I would argue that European music can be damn good, there's some pretty talented musicians out there and musicians capable of some pretty amazing things. Of course I would agree that music in the charts tends to be nothing special, which is fine if you like that kind of thing.
Just look at some of the geniuses to come out of Europe. Not just the classical music movement, but also more modern artists like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath, which have defined their own styles of music and have been unparalleled by anybody else.
On a purely instrumental level, violins, violas, cellos and the like aren't easy instruments to master. But even singers and guitarists can devote a lot to mastering their art beyond most others, there's a lot of guitarists out there and it's not so difficult to learn at a normal level, but to have the control of people like Jimi Henrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan takes a lot of work, or for European guitarists, Gary Moore or Eric Clapton.
So I think it's hard to say one is superior. Just great for different reasons. I'd say more goosebumps are raised by my listening to Pink Floyd than to some of the sitar players. Not to downplay people who play sitar, but PF is responsible for some fantastic song writing, hence they're able to make my my hairs stand on end. Heck, the cover band Australian Pink Floyd give me goosebumps having seen them live because they manage to pull off PF's material extremely well.
Yes I know my examples are all British, but my non-British ones would be purely metal and that would indicate a bias.
