What music is not derivative?

Hummm....Every music is derivative. Nothing bad about that. In fact, it's a good thing. You stand on someone's shoulders...you can see further. I'm not one to say there is nothing new under the sun but there is nothing completely new. Are you going to create a new scale or something? Even Coltrane had his debts. Shakespeare read Ben Johnson and the Bible.... In undergraduate school we had a discussion group we named "de novo ex nihilo", roughly translated "the new from nothing."

Looking back at it.... what a ridicules conceit!

I remain,

Dire Straits, to me, on first hearing, sounded strikingly fresh, original, unique and worth listening to, compared to the thrash heap surrounding them at the time. The trash heap, many years later, is just bigger and stinkier. Good day.

Check out the clarinet playing of Jimmy Guiffre and Joe Maneri -- they are classified as jazz musicians, but nobody sounds like them to be sure!

I love Mark Knopfler but he would be the first to acknowledge his many heros and main sources. Among them Chet Atkins and J.J. Cale. Look at the chord progressions of Cale. It runs through all of Knopfler's stuff. Unmistakable.

I remain

I agree with the premise that others have posed that music builds upon its predecessors and so can be deamed 'derivative'. Furthermore I'd suggest musicians from the 20th century onwards are at a disadvantage because they, generally, have released their performances on widely available media and so the performances can be considered 'preemptive'. Also the format of current music in 3-4 minute chunks is such that it may not replayed by others unless it's in the forum of future 'folk' music.

Having said all that a couple of musicians that come to mind as potentially transitional are Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and in the more mainstream I think one could squeeze in the Beatles. Most of the rest (even though I listen and enjoy it) I consider "contempory" and as such will die a quiet death in time.

Aren't I in a happy mood !