Black Popular Music is a classification of music originated from African American musicians. The music characteristics includes memorable and or simple melodic lines, easy harmonics, and straightforward rhythms, moderate tempos, catchy, symmetrical melodies, in combination with bebop structure. It may be safe to say that the majority of Black popular tunes have an Afro style about them while in other cases it may be interesting to discover some of the influences that affected the composers of such songs. It was from these musical characteristics that gave birth to the musical genres of what is today known as Jazz which started out with a mixture of many types of music. Its roots date back to the 1880's with African origins. Jazz combines elements of African music with elements of Western European music. The birthplace of that combination, which is Jazz, is said to be New Orleans. One theory as to why New Orleans is the birthplace is contributed to the black Creole subculture. Jazz made it possible for African-American music to be imitated for the first time by white musicians. The broad emotional meaning of the genre allowed such cross-cultural development without being "watered down". From jazz grew many different elements within it. Bebop, swing, Boogie Woogie, Free jazz and Hard Bop were all examples of the experimentation the musicians of the time were making to elevate the sound; Blues-secular folk music-an expressive form of music with soulful feel of gospel blended in, from its origin in the South in the early 20 ^th century had become by 1960s one of the most important influence on the American musical scene. Gospel-African-American music derived from church worship services and from spiritual and blues singing. Funk-an African American musical style-emanated from African-American oral tradition, and is a rhythm driven musical genre popular in the 1970s and early 1980s. Rhythm & blues-predominantly a vocal genre was often used for dancing and very popular in the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Soul-emerged in the mid 1960s was a single prominent element of musical spontaneity combined with pervasive musical and extra musical control. Finally Rock 'n' roll-essentially a form of rhythmic zed blues, became a dominant popular style in 1955.

The history of Black popular music cannot be complete without a little investigation about its origin. The Black popular music emanates from black music history that started from Work song/Spiritual (1619)--chant and lyrics derived from everyday life of slavery, where voice was used as an instrument and set the scene for what was to come. Without the Work song, none of the musical genres that came after could have existed. The "Call and Response" form of these work songs came straight out of the Slaves' African heritage.

Today, it may be safe to say that majority of American popular music of the 1950s, based chiefly on elements of vernacular of African American music.