What music is not derivative?

I think Kthomas is right. The Beatles weren't even that original. Lots of groups did the same things, they got the recognition. It's all in the marketing. I get the feeling most of the best and original music will never be recorded or heard by the public at large. Most people don't like or want change.
As long as people are using the same instruments they will be making the same basic music. How many variations can there be to one theme? This is one of the reasons I prefer music that incorporates instruments not typically associated with that genre.
We could certainly stand some originality in music today. There are too many Eminems to every Mozart!!!

One can be derivative yet original. Early Chicago is clearly rock/jazz, but the complexities of orchestrations and arrangements were highly original, but vey derivative.

Agreed that early Beatles weren't original (straight forward rock-n-roll), but several of their later works after they went "studio band", like Sgt Pepper's and the White Album left nearly everyone in the music biz with jaws dropped. Another of the more well-known groups that were extremely original was Yes, especially with Rick Wakeman on board.

Jim

I tend to agree with Kthomas and Nrchy music by it's very nature is derivative-no disrespect to those who mentioned Radiohead and Sigur Ros both bands I like but neither are really original at all in the wider sense.
To confuse the discussion every artist is to some extent original,the great bands,the innovators,tend to take the past,add something of themselves and sometimes capture something of the spirit of the times (the Zeitgeist as the Germans would say)they live in.
Ultimately who cares?
Enjoy what you enjoy.

Yes, Gentle Giant. Also my favorite punk band from back then was the Stranglers. If you listen through the noise; buried inside are real melodies and quite substantial music structure. Someone in that band must have gone to the Royal College of Music and studied counterpoint and composition.

Most pop music is basically in Sonata form.

I'm more than sure that beatles is somewhat derivative of Bill Heiley, Elvis Presley,...
Frank Zappa can be considered as a complex derivative of higher than first order from different bands often humiliating them with his genious musical way giving an extra-ordinary colour to the jazz and rock.
Gentle Giant is not the first-order but still can be considered as a derivative to Genesis and so is Van Der Graaf Generator. The first-order derivative of Genesis we can consider Marillion.
If you consider King Crimson than Robert Fripp is not only a leader of that band but a talented mathematician and there is a whole line of "Larks..." created further on as a true multiple order derivatives of the original "Larks Tongues In Aspic" composition. I'm still checking this hypothesis and more believe that it's true.
An abstract music can be presented as a very large-order derivative of hell-knows what:
David Byrne working with Robert Fripp or Bryan Eno started to take a high-order derivatives I assume from his previous Talking Heads works giving some unrealistic abstractions.

I'm sure that Pink Floyd is derived somehow, but it was a band of my youth rather than I'm too much into it right now.

Monsieur Jacques Loussier brought the hypothesis that jazz was derived from J.S.Bach and figured why not playing original instead of derived in the classic jazz trio.

Very often the high orderds of derivatives we accept as an original and somwhere we could be right about that since if you compare already the sixth order derivative with original less-likely you would see the connection between.