The creation of American jazz, blues, swing, rap, and hip hop started long ago when African song and dance was combined with European styles. In the West Indies and throughout the Americas wherever slaves were kept, there was an interaction between white and black. I think of it as understudy. Two films show blacks in charge of plantation music, Gone With the Wind and Twelve Years a Slave.
Whites studied black music in the fields, in the cabins, in the big house, at churches, and on the docks and rivers. A central place for this cultural integration was New Orleans. But the minstrel show started in New York and traveled extensively through the world. It was a larger part of popular culture for a hundred years than many of us realize. Young Stephen Foster, the first full-time songwriter, was taken to black church by a bound woman.