I scoured the archives but couldn't find threads that dealt specifically with this, so here goes...

For the past week I've been corresponding with a chap in a lively analysis of the roots of folk music in North America. Because I happen to have a traditional / folk music website he posed two questions to me (gulp):

1. When and how did folk music start in North America?
2. What instruments were used in those earliest times?

I realized very quickly that I was hypothesizing based on my recall of school daze social studies. "Halt!" I said. Time to call in the 'Catters to help!

I found a great source on Canadian folk music history here. And on the American folk history I took a scientific wild-assed guess at the following:

- Native American songs and dances
- Puritan Church music brought by the pre-colonial settlers of the eastern seaboard.
- 16th century broadside ballads brought from Britain by the sailors, soldiers and settler passengers
- Some musical influence from the pre-colonial Spanish settlements of Florida
- French musical influence in what is now Canada and also down the Mississippi River system to Louisiana
- The Acadian influence in the American south after the 1755 expulsion from Canada
- Songs of hardship and hope among the slaves
- Country dance tunes and ballads brought by the Scots-Irish settlers and taken into and beyond the Appalachians.

How am I doin' folks? Anything obvious that I've missed? And what about the instruments played in those earliest times?