From the New York Times Magazine, I'm Nicole Hannah-Jones.

This is 1619.

This week, Wesley Morris, on the Birth of American Music.

Oh, you come that I know,

you can't know, you'll fall, I am at my home. I am at my friend's house.

We are making dinner.

I'm chopping vegetables.

And I asked my friend Brett, who was cooking with me, can you put on some music?

And he said, what do you want to listen to?

And I said, have you ever heard of Yad Rock? And he said, what do you want to listen to? And I said, have you ever heard of Yot Rock?

And he said, what? I said, Yacht Rock. Have you ever heard of this? And he goes, no, I have not.

So he finds the Yot Rock station in Pandora, which I don't know why or how he's still a Pandora guy.

With all due respect to Pandora, he is one.

And he finds the Yerok station.

At some point, Bright has to go run an arrow.

And I think I might have sent him on one.

I don't remember.

But he's gone.

So I'm alone.

Just me with the vegetables. And Yad Rock.

It gives me plenty of time to really think about the songs I'm hearing.

We're talking about music made between the years of, I don't know, I would say like 1975 to about 1983.

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