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Step 1
Listen to spirituals like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Study the history of hollers and chants that were used by plantation workers and street peddlers after the abolition of slavery. The folk and arranged spirituals of the 1870s paved the way for rural blues and the ragtime piano of artists like Scott Joplin.
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Step 2
Track the divergent forms of African-American music popularized in the early 1900s. The spirituals of the late 1800s took form as folk and traditional gospel, with groups like the Fisk University Jubilee Singers leading the way. The New Orleans musical style also evolved during this time with brass bands, boogie-woogie and jazz heating up in the French Quarter.
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Step 3
Play blues music from Chicago and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s artists like Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Delta Blues guitarist Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy and LeRoy Carr. Blues gained popularity in Memphis and the South, Then known as "race" music, was performed in small clubs throughout the African-American community.
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Step 4
Travel to New York and Kansas City to listen to the development of jazz. Listen to artists such as pianist Thelonious Monk (famous for his song "Round Midnight") and drummer Max Roach, who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. The jazz sound proliferated, with bebop, swing and hard bop among the new musical forms. Study the sounds of band leaders like Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
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Step 5
Give ear to the first rock 'n rollers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino. Collect greatest hits CDs featuring songs from the 1950s and early 1960s. Continue on to the Motown sound of the 1960s with groups like the Supremes, the Temptations and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Find recordings by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and other artists on the harder funkier Stax label.
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Step 6
Familiarize yourself with soul music of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Buy CDs by Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers and the Chi-Lites. Watch documentaries like "Wattstax," a concert filmed in Los Angeles in 1972.
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Step 7
Follow the musical styles popular since the late 1970s, including disco, funk, "Quiet Storm," free-form jazz, hip-hop and rap. Rap first appeared on the streets of New York with groups like Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy, and Run-DMC.
