Once, someone put on some old folk music from Ghana for me. It was the blues, more or less. No harmonic changes, but the scales were very bluesy.
The slaves then came over here. Some dude in the cotton field sang out, "Baby left this morning/Feeling so damn sad."
The others in the field repeated/responded, "Baby left this morning/Feeling so damn sad" while dude thought of a rhyme. "I tell's ya all/Best bitch I done had." This call-and-response format lasts to this day.
So, there's that.
But this was all very basic stuff, musically speaking.
In thinking about "European" music, it's easy to think of "classical" or "opera" or something, but there is a long and rich tradition of the popular song in Europe. The form was particularly popular in the eighteenth century, as reasonably-priced pianofortes came on the market and there was a demand for ditties. This tradition existed in America as well.
A lot of the songs used endless variations on I-IV-V changes, which we all know and love.
And then at some point, the black music and the white music slowly made love and had a baby.
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Originally Posted by chocolate_ladyland
have you ever heard of Dolly Mixture? They're first album is really cool
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No, but they seem really interesting.
Is Liz Phair eligible, by the way? Not a huge fan, but if RHOF brought up Green Day, Phair doesn't seem an outrageous suggestion.