Linked from

The 42 pages that link to African American music, each with the reason it gives.

• Call and responseNarrower topic: Call and response has deep roots in African-American musical traditions.

• JazzNarrower topic: Jazz belongs to this broader history and draws on its musical innovations and cultural life.

• Country musicRelated: Black musical traditions and musicians shaped country instruments, repertoire, and performance.

• Elvis PresleyNarrower topic: Presley’s success renewed debate about how white performers benefited from Black musical traditions.

• Duke EllingtonNarrower topic: Ellington’s work became a major achievement within this broad musical history.

• FunkNarrower topic: Funk draws on rhythmic practices and musical forms developed across these traditions.

• Louis ArmstrongNarrower topic: Armstrong’s career carried Black musical innovation into the center of American popular culture.

• RagtimeNarrower topic: Ragtime’s rhythms and performance traditions grew within this broader musical history.

• Twelve-bar bluesNarrower topic: The twelve-bar blues emerged within this broad musical history.

• Langston HughesRelated: His poetry carried Black musical idioms into print and performance.

• New Orleans jazzNarrower topic: Its practices and expressive forms are central to New Orleans jazz’s formation.

• American popular musicNarrower topic: Its forms and innovations have shaped much of the sound and history of U.S. popular music.

• BackbeatNarrower topic: The backbeat developed within musical traditions shaped by African American rhythmic practices.

• Berry GordyNarrower topic: Motown grew from these traditions while bringing many performers to national and international prominence.

• Delta bluesNarrower topic: Delta blues grew from the musical life of Black communities in the Mississippi Delta.

• Race recordsNarrower topic: The category packaged a broad, diverse body of music for commercial sale.

• Boogie-woogieNarrower topic: Boogie-woogie emerged within African-American musical traditions in the American South.

• American classical musicRelated: African American musical practices shaped American composers’ rhythms, forms, and ideas of national sound.

• American folk musicRelated: African American musical forms and musicians shaped folk song, instrumentation, rhythm, and performance.

• BanjoNarrower topic: The banjo’s early American history is inseparable from Black musicians and musical innovation.

• Bessie SmithNarrower topic: Smith’s career belongs to a broader history of Black musical innovation shaped by community and commerce.

• National Museum of African American History and CultureBroader topic: Music exhibitions show how African American creativity has influenced U.S. culture.

• Appalachian musicRelated: African American musicians and styles helped shape the region’s banjo music and dance repertoire.

• Blackface minstrelsyRelated: Minstrel performance appropriated and distorted Black musical forms even as Black artists shaped American music.

• The Apollo TheaterNarrower topic: The Apollo has presented performers across many of these traditions and helped bring them to broad audiences.

• W. C. HandyNarrower topic: Handy’s work adapted Black musical practices for a broader commercial audience.

• Scott JoplinNarrower topic: Joplin’s ragtime drew on and extended African American musical practices.

• Ma RaineyNarrower topic: Rainey’s blues emerged within this wider musical history.

• Original Dixieland Jass BandNarrower topic: The band’s fame raises questions about recognition and commercial credit for jazz’s Black origins.

• Buddy BoldenNarrower topic: Bolden’s innovations grew from a wider African American musical heritage.

• Charles MingusNarrower topic: Mingus’s work draws on traditions spanning blues, gospel, spirituals, and jazz.

• Erykah BaduNarrower topic: Her music draws on and renews traditions central to this broad musical history.

• Music of the United StatesRelated: African diasporic musical practices shaped blues, jazz, gospel, and many later American styles.

• Moms MableyRelated: Her performance career intersected with Black musical venues and entertainment circuits.

• African AmericansNarrower topic: These traditions transformed popular music in the United States and around the world.

• Dexter GordonNarrower topic: Gordon’s bebop career belongs to a broader history of Black innovation in American music.

• SinnersNarrower topic: The film frames music as a carrier of Black history and communal memory.

• To Pimp a ButterflyNarrower topic: The album’s stylistic range places it in conversation with a long history of Black musical innovation.

• Jingle BellsRelated: Questions about the song’s early performance context intersect with the racial history of American popular music.

• Music of AfricaCompared with: It shares diasporic connections with African traditions but developed in distinct historical settings.

• OdettaNarrower topic: Odetta’s repertoire carried African American traditions into mainstream folk audiences.

• Samuel Coleridge-TaylorNarrower topic: His compositions and American connections brought him into dialogue with African American musical life.