Musical culture in Equestria

Hello There! Yay first blog post etc.

After reading All the Way Back I began thinking about how music is used in the land of the ponies. I'll break it up according to Tribe and here we go.

Earth Ponies are the most musically talented of the tribes. That's not saying that there aren't others of other tribes that sing or perform music but they seem to be a (pardon the pun) rarity. Pinkie is rather obvious in that statement, but without her, a good 2/3 of the songs on the show would be excised and the show would be lacking for it but that's not what I am to be going on about. Seemingly 90% of the musicians illustrated in the show are Earth Ponies. For example: At the Gala, at the opera (Becoming Popular), at various hoedowns (Luna Eclipsed, Apple Family reunion), Musicals (Hinny of the Hills) and rodeos (Appeloosa's Most Wanted). I think that this vast amount of musicality in a single branch of Equestrian society can be evinced by looking at three (or four depending on if you count reprises as different songs or not) of the most Ear Worm-y songs in the show. Raise This Barn, Winter Wrap Up and Apples to the Core.
Raise This Barn and Winter Wrap Up are direct Work Songs which help to break up the monotony of whatever one is doing and helps direct workers to be in time with one another so that no-one injures themselves or others whilst striking metal or stone. A good example of one in modern terms would be Po' Lazarus from O Brother Where Art Thou?. The development of songs such as this would make sense in agrarian communities such as Ponyville which was an earthen settlement and the scattered Rock farms ofSketcha-Holic'sNickerlite and the Whitetail Woods. Now Apples to the Core is a travel song. That is, a song used to help eat the miles as one traveled in the times before radio and personal music. This makes sense because Earth Ponies were the ones at most of a disadvantage during travel because they couldn't fly for part of the way or have another means of ameliorating the discomfort of walking (check out Chasing Winter for an explanation). So consequently, they had to have ways to pass the time and traveling music was an obvious outgrowth of theirs.
Unicorns The only musical unicorns that are showcased (outside of the Mane Six) are Flim, Flam, Vinyl Scratch and Starlight Glimmer. Now, Flim and Flam are obvious homages to The Music Man with both of their appearances using catchy tunes to appeal to as many rubes suckers costumers as possible. For example "Trouble" from The Music Man is very similar to Super Cider Squeezy 6000

a fact that basically everyone came to after watching the episode. I'm sure that the brothers came to a similar conclusion after seeing a musical or play that probably had similar elements to it. After all, the show's setting seems to come closest to the early teens of the 1900's. For example, here's a scene from the same musical and watch how the men act around each other.

Vinyl is possibly the biggest anomaly to a society that is probably in the 19teens although her turntables could be mag-electric. Starlight or one of her flunkies probably wrote that little ditty to give the town some form of civic pride less tangible than buildings.
Pegasi seem to be enmeshed within what ever musical culture happens to be dominant. There doesn't seem to be much singing in Cloudsdale, though that could be due to the fact that it's an industrial hub and not a small farm town. Perhaps being above the ground for too long isolates one in many ways.
Well, that's all I have to say. This post was mainly due to the fact that I had a itch and I needed to scratch it. If anyone wants to use ideas from it, go ahead and do so just contact me. Yep, a donut steel in a crappy blogpost