Art-U9-Music-A4-Discovery Journal-Put it all together

American music comes from many sources. America is a melting pot of immigrants from all over the world. Everything we are as a country had its influences come from our founding fathers and our American ancestors. This is especially true for the many types of music that is a strong part of our American heritage even though much of its origins were influenced by other countries’ musical styles. Today, our music is a fusion of many different styles such as African, South America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and those uniquely developed by Americans.

Some of the strongest influences happened in the last century. In 1920s, Afro-Cuban dance music and West African became popular in America. In the 1940s, Cubop became popular and it was a combination of Afro-Cuban rhythms as well as American jazz. In the 1950s, bossa nova music was imported from Brazil and Calypso music made it on the pop charts. In the 1960s, the Beatles brought Indian sitar music into the rock style, traditional songs became folk rock, South African folk and pop music was introduced here by Miriam Maketa. In the 1970s, Malian Touré brought a blues sound to African melodies, and Jamaican reggae became popular which influenced punk. In the 1980s, music is becoming more world connected so many other musical influences were introduced in America by popular pop stars. Some of these artists used music from more African styles, Latin American, Bulgarian, etc. In the 1990s, more influences became a part from our culture. Some examples are Afro-Gaelic, punk Ukrainian, etc. As time goes on and the world is becoming more and more united by the internet and social media our influences will surly become even broader as we connect with everyone throughout the world.

In fact, some of the things that I learned in this lesson was how our music has such a strong connection to many musical styles from around the world especially Africa and Latin. It was interesting to see how most of these influences were more recent then one would think but I am sure that technology such as recorders, record players, etc. was part of the reason music could be so widely shared. All in all, now that we can talk or listen to things from around the world in just a few clicks, I believe we will become even more united especially in music