Dave (the ancient mariner) asked... Interesting subject Barry T. Are you thinking about producing a book or paper on the subject?

No, but it might be a good topic for some wordsmith! In surfing I found a couple of CDROMS, one for $9 and another for $75, that are focused on the topic. I'm sure there must already be books written on it, and term papers written by music students.

When I went cybersearching I found that most of the available information focuses on the colonial and post-colonial period. There is some great material for those eras and for the music genres that developed from that time, but there's not much on the topic of music in the really early explorer / settler societies.