brown's Body" refer to John Brown's abolitionist activities in Kansas Territory during the same era.

Following the Civil War, as Kansas became known more for its cowboys, saloons and wide-open spaces, another notable song written in and about Kansas was "Home on the Range". It was penned in the state in the 1870s, and then spread throughout the American Old West as an unofficial anthem. It is now Kansas's official state song. The song established something of a template for Kansas music, and over the next several decades, music coming from Kansas remained in a similar folk or old-time music style, while lyrics referencing the state tended to focus on its open countryside.

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Wikipedia