There were very few Russian settlers in Russian America. Rather than settlement on the scale of the English colonies along the eastern coast of North America, the Russian pattern followed that of the French-Canadian fur traders in the center of the continent. Russian America was not intended to be a self-sustaining colony. Rather, it imported the supplies it needed for its operation (food, manufactured tools, etc.) and exported furs (as well as ice and salted fish in the later years of the territory).

Just as it imported most of its supplies, so too did it import most of its music. Russian folk music was popular in Russian America, particularly because its insurgent attitude mimicked the attitudes of those few Russians who tended to live and work in the territory. They tended to be out of the ordinary; scapegraces, criminals and adventurers willing to risk their lives to become rich.

The most common music, however, was liturgical. We have ample surviving hymn books (Kodiak has a particularly nice collection) written in Old Church Slavonic, and the music in those books was sung in churches across the territory. This is setting aside traditional Alaska Native music, of course. the Russians intermarried extensively along the coast, with Alaska Native women and Russian men creating a vibrant creole class by the Alaska Purchase. Russians would have been familiar with Alaska Native song and dances of the region in which they lived.

New Archangel, the territorial capital, was supposed to be an island of culture in the territory, according to contemporary accounts. Particularly in the final years of the Russian possession, the home of the governor was said to be an elegant place for balls, dancing and modern music. Married to the Empire, a recently published book about three governors' wives in the middle of the 19th century, is a good work that explains life in New Archangel for this colonial elite.