What music is not derivative?

Very intersting discussions all around. If you read my original post, I never said that the Beatles were non derivative, although I do believe their later work was far enough removed from anything that had been done before to consider it original. Particularly Abbey Road. Plus it has spawned several generations of bands that have continued music in the same vein.

That being said, some of the people I had in mind?

Kraftwerk. Noone had ever done anything like what they had. So many now draw from what they started.

Grandmaster Flash. He single handedly started the whole hip hop movement. Well maybe he had some help. Or a ot of it.

The Velvet Underground.

The Jesus and Mary Chain. This is derivative to some extent, but they definitely put a different twist to beach boys melodies with massive use of feedback.

Those are some of the people I consider to be fairly original. I do agree it is impossible to be entirely original if you use a guitar, bass, drms, etc. But some of these artists pioneered the use of alternate forms of sound, ie turntables, feedback, all electronic music, etc...

OOOPS!
Jposs, I think you didn't shoot well on Kraftwerk...
Everything in synth business probably starts from Jean Michell Gare the former leader of synth band Space.

As I said before that if you take a derivative of the higher than third order(please recall the school math for Christ sake) you might not distinguish a derivative from the original function!

Kraftwerk explcitly acknowledged the avante garde classical composer Varese as the father of electronic music.

A lot of good posts here, especially Ben Campbell's. May I submit Ornette Coleman and John Cage.

Let me begin from Classical music that in fact also has lots of directions and generations.
At the same time when the classical music existed there were Mazurkas Waltzes and Tangos popular for parties back than.
Than there were influence of a black rhythms and music that influenced to create blues, fox-trot and later-on swing.
Than the rock-n-roll took over blues, fox-trot and swing as a derivative of previousely stated.
Than The Beatles created pop that is derivative of everything stated above.

Derivative we can scientifically define as an operand that decreases a degree of a function but if the derivatives are taken on multiple-order the function could be still complicated and hard to understand from the first sight.