Stephen Foster

American songwriter who wrote Oh! Susanna, Beautiful Dreamer, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, and Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) — the most beloved American folk songs of the 19th century — whose music, though written in the minstrel tradition, became the soundtrack of American nostalgia.

Created the first distinctively American popular song tradition — Foster's songs expressed an American yearning for home, simplicity, and an idealized past that became permanently embedded in American cultural memory — representing the lyric voice of American nostalgia as a psychological force.