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Introduction
It falls under the heading of general knowledge that much modern American popular
music is heavily influenced by African-American musical tradition. Jazz began with the black
Creole musicians that played ragtime in the red light district of New Orleans. After that district,
known as Storyville, was shut down in 1917, the music traveled up the Mississippi river to the
urban centers where it ultimately became jazz and was embraced by white musicians.
Rock and Roll, at least according to one interpretation, was born when young Elvis
Presley was discovered by record producer Sam Phillips. A white man, Elvis fused elements of
black and white music into a style that came to be called Rockabilly, a hybrid of black rhythm and
blues and white hillbilly music which was acceptable to a "whites-only" society that would not
directly embrace black performers. To this day, elements of 12 bar blues can easily be heard in
most rock and roll.
But are these 20th century occurrences the only instances of the blending of black and white music? The white European settlers that colonized North America brought their folk music with them. Over time, new songs written in a similar style were added to the old, creating a body of strictly American folk music. But despite the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant tendency toward separation of the races, a strong African-American musical tradition had an unmistakable influence on white folk music. Due to the racial segregation that was practiced in the early United States, and which in effect is still practiced today, there existed in North America two folk music traditions, one black and one white. However, a considerable amount of borrowing occurred between the two traditions.
[Preface] [Introduction] [Life in EarlyAmerica] [EuropeanElements] [AfricanAttributes] [Instruments] [MusicSamples-Folk] [MusicSamples-Sacred] [MusicSamples-Blues] [Conclusion]