There are six classic forms of American popular music; jazz, the blues, bluegrass, soul, rock 'n' roll, and country and western.

    With the exception of bluegrass and country and western, the Mississippi valley is the birthplace of Cloze (1): JXUwMDJjJXUwMDFjJXUwMDBkJXUwMDA4 all.

    Like American culture in general, American music Cloze (2): JXUwMDMwJXUwMDA5JXUwMDEy evolved out of the different traditions that reached the New World from the old. But out of all the different types of music Cloze (3): JXUwMDJjJXUwMDFjJXUwMDA5JXUwMDE1 reached the New World - from England, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Africa and Cloze (4): JXUwMDM1JXUwMDBjJXUwMDBmJXUwMDE3 other places - one was to have a particularly significant impact: African music.

    While European influences provided melody and a lyric tradition, African influences added a new sense of rhythm and new harmonies, which Cloze (5): JXUwMDJmJXUwMDEyJXUwMDE3JXUwMDE3 to give rise to several new forms of music that were different from anything European.

    New American forms of music developed among the Cloze (6): JXUwMDJiJXUwMDFmJXUwMDBkJXUwMDE3JXUwMDEz communities working in the cotton fields near the mouth Cloze (7): JXUwMDM3JXUwMDA5 the Mississippi; Christianized slaves Cloze (8): JXUwMDNjJXUwMDAxJXUwMDEzJXUwMDEzJXUwMDA5JXUwMDAzJXUwMDFmJXUwMDE1JXUwMDAx gospel music and Negro Spirituals, which soon became popular far beyond the rural states of the South.

    Following emancipation, Blacks had much more opportunity to develop Cloze (9): JXUwMDJjJXUwMDFjJXUwMDBkJXUwMDBjJXUwMDFi musical talents, and many did exactly that, adding instrumentation to the essentially vocal tradition of the spiritual.

    From the Spanish musical tradition they added the Cloze (10): JXUwMDNmJXUwMDEyJXUwMDFjJXUwMDFkJXUwMDE1JXUwMDEzJXUwMDVl a popular instrument in the southern states which had been originally colonized by the Spanish. From a more general European tradition they added brass instruments Cloze (11): JXUwMDJiJXUwMDA2JXUwMDE2JXUwMDBi as trumpets, which were popular with the marching bands Cloze (12): JXUwMDJkJXUwMDA2JXUwMDE2JXUwMDAx at all kinds of ceremonial events in the American states.

    It was thus in the late nineteenth Cloze (13): JXUwMDNiJXUwMDA2JXUwMDBiJXUwMDFhJXUwMDAxJXUwMDA3JXUwMDBi that two new forms of American music began to develop, both of them in the Mississippi valley.

    Firstly there was the blues. In the cotton-growing Delta Cloze (14): JXUwMDJhJXUwMDE3JXUwMDAyJXUwMDBlJXUwMDA2JXUwMDAx of the state of Mississippi (not to be confused with the Mississippi Delta), the blues Cloze (15): JXUwMDM5JXUwMDExJXUwMDAwJXUwMDE1JXUwMDA0JXUwMDEzJXUwMDE3JXUwMDAx in the 1870's, sometimes as a purely vocal tradition, at other times using the guitar as accompaniment. It was a form of music through which poor exploited Blacks expressed their Cloze (16): JXUwMDJiJXUwMDEyJXUwMDA1JXUwMDBhJXUwMDBiJXUwMDE2JXUwMDAw and their problems, their "blues". The sadness of the blues is evident both in the music itself, and in the titles of countless Cloze (17): JXUwMDI4JXUwMDFmJXUwMDFmJXUwMDA1JXUwMDE5JXUwMDBkJXUwMDEz blues songs, such as Poor Boy Blues, Homesick Blues and many many others.

Jazz, on the other hand, developed in and around New Orleans, as a type of music for festive moments and dancing. The most Cloze (18): JXUwMDNlJXUwMDA3JXUwMDBjJXUwMDAyJXUwMDFhJXUwMDA2 jazzman of all, Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) was born in New Orleans.

    Both of these forms of music migrated up the Mississippi valley with the Blacks who Cloze (19): JXUwMDJmJXUwMDEyJXUwMDBiJXUwMDFh north in search of work in the early twentieth century. Satchmo was one of them; he went north, Cloze (20): JXUwMDNkJXUwMDBiJXUwMDBhJXUwMDBkJXUwMDA3JXUwMDA5 up in Chicago, where his "New Orleans Jazzmen" soon established a national reputation, thanks to the development of both radio and the gramophone.

    In the 1920's, many of the Blacks who migrated north went looking for Cloze (21): JXUwMDMyJXUwMDA1JXUwMDBkJXUwMDEx in the booming American automobile industry, in and around  Detroit, and it was here in "Motown", i.e. motor town, that soul music and other new varieties evolved.

    With the advent of radio and records, all Cloze (22): JXUwMDJlJXUwMDE3JXUwMDEzJXUwMDFiJXUwMDBjJXUwMDExJXUwMDFkJXUwMDBjJXUwMDE2 of black music became increasingly popular. In the north Detroit Cloze (23): JXUwMDNhJXUwMDA3JXUwMDA2JXUwMDAyJXUwMDBjJXUwMDA4 the capital of soul music; in the south New Orleans remained the capital of jazz; and between the two, at the heart of the Mississippi valley, Memphis became the center for an exciting new type of music; rhythm 'n' blues.

    This music soon attracted the attention not just of Blacks but of Whites too; and with very little change, R & B evolved into yet another new type of Cloze (24): JXUwMDM1JXUwMDE4JXUwMDA2JXUwMDFhJXUwMDBh  rock 'n' roll.