It hasn’t been since Tin Pan Alley. There’s only a brief period like say ~1880 to ~1930 where NYC was genuinely the cultural capital of the US. Before the civil war, the US was too divided to have a single cultural capital and NYC didn’t stand out as a cultural capital of the north. The 1930s was the golden age of Hollywood.
When NYC was the actual cultural capital of the US, a typical cultural export would be some vaudeville act by Yiddish-speaking performers or some super early silent film filmed by Edison. The dominant musical genre was ragtime.
It hasn’t been since Tin Pan Alley. There’s only a brief period like say ~1880 to ~1930 where NYC was genuinely the cultural capital of the US. Before the civil war, the US was too divided to have a single cultural capital and NYC didn’t stand out as a cultural capital of the north. The 1930s was the golden age of Hollywood.
When NYC was the actual cultural capital of the US, a typical cultural export would be some vaudeville act by Yiddish-speaking performers or some super early silent film filmed by Edison. The dominant musical genre was ragtime.