It's hard to know, because "rowdy tavern music" is a local phenomenon that doesn't really have the ability to spread the way pop music could in the 20th century. And people don't generally come home from taverns and write in their diaries about the music they heard.

But of course, grumpy old men are always gonna complain about something. While I'm not quite sure what's going on in 1776 specifically (much less in America), there is a broad European critical grumpiness felt towards Italian opera, and a pretty large disconnect between this attitude and the often enraptured accounts we have of fans of the genre.

For instance, Voltaire has little good to say about opera from Italy or from France. He writes (in the "Dissertation on Ancient and Modern Tragedy" of 1748):

[The chief fault of opera is] of bringing into every scene little airs and catches that interrupt the action, merely to show off the quavers of an effeminate voice, that exerts itself to the utter destruction of probability and good sense... [It] has taught our young men to be fonder of sound than of sense, to prefer the tickling of their ears to the improvement of their minds; the nonsense of sing-song to sublimity of sentiment; and have besides contributed to the success of many insipid and ill-written performances, which have been supported by a few pleasing airs: and yet, in spite of all of these faults, that enchantment which arises from the happy mixture of fine scenes, choruses, dances, symphony, and a variety of decorations, bears all before it, and silences even criticism itself; insomuch as the best [spoken] comedy, or tragedy we have is never seen so often by the same people with half the pleasure as a middling opera. Beauties which are regular, noble, and severe are seldom much sought after by vulgar minds... In short, real merit is overlooked in almost every art and science, in favor of agreeable trifles. [emphasis added]

Clearly, Voltaire is not a fan, and he's pretty perplexed by the astounding popularity of opera. Opera was seen as femininizing, as were a lot of things associated with Italy. In fact, Europe's relationship with Italian culture is pretty fraught during this time period. For you see, when noble lads turned of age, they went on a so-called "grand tour" through Europe, with Italy as the crown jewel of the experience. There, they would encounter the seat of all civilization: the ruins of Ancient Rome, while also soaking themselves in all the cultural opportunities modern Italy could offer.

And yet, as I said, the grumpy old patriarchs generally saw Italy as a great font of corruption for youths. They'd go to Italy and see mutilated men portray the great heroes of history using the voice of a woman (these were the castrated operatic superstars, the castrati), they'd see married women attended in their private chambers by intimate male companions (the "cicisbei"), they'd see women figures with far more power in society than women at home would ever be allowed (though still very meager by our standards today). Hell, just the fact that they'd be spending time fratranizing with catholics in the epicenter of catholicism was a pretty huge red flag.

Italian culture was felt to be so degenerative, that it basically became a homophobic stereotype. This is very much at play in the song "Yankee Doodle," which deploys "macaroni" as a well-known homophobic dog whistle (though not an academic source, this NYT article is actually a pretty decent overview of the subject). So these young men were paradoxically sent off to Italy to become cultured while the many fruits of Italy were openly regarded with scorn back home.

[I think it's helpful to think of the eighteenth century Grand Tour as essentially serving the same cultural function as the "acid trip" of the 1960s. But that's something I can expand on in another post if someone wants to hear it.]

So you see, when Voltaire calls opera "an empty trifle," he's not just saying "I don't care for opera or understand why people like it," but he's saying it corrupts and makes people more effeminate by listening. So despite the fact that Italian opera is pretty mainstream, it is the thing that bears the brunt of critical ire at this time.

Here's actually one of the pieces of music Voltaire explicitly calls out in his essay (though I actually think he likes the piece. His point about it is not that it's obviously bad, but rather "hey, this is awesome music and awesome poetry! But it doesn't belong anywhere on the tragic stage and the fact that it does occur in a staged drama is a monstrous affront to theatre).

So, this could just be the Bad Religion fan in me, but I like my punk rock political and dense with references. If I were a young idealist in 1776, I would not want for music choices.

Any discussion of Revolutionary music should begin with William Billings. His big hit was Chester, which served as an unofficial national anthem during the war, but Billings had MANY other songs. When Washington announced the cease fire that marked the end of combat operations to his troops, he ordered that they sing Billings' "Independence." Since he did not disseminate lyrics to the song, he appears to have assumed that everyone knew them already.

While Billings was churning out original hits, many others adapted traditional British tunes to the American cause. Continental Congressman John Dickinson turned the British naval anthem "Hearts of Oak" into "The Liberty Song. Boston Son of Liberty Dr. Joseph Warren adapted the British Grenadier's March into (my personal favorite) "Free America" (Warren appears to have pronounced America as "Ameri-kay" here, which is a whole linguistic bag of worms).

Most of the songwriters of the period remain anonymous. We still don't know for certain who wrote Yankee Doodle, though there's at least a story tracing it back to Dr. Richard Shuckburgh during the Seven Years War. Though the lyrics were meant to mock the colonial militia, the song was cheerily adopted by the Continental Army. Another anonymous political barn-burner was "Revolutionary Tea".

Considering the prominence of taverns in American social life,these political songs did much to keep the colonial minds on the Revolution in the years before it began, and sustained morale through the war.