How does Black music and culture function as a part of American Popular culture?

I think that the question suggests the enormity of the range and scope of the African-American experience in the New World over the last several hundred years and of his African ancestors before that. In order to address the question we must examine the nature of a couple of things. One of those is certainly what it is we mean when we say “Black” in the context of music and in the context of America and in the context of American music. I find it curiously intriguing that the question does not use the term “Black Music.” I suspect this is quite deliberate, as it invites us to ask, as Stuart Hall (1992) cagily queries: “What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?” Our mission here is similar, to wit: what is this “Black” in American music? (pun unintended but acceptable).
The question hints at whether we can distinguish the validity of something called “Black music,” and if so, how are we to identify it? It also gets at whether “Black Music,” if it e...