Hi,
My apologies for the tone, but music has thousands of years of history, and Europe is an incredible melting pot in the 20th century when it comes to the arts ... one can say that things like Cubism, and Surrealism had its origin somewhere (where was music then? nowhere?) ... and then it's like music wakes up in London with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who and such, and no one can tell me that Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Rome, did not have their very own inventive works in many of the art disciplines. These cities are FAMOUS for the incredible variety of works ... I usually don't like to mention New York here, because of its insane redo's of so many musical and old things ... but they still have a lot of new things, even if they are in Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, where folks like Sam Sheppard could be found playing drums as you walked in the theater for fun and then go run the light board, or the sound board. And if you have never read or heard about the million ping-pong balls, you missed out on some great fun and weird stuff ... !!!
Likewise, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires are absolutely HUGE when it comes to music, even though we kinda think that the Tango belongs to Argentina and the Samba belongs in Brazil during the Carnaval ... but these cities are also know to be huge cultural centers, though my thoughts are that the political situation in Argentina for the past 30/40 years has been way too nasty for these to survive well and be heard. Along the same lines, Mexico City is also a massive music center, though we tend to think that Mexico only has Mariachi music ... and they have a heck of a lot more ... and some of it is funny ... like you have not heard that Mariachi band doing some rock music, like Metallica and stuff? That's really adventurous and out there if not crazy.
In the US, these scenes are difficult to even study and discuss ... and it's (I think) because it's like the US is so many different countries ... what you get in LA, is not the same as SF or NY, or Memphis! But it's there all the same.
The only issue with "progressive" is the most common one ... we do not hear enough of other cultures and their music to stop being completely desensitized by the top ten process ... where we have the tendency to think that everything has to sound like that, and be like that in format ... and this hurts horribly the ability of new folks coming up with their own music and new musics. They will not get a decent ear, because you touch here and there in Bandcamp, and within a minute you decide it's not what you like ... sort of like, you have to like Beethoven for the whole Symphony, or Mozart for the complete piece ... and you have not given it a good ear.
I appreciate Glyn a lot ... for mentioning these things and even to remind me ... ooopppsss forgot about those ... but seeing the responses by some folks, that basically are stating that the rest of the world is all a bunch of third and fourth world countries when it comes to music and the arts ... is kinda sick. All you have to do is watch some of their films ... yeah I know ... you can't stand subtitles!
Would you not love a woman, if she was mute and did not speak the language you do?
Where is your soul? And you say you are into the music/art of it?