Leroy Anderson for the win.
OK, fair enough. But I can’t think of what cultural tradition a song like The Gift or The Black Angel’s Death Song comes from.
It was complicated for sure. Maybe this has some clues in it?
Lou Reed _ I Wanna Be BlackAnything from the catalogue of J. S. Bach.
Ridiculous “no pre-20th Century” hypothetical notwithstanding. Cool doesn’t care 'bout your rules
I’ll give you Black Angel’s Death Song, but The Gift definitely has blues influence running along with the guitar line (especially when it gets to three minutes and it’s just riffing completely on the blues scale) and perhaps the chord progression. Plus the beat.
It all depends on how granular you want to get with finding music with the least non-Western European influence in it. I would argue that while Rodrigo y Gabriela tend not to show that much blues and jazz influence in their music, flamenco itself is a bit of a hodgepodge of European and non-European (North African, Arabic, Gypsy) influences.
The Decemberists - cool in the English major working at Starbuck’s sort of way.
While quickly scanning through this thread, my eyes report this as “my Pia Zadora station.” Yikes.
Hall & Oates?
They are known as a “rock and soul” group.
80s Metallica
Sex Pistols
Devo
Tom Lehrer
Honorable mention to Sarah McLachlan, but she may not be cool…
Isn’t punk kind of the whitest genre? I am not a punk expert but didn’t it ditch the musicality and soulfulness of the rock that came before it in exchange for bland chords and screaming? Or would you say it still has an element of blues or jazz to it?
I think Tom Lehrer would be horrified to be considered cool…
The Decemberists. That is some nerdy, hipster, white people shit right there but they still have a real following. It is hard to tell they are American. The Beatles sounded more American than they do.
Bela Fleck.
Astrud Gilberto.
It was Lou’s talent for singing off the cuff rock, which I think you may read as “black,” which so impressed John Cale, who was actually previously training to be the ideal of the OP. I would think that the velvets would not want to be considered for this honor, even Cale. He came on board. The vernacular of their music was not white.
Did they wear Birkenstocks and eat cardboard boxes?
In all seriousness, White Zombie and White Wizzard.
ETA: And The Darkness
I swear the puns aren’t (totally) intentional. These are all white boy, white bread bands unless you want to start throwing the blues around as the base for pretty much any rock music.
Dammit, I say no to Johnny Cash. If he’s even in the running, the whole question morphs into “Who’s a white singer that white people listen to?” Cash is heavily, HEAVILY influenced not only by blues, but also by gospel music, two genres heavily rooted in African American traditions.