Haitiancompas and cadence rampa take over the music scene in Martinique, Guadeloupe and elsewhere in the Lesser Antilles, displacing biguine and similar native genres, which continue to thrive in rural villages
Ray Boley sets up Canyon Records to record Navajo singer Ed Lee Natay; Canyon Records goes on to become the most influential label in Native American music
Alan Freed begins broadcsting black R&B to white teenagers on his radio show, Moondog Rock'n'Roll Party
Doo wop has many of its earliest hits, including "My Reverie" by The Larks, "I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night" by The Mello-Moods, "Glory of Love" by The Five Keys, "Shouldn't I Know" by The Cardinals and "It Ain't the Meat" by The Swallows
Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren moves to Liberia and then the United States, where he begins recording a series of radical fusions of African drumming with American jazz musicians
Luambo Makiadi begins recording, and the first full-time Congolese orchestra, African Jazz forms; this is the beginning of a Congolese popular music sound
Count Ossie introduces akete drums and burru percussion styles to Rastafarian communities in West Kingston, leading to a close association between the religion and all forms of Jamaican popular music
The Orioles' "Cryin' in the Chapel" is the first record by a black group to be a #1 pop hit; other doo wop recordings by black groups like The Spaniels, The Moonglows and The Flamingoes, promoted by Alan Freed, are also hits
Bahamanian junkanoo parades, annual celebrations of music and dance, begin to become more organized, eventually helping solidify the sound of junkanoo and move it towards popularization
Spokes Mashiyane's "Ace Blues" is the biggest African hit of the year and launches the pennywhistle jive as the first major form of South African popular music
Mighty Sparrow's "Jean and Dinah" is the last hit for classical calypso. The song became a hit and led to a new interest in pop-calypso, heralded by another major hit, Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song", which came from the album Calypso, the first of any kind to sell more than a million copies
The founding of the Hanoi Conservatoire of Music leads to more formality and modernization in Vietnamesefolk music and the development of nhac dan toc cai bien
Tony Crombie & His Rockets, an English band, popularizes rock and roll in Iceland with a series of thirteen concerts; authorities don't approve and try to offer non-rock related activities for Icelandic youth
IK Dairo & the Morning Star Orchestra begin performing, soon becoming the biggest band in juju music and adding electric guitars and accordion to the style
The films Al Hilal and Mughal-e-Azam are responsible for the blossoming of filmi qawwali, as well as its increasing secularization, leading to intense controversy
Native rock and roll musicians begin an Icelandic rock scene. Record companies require lyrics to be in Icelandic, though the youthful listeners prefer English language acts.
The Festival De La Canción De Benidorm is founded in Benidorm; it will inspire a wave of similar music festivals across the country, and the beginning of the Spanish pop industry
