Timeline of trends in music from the United States to 1930
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- c. 1690
- Andalusian ballads arrive in Puerto Rico, vastly influencing future forms of music including the decima
- c. 1740
- Neil Gow's short bow sawstroke technique is the basis for Appalachian fiddling
- 1770
- William Billings publishes The New England Psalm Singer, an influential collection of songs
- 1794
- Tammany, or The Indian Chief by James Hewitt is one of the first American operas
- 1801
- The Easy Instructor by William Smith and William Little is published for choral schools, leading to the shape note tradition
- c. 1830
- "Jump Jim Crow" by Thomas Rice becomes popular in the United States
- The Great Awakening (a religious revival) sweeps the United States, inspiring slaves to use their own vocal styles with English hymns; these songs are called negro spirituals
- The shape note tradition becomes popular in the American South
- c. 1840
- 1844
- B. F. White and E. J. King publish The Sacred Harp, the foundation for modern Sacred Harp music
- c. 1860
- Brass bands begin their period of innovation and popularization
- Sebastian Yradier's "La Paloma" leads to greater popularity for the habanera in Mexico and the United States
- 1867
- Slave Songs From the Southern United States is published and helps to set the stage for the popularization of African American music which enters the mainstream in the following century
- c. 1870
- Tin Pan Alley begins to dominate popular music
- 1871
- African-American spirituals are popular in Europe, even being played for Queen Victoria, who is said to have been moved to tears by the performance
- 1875
- Earliest origins of plena in Puerto Rico
- 1877
- Thomas Edison invents the first machine to record sound
- c. 1880
- Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe begin a period of large-scale immigration to the United States, establishing North America as the hub of klezmer music
- The Ghost Dance spreads from Paiute Native Americans in Nevada to other tribes across the United States
- 1880
- John Paine's In Spring is the first symphony published in the US
- 1892
- Tin Pan Alley, the area around Union Square in New York City, becomes the center for sheet music publishing in the United States
- 1895
- Perhaps the first modern jazz band, the Spasm Band, performs in New Orleans
- 1896
- Joseph Kekuku invents steel guitar by sliding a piece of steel across the strings of a slacked guitar; at about the same time, Hawaiian traditional music with English lyrics (hapa haole) was invented
- The modern incarnation of Native American powwow music and dance arise
- Commonly regarded as the beginning of plena music in Puerto Rico
- Early blues is sung and played by guitarists along the lower Mississippi River, also played by bands in New Orleans
- Tin Pan Alley continues dominating the US music industry
- Anthony Maggio publishes blues band orchestration "I Got the Blues"
- A song called "Uncle Josh in Society" is the first use of the term jazz (here used to refer to ragtime
- The first scholarly interest in Appalachian folk music results in several field recordings, and John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads
- W.C. Handy publishes early hit blues song, "The Memphis Blues"
- After Bird of Paradise becomes a Broadway hit, the popularization of Hawaiian music begins; slack-key guitar's influence on country music also starts
- New Orleans-style bands start enjoying popularity in Chicago; Tom Brown starts billing his group as a Jass Band
- Folklorist Cecil Sharp begins a series of influential recordings of rural folk musicians, most importantly The Ritchies
- The beginning of recorded jazz by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band ("Livery Stable Blues")
- Abe Schwartz and Harry Kandel help launch an American klezmer scene among Eastern European Jewish immigrant families
- Chicago establishes itself as the capital of jazz
- Stride piano style develops in New York City
- Popularity of Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" alerts music industry to the profitablity of making records by and for African Americans
- Hawaiian musicians like Bennie Nawahi begin incorporating jazz influences into traditional Hawaiian music
- Harry Pace founds Black Swan Records, the first black-owned record label in the country
- Thomas A. Dorsey's "If I Don't Get There" is the start of the popularization of gospel music, performed outside of a church setting
- Eck Robertson makes the first recording of rural Appalachian folk music, setting the stage for the development of country music
- Surge in recordings by African American jazz and blues artists, including first records by Louis Armstrong, Ida Cox, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Johnny Dodds, Bessie Smith, and many others
- John Carson records two hillbilly songs; this is the root of commercial country music
- Fletcher Henderson begins enlarging jazz ensembles, providing the foundation for swing music
- Louis Armstrong joins the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, arguably the beginning of big band and swing music
- Vernon Dalhart's "The Prisoner's Song" is the first commercially successful country single
- Riley Puckett introduces a vocal method similar to yodelling into country music
- Jazz finally enters the mainstream with the popular success of Paul Whiteman
- Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin' Hopkins help invent the Texas blues
- Gospel music begins to enter the mainstream led by jubilee quartets (such as the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet), jackleg preachers (such as Blind Willie Johnson and Washington Phillips) and singing preachers (such as Reverend J. M. Gates
- Barbershop is popularized by The Mills Brothers
- The program that will eventually become the Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting on WSM Radio, the first major station in Nashville
- Carl Sprague becomes the first singing cowboy
- The tango is popularized by Rudolph Valentino films like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Ukrainian-American fiddler Pawlo Humeniuk releases "Ukrainske Wesilie", which sells about 150,000 copies and launches his career as the King of the Ukrainian fiddlers
- A new type of microphone enables Bing Crosby to introduces a new style of "crooning" on his debut record
- Will Shade founds the first jug band in Memphis
- Big band and swing music begin to break into the fringes of the mainstream
- Gus Cannon, Noah Lewis and Will Shade represent the commercial peak of jug band-styled folk music
- Hillbilly music's two biggest performers, The Carters and Jimmie Rodgers, are recorded for the first time during a recording session led by Ralph Peer; Jimmie Rodgers proves most influential, adapting yodelling, Hawaiian slide guitar and blues-style musicianship for country music
- The first massively popular musical comedy, Show Boat (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II) is performed for the first time
- Recordings by banjoist Dock Boggs are among the early pivotal recordings of folk music
- Joseph and Cleoma Falcon record the first Cajun song, "Allons à Lafayette"
- Blues musicians like Memphis Minnie and Furry Lewis emerge with the Memphis blues
- Musicians like Cow Cow Davenport, Roosevelt Sykes, and Clarence "Pine Top" Smith use the piano in the blues, coining the term boogie woogie to describe this sound
- The first recordings of Texan conjunto music begin