Pop history · ArtEZ University of the Arts
School of Rock
The history of popular music in mixtapes
Jan-Wolter Smit
How this site works
Read, listen, look up
School of Rock tells the history of popular music in thirteen mixtapes. Each mixtape is a chapter about a period or a theme: from blues, ragtime and rock 'n' roll via The Beatles, jazz, soul, punk and hip-hop to electronic music, Dutch pop and today's playlist. You read how genres grew out of one another, who made the music and what was happening in the world when it appeared.
Every listening tip comes with a fragment you can play, and every mixtape has its own Spotify playlist. On the genre map you see the whole history of pop as a family tree: 218 genres along the timeline and on the world map, with the influences between them. The site accompanies the pop history course at ArtEZ University of the Arts, but it is for anyone who wants to know where today's music comes from.
The genre map and HitStory, the pop encyclopedia, are available in English. The mixtape chapters are still in Dutch, so those links are marked NL; a translation is on the way.
The mixtapes
The chapters of the reader online, with a playable fragment for every listening tip, the Spotify playlist and the pdf. For now in Dutch.
Pick a mixtape → 02 · ListenThe genre map
Every genre in the reader as a family tree and on the world map. Listen to each genre, follow the influences and play back the history.
Open the map → 03 · Look upHitStory
The pop encyclopedia of School of Rock: thousands of articles on artists, albums, genres and terms, with discographies, photos and listening tips.
Open the encyclopedia →The reader
The mixtapes
The timeline
From work songs and ragtime to Rocket 88: the roots of everything that came after (up to 1955).
Rockers, mods, indorockers, hippies, punks and skinheads, and the music that went with their clothes.
From a skiffle group in Liverpool to the band that invented the pop studio (1957-1970).
From psychedelia to Mumford & Sons: how rock dominated pop music for forty years, and why that came to an end (1965-2010).
From bebop to trip hop: how jazz turned from dance music into art music after 1945, and then turned up everywhere in pop.
Black music from 1945 onwards: soul, funk, reggae, disco, hip hop and R&B, and the struggle that resounds through it.
Synthesizers, MTV, megastars and the Cold War: the decade that shaped the pop music of today.
Themes
From Stockhausen and Kraftwerk via Detroit techno and Chicago house to EDM: how the machine became an instrument.
Electric guitar, Hammond, Mellotron, Moog, TR-808 and sampler: every new machine brought a new music with it.
From Bessie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Björk and Billie Eilish: singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer.
From indorock and Nederbeat via Golden Earring, Normaal and Doe Maar to Nederhop and today's Dutch-language hits.
From Tin Pan Alley via Motown and ABBA to Max Martin: who makes a hit, and with which tools?
Up to now