Israel–David “Dudu” Fisher. Listen to him and prepare to be astonded
Jacques Brel is Belgian, not French. On the plus side, can you think of any Belgian musician more influential?
Personally, I’d nominate, in terms of INFLUENCE (which does not necessarily equal record sales):
France - Serge Gainsbourg
Brazil - Caetano Veloso or Os Mutantes - CV is probably more influential within Brazil, but OM for the world as a whole
USA - Bob Dylan (or Chuck Berry)
New Zealand - The Clean
Jamaica - Bob Marley
Wales - Manic Street Preachers (or John Cale, although his most influential stuff was in the US)
Scotland - The Jesus and Mary Chain (surely not The Bay City Rollers)
Northern Ireland - Van Morrison
:smack:
Right. That would kind of tie in with the fact that he’s got a whole song about les flamandes and all.
For Germany, for most influential I’d reckon Kraftwerk by a country mile. Other bands might have more record sales but their influence in palpable in many popular genres today.
U2 are probably the most influential band out of this island but maybe The Dubliners or Planxty deserve honourable mentions.
Ones that come to mind when I think of a country…
England: Beatles
US: Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra
Argentina: Carlos Gardel, Los Enanitos Verdes
Peru: Chabuca Granda, Eva Ayllon
Cuba: Compay Segundo, Perez Prado, La Sonora Matancera
Mexico: Pedro Infante, Cafe Tacuba, Mana, Carlos Santana
Spain: Hombres G, Manu Chao
This thread has made me feel frustrated at the task of picking one artist from the US to select. It has also left me in awe thinking about the sheer number of terrible canadian musicians.
Japan hasn’t had many musicians who’ve had any influence on the west, but one exception might be Kyu Sakamoto, who wrote Ue o muite arukō, aka The Sukiyaki Song, which according to wiki a ton of western performers have covered.
There’s also Puffy, who haven’t influenced western music much, but have become pop culture items with their cartoon.
Haha, whoops! Knock that one up to Britain and replace with Elvis.
Oh, and Sweden: Abba.
I nominate:
France–Manu Chao
Mali–Amadou and Mariam
Pretty much everything else I listen to is somewhat anglo-centric (and sometimes hispanicentric).
p.s. atomicflea, Manu Chao is French.
You’re fired. Tom Jones is the beginning, middle and end of Welsh popular music.
And for Scotland you could have gone with Wet Wet Wet, Simple Minds, Travis, The Proclaimers, Primal Scream, Belle & Sebastian, Del Amitri, Nazereth, or The Shamen, any of whom I’d put in front of TJAMC.
Not in a million years. Neil Young? Leonard Cohen? k d lang? Rush? There must be 50 other Canadians more influential than her. Even in country music there’s Hank Snow at the very least.
Sadly the answer here is going to be Yoko Ono, for some meanings of “influence” anyway.
I think he was born in France, but he’s Spanish Galician. MySpace location listed as Barcelona, Spain.
But how influential was Tom Jones? Or almost any of those Scottish bands on your list (I will give you Primal Scream and Belle & Sebastian). Those are all bands with monster hits, but how many bands can say that Travis inspired them to get into music, or that they aspire to sound like Del Amitri, or that they copped some ideas from The Proclaimers? Compare to how many times Psychocandy has been referenced in album reviews. I don’t even like the Manics, but there’re oodles of (mostly shitty) bands who’ve based their entire careers on Everything Must Go and The Holy Bible. (I would listen to an argument in favor of Shirley Bassey, though.)
He’s French but of Spanish (Galician and Basque) parentage. He moved to Barcelona in recent years. He’s European. 
The Shamen were horrible, but laid the groundwork for a lot of modern dance music, and arguably (along with Depeche Mode and Faith No More) for much of today’s synth-rock: Orgy, Linkin Park, and so on.
But were The Shamen really more influential than, say, Primal Scream or The Happy Mondays or The Prodigy in influencing modern dance music? That said, I agree with your argument for The Shamen much more than if you had argued for Wet Wet Wet. 
Algeria - Khaled
India - Ravi Shankar, Sheila Chandra
Iceland - Sigur Rós
Canada - Joni Mitchell
Nigeria - Fela Kuti
South Africa - Al Bowlly (he invented crooning)
I can get on board with that! Pardon my nitpick, atomicflea! 