From jazz, blues, and the nebulous cluster of music generally referred to either as country, folk, or singer-songwriter on up to rock, hip-hop, soul/R&B, funk, and many forms of electronic music, the US has been possibly the defining country in musical innovation during the past century. Let's take a look at some possible factors that drove that trend:
1) Americans are somehow culturally predisposed to creating better popular music. I don't know how this can actually be proven with any sort of objectivity, at least not without sounding borderline racist.
1a) The individualism of American politics and the harshness of the American form of capitalism reward innovation and creativity. I've also seen this argument with a lot of aspects of American culture and science, from tech and startups to finance and movies, but again I don't know if the evidence is there. The innovations behind rock, the folk revival, and R&B/soul occurred when the US had a much more equal economic model than it does today, and similarly the major innovations in British and Northern European popular music (the British invasion, metal, Europop, etc) all occurred during a much more socialistic economic model as compared to now. In addition, many other industries remain at least partly centered outside the US: video games in Japan, fashion in France and Italy, automobiles in Germany and East Asia, finance in the UK, film (to an extent) in India...It imo is hard to think of an area of cultural accomplishment that is as US-centric as in the crystallization of music genres.
2) The US' economic dominance and the ability to develop a popular music industry (shared language, relative prosperity, large concentrations of industries, cheap pianos and later records) meant that its genres were able to dominate. If Germany or Japan had been as prosperous then we'd all be listening to oom-pah or koto music. This sounds pretty obvious, but the major waves of new genres emanating from the US have come at very different times and stages of music-industry development (jazz and blues around WWI, rock and soul during the Fifties, hip-hop and techno in the Seventies and Eighties), and other countries that have massive music industries continue to work in styles that are heavily drawn from the American canon (K-pop, J-pop, many if not most contemporary Latin and European artists).
3) The combination of West African and European influences (rhythm, melody, instruments) somehow creates more appealing music than any other two-region combination. Maybe that could explain why Latin pop music has managed to remain pretty close to traditional forms as opposed to say Korean and Japanese pop, but I would also point out the example of ragtime - jazz's immediate ancestor, a style of piano music that combined syncopations from the early stages of blues with classical marches and solo-piano pieces - didn't really adapt well to the times, remaining a form of "exotic" composition comparable to Turkish marches or Hungarian-style music.
4) The emphasis on improvisation and flexibility associated with jazz combined with symphonic instrumentation allowed for 20th-century American genres of music to be more able to adapt and evolve to a broad variety of settings as opposed to their counterparts elsewhere in space (polka, Carnatic, Turkish marches) and time (ragtime). I think that this emphasis on improvisation and on playing fast and loose with rules is actually a big part of the puzzle, in that from relatively early on musicians in many parts of the world could incorporate their local music into a global style (for instance, shidaiqu in China and Afro-Cuban jazz in, well, Cuba) - or even take elements from wherever in the world they liked (Indian and Latin influences are common across ethnic lines). At the same time, the emergence of jazz (a form of music that was neither classical or folk but had clear ties to both) resulted in a wave of interest in other American musical traditions.
1) Americans are somehow culturally predisposed to creating better popular music. I don't know how this can actually be proven with any sort of objectivity, at least not without sounding borderline racist.
1a) The individualism of American politics and the harshness of the American form of capitalism reward innovation and creativity. I've also seen this argument with a lot of aspects of American culture and science, from tech and startups to finance and movies, but again I don't know if the evidence is there. The innovations behind rock, the folk revival, and R&B/soul occurred when the US had a much more equal economic model than it does today, and similarly the major innovations in British and Northern European popular music (the British invasion, metal, Europop, etc) all occurred during a much more socialistic economic model as compared to now. In addition, many other industries remain at least partly centered outside the US: video games in Japan, fashion in France and Italy, automobiles in Germany and East Asia, finance in the UK, film (to an extent) in India...It imo is hard to think of an area of cultural accomplishment that is as US-centric as in the crystallization of music genres.
2) The US' economic dominance and the ability to develop a popular music industry (shared language, relative prosperity, large concentrations of industries, cheap pianos and later records) meant that its genres were able to dominate. If Germany or Japan had been as prosperous then we'd all be listening to oom-pah or koto music. This sounds pretty obvious, but the major waves of new genres emanating from the US have come at very different times and stages of music-industry development (jazz and blues around WWI, rock and soul during the Fifties, hip-hop and techno in the Seventies and Eighties), and other countries that have massive music industries continue to work in styles that are heavily drawn from the American canon (K-pop, J-pop, many if not most contemporary Latin and European artists).
3) The combination of West African and European influences (rhythm, melody, instruments) somehow creates more appealing music than any other two-region combination. Maybe that could explain why Latin pop music has managed to remain pretty close to traditional forms as opposed to say Korean and Japanese pop, but I would also point out the example of ragtime - jazz's immediate ancestor, a style of piano music that combined syncopations from the early stages of blues with classical marches and solo-piano pieces - didn't really adapt well to the times, remaining a form of "exotic" composition comparable to Turkish marches or Hungarian-style music.
4) The emphasis on improvisation and flexibility associated with jazz combined with symphonic instrumentation allowed for 20th-century American genres of music to be more able to adapt and evolve to a broad variety of settings as opposed to their counterparts elsewhere in space (polka, Carnatic, Turkish marches) and time (ragtime). I think that this emphasis on improvisation and on playing fast and loose with rules is actually a big part of the puzzle, in that from relatively early on musicians in many parts of the world could incorporate their local music into a global style (for instance, shidaiqu in China and Afro-Cuban jazz in, well, Cuba) - or even take elements from wherever in the world they liked (Indian and Latin influences are common across ethnic lines). At the same time, the emergence of jazz (a form of music that was neither classical or folk but had clear ties to both) resulted in a wave of interest in other American musical traditions.
For instance, a Victor Records employee named Ralph Peer, who had conducted among the first ever recordings of New Orleans jazz in its native habitat, eventually chose to record Appalachian folk songs in Bristol, Tennessee. According to Wikipedia, "the Bristol Sessions are considered by some as the 'Big Bang' of modern country music."
So, how influential do y'all think each of these different factors was in the dominance of American musical genres? I listed them in what I think is roughly increasing order of importance, although I think that African-European fusion and the improv culture are about tied as the #1 factor, with economics a close second and political/cultural superiority as deeply secondary.
So, how influential do y'all think each of these different factors was in the dominance of American musical genres? I listed them in what I think is roughly increasing order of importance, although I think that African-European fusion and the improv culture are about tied as the #1 factor, with economics a close second and political/cultural superiority as deeply secondary.
Post-Shitposting (dark woke edition)
why reddit attracts this type of people
because it's the easiest platform to access in case you have a brain rot