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The development of the arts in America has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration - European sophistication and domestic originality.

Blues is a native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. The slaves sang songs telling about their extreme suffering and privation. The blues was mostly sung in the South and only spread northward in the 1930s and 1940s with the migration of many blacks from the South. The 1920s saw the blues become a musical form more widely used by jazz instrumentalists.

Jazz originated in New Orleans early in the 20th century, bringing together elements from ragtime, slave songs, and brass bands. Jazz was the reigning popular American music from the 1920s through the 1940s. In the late 1940s, a new, more cerebral form of mostly instrumental jazz, called be-bop, began to attract audiences. Rhythm & blues was a combination of jazz and other "race" music with the lyrical content, sonic gestures and format of the blues. The epoch of rhythm & blues spans the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

The melding of rhythm & blues with country and western music in the mid-1950s gave birth to rock and roll. To make the new music more acceptable to a mainstream audience, white performers and arrangers began to "cover" rhythm and blues songs - singing them with a toned down beat and revised lyrics.

Folk music was based largely on ballads brought over from Scotland, England, and Ireland; it had been preserved in such enclaves as the mountains of North Carolina and West Virginia. Bob Dylan extended the reach of folk music by writing striking new songs that addressed contemporary social problems, especially the denial of civil rights to black Americans.

Like folk, country music descends from the songs brought to the United States from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The original form of country music, called "old-time" and played by string bands, can still be heard at festivals held each year in many southern states. Modern country music developed in the 1920s, roughly coinciding with a mass migration of rural people to big cities in search of work.

Due to its diversity, popular music in the United States today challenges simple description. The history of popular music since the 1970s is basically that of rock music, which has grown to include hundreds of musical styles.

Until the end of the 19th century, there really was no distinctive classical music, e.g. symphony, opera, chamber music, sonata etc., in America. With the advent of the 20th century, sparked by the immigrant urge to assimilate, isolationism, the excitement of jazz, and a "can-do" spirit, American composers started to create an astounding variety of distinctively American classical music. Composers such as George Gershwin and Aaron Copland incorporated homegrown melodies and rhythms into forms borrowed from Europe. Music composition of the greater part of the 20th century, especially the period after World War II, is characterized by experimentation and a constant search for new systems of writing music, new forms and new styles.

• American Popular Music
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• Blues, Gospel and the Fort Valley Music Festivals 1938-43 US Library of Congress, American Memory
• Changing the Beat - A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Vol.I
• Changing the Beat - A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Vol.II
• Changing the Beat - A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Vol.III
• Hearts and Soul: A Celebration of African American Music
• Historic American Sheet Music 1850 - 1920 Duke University
• I hear America Singing Thomas Hampson
• Max Hunter Folk Song Collection Southwest Missouri State University
• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1820-1885 US Library of Congress, American Memory
• The Music of Americans US Library of Congress, American Memory
• Music: The Quintessential American Sound DOS IIP, Electronic-Journal
DOS IIP, Electronic-Journal
• 19th-Century California Sheet Music: 1852 - 1900 University of California, Berkeley
• Popular Songs in American History
• Portrait of America: Distinctively American Arts
• Smithsonian Folkways
• Southern Mosaic-The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip U.S. Library of Congress, American Memory

• African-American Sheet Music 1850-1920
• American Classical Music Hall of Fame
• American Folklife Center US Library of Congress
• American Gospel Music Directory
• America's Jazz Heritage Smithsonian Institution
• American Music Center
• American Music Resource
• American Roots Music: The Roots of American Music PBS
• The Blues PBS
• A Directory to Musical Organizations, Societies, and Clubs on the Web University of Washington
• Duke Ellington Centennial
• Official Elvis Presley Site
• Evolution of Rap Music in the United States
• Festival Finder
• Gospel Music Hall of Fame
• Grammy Online
• Historic American Sheet Music Duke University
• History of America's Music: Jazz
• Honky Tonks, Hymns and the Blues National Public Radio
• International Bluegrass Music Association
• Jazz Age Chicago
• Jazz Web: Styles of Jazz - Northwestern University
• Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room, Music Division
• Links - National Music Museum
• Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - Southwest Missouri State University
• Music - the Internet Public Library
• The Music of Americans US Library of Congress
• 19th-Century California Sheet Music: 1852 - 1900 University of California, Berkeley
• OperaGlass Stanford University
• Performing Arts in America 1875-1923 New York Public Library
• Performing Arts, Music US Library of Congress, American Memory
• Popular Songs in American History
• PBS Arts - Music
• Red Hot Jazz Archive: History of Jazz before 1930
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
• Roughstock's History of Country Music
• Smithsonian Jazz Portal
• Spotlight Biography: Jazz & Blues
• U.S. Opera
• Worldwide Internet Music Resources: Genres and Types of Music Indiana University School of Music
• Year of the Blues 2003