Before radio, before records, before playlists, American music traveled by river. This episode explores how the Mississippi River functioned as America’s first streaming platform—carrying African diasporic rhythm, memory, and survival from the South to the North. Through migration and adaptation, music became a living archive, reshaping itself in bodies, communities, and cities long before modern media existed.

Have you ever wondered where the music of the United States started and evolved? We answer that question in this episode.

This piece challenges the false separation of musical genres such as blues, gospel, jazz, soul, funk, R&B, Afro-Caribbean music, country, rock, and even classical traditions. These genres are often misunderstood in ways that erase Black contributions, collapse diverse styles into a single “Black music” category, and ignore deep African rhythmic, spiritual, and storytelling lineages. When examined on their own terms—and in relation to one another—they reveal a shared history shaped by migration, resistance, innovation, and diasporic memory.

Across genres, common elements emerge: call-and-response rooted in West African griot traditions, polyrhythms carried through the Americas via the slave trade, sacred-secular interplay forged in churches and streets, and continuous cross-pollination between Black American, Afro-Caribbean, and global traditions. From the banjo’s African origins in country music, to gospel’s influence on soul and civil rights anthems, to funk and jazz shaping hip-hop and contemporary classical composition, these connections dismantle hierarchical and racialized views of music history. Understanding this network of influences reclaims Black musical genius as foundational—not peripheral—to global sound.