Music of North Dakota

The Music of North Dakota has followed general American trends over much of its history, beginning with ragtime and folk music, moving into big band and jazz. With the development of mass media, local artists in North Dakota, as in the rest of the country, saw a rapid loss of opportunity to create, perform, and sell popular music to the regional audience that had previously provided a market. Although perhaps unexpected for a largely agricultural region of the nation, country music is not a major genre in the modern youth scene of North Dakota. A number of country artists who appeal to older audiences however, have emerged from the state.