Provisional Abstract. The explorations and colonization of the New World by the Old gave rise to unprecedented political and social changes for peoples living in both.  But the changes varied among the actors depending on the time of contact, the nature of interaction(s), societal ontologies, and other factors.  Some information about the encounters is contained in ethnohistoric accounts but they are often biased, and the material record alone is at the mercy of environmental factors and excavation choices.  Music and music-accompanied events, on the other hand, can retain cultural messages (sonic preferences, myths, cultural ties etc.) that escape detection by censors (of both the human and nature kind).  In this paper I will use music evidence as a lens to view contact’s range of effects on Europeans and Amerindians in three areas of interaction—the English in the American southeast, the French in the Mississippi River Valley, and the Spanish in Central America.