Timeline of trends in music from the United States to 1930

Timeline of trends in music
Before 1799	1800-1899
1900-1909	1910-1919
1920-1929	1930-1939
1940-1949	1950-1959
1960-1969	1970-1979
1980-1989	1990-1999
2000-present
List of musical events
United States (To 1930 - to 1970 - To present)
Cuba

17th century

• c. 1690
  • Andalusian ballads arrive in Puerto Rico, vastly influencing future forms of music including the decima

18th century

• 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

American art
Architecture - Comics - Cuisine - Dance - Folklore - Literature - Movies - Painting - Poetry - Sculpture - Television - Theater - Visual arts
Music of the United States
History (Timeline)	Ethnicities
Before 1940	African American
1900-1940	Native American (Inuit and Hawaiian)
40s and 50s	Latin (Tejano and Puerto Rican)
60s and 70s	Cajun and Creole
80s to the present	Other immigrants (Jewish, European, South and East Asian, modern African and Middle-Eastern)
Genres (Samples): Classical - Rock - Pop - Folk
Awards	Grammy Awards
Charts	Billboard Music Chart
Festivals	Lollapoolooza, Lilith Fair, Ozz Fest
Media	Spin, Rolling Stone, Vibe
National anthem	"The Star-Spangled Banner" and forty-nine state songs
Local music
AL - AK - AR - AS - CA - CO - CT - DC - DE - FL - GA - GU - HI - ID - IL - IN - IA - KS - KY - LA - ME - MD - MA - MI - MN - MP - MS - MO - MT - NC - ND - NE - NV - NH - NJ - NM - NY - OH - OK - OR - PA - PR - RI - SC - SD - TN - TX - UT - VT - VA - VI - WA - WV - WI - WY

19th century

• 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
  • The danza is invented in Puerto Rico
  • The banjo becomes popular in the United States due to the minstrel show
• 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
  • Ragtime and cakewalk are popularized in the United States

20th century

1900s

1900 in music

• 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

1901 in music

• Commonly regarded as the beginning of plena music in Puerto Rico

1906 in music

• Early blues is sung and played by guitarists along the lower Mississippi River, also played by bands in New Orleans

1907 in music

• Isaac Watts publishes the first collection of New England hymns, Hymns and Spiritual Songs

1908 in music

• Tin Pan Alley continues dominating the US music industry
• Anthony Maggio publishes blues band orchestration "I Got the Blues"

1909 in music

• A song called "Uncle Josh in Society" is the first use of the term jazz (here used to refer to ragtime

1910s

1910 in music

• The first scholarly interest in Appalachian folk music results in several field recordings, and John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

1912 in music

• 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

1915 in music]]

• New Orleans-style bands start enjoying popularity in Chicago; Tom Brown starts billing his group as a Jass Band

1916 in music

• Folklorist Cecil Sharp begins a series of influential recordings of rural folk musicians, most importantly The Ritchies

1917 in music

• 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

1919 in music

• Chicago establishes itself as the capital of jazz
• Stride piano style develops in New York City

1920s

1920 in music

• 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

1921 in 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

1922 in music

• Eck Robertson makes the first recording of rural Appalachian folk music, setting the stage for the development of country music

1923 in 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

1924 in 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

1925 in 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

1926 in music

• 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

1927 in music

• 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

1928 in music

• 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"

1929 in music

• 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