American popular music spans a range of human experience, from matters of the heart to political protest. The United States is a perfect musical laboratory: Take people from every corner of the globe, give them freedom to create and distribute their effort. And what results! European ballads recast with African polyrhythmic textures or blended with a Cuban-flavored habanera. “Cold” bop. “Hot” jazz. “Acid” rock. “Gangsta” rap. We might speak less of a singular American popular music than of a constellation of American popular “musics.”
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