Click a genre to read about it and listen. The lines show where it came from and what grew out of it.
Family tree, world or technology: the same genres along the timeline, at the place where they arose, or with the inventions above them, from the gramophone and the electric guitar to the sampler and streaming. A solid line means an invention made the genre possible, a dotted line that it played a part later.
Learning path: choose a mixtape and step through the genres of that chapter in reading order, with the arrow keys. The reader itself is in Dutch.
Play the history and watch the genres appear one by one. Turn on the sound to hear them too.
By genre family, in the order they arose, followed by the instruments and music technology from the Technology view. Click a name to open it on the map and listen. Film music has its own map.
Roots
West African music traditions1700 · West and Central Africa Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries more than twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas as slaves, most of them from West and Central Africa.
British and Irish folk music1700 · Scotland, Ireland and England From the eighteenth century onwards, immigrants from Scotland, England and Ireland settled in the Appalachians.
European art music1750 · Europe From Europe came the harmony of art music: major and minor, chords with a fixed function, melodies in regular phrases, and music that was written down.
Work songs and field hollers1800 · Plantations in the southern US On the cotton and sugar plantations of the southern United States, enslaved Africans sang while they worked.
March music and brass bands1880 · Washington By the end of the nineteenth century almost every American town had a brass band, and John Philip Sousa, leader of the United States Marine Band in Washington, wrote marches such as The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896).
Spirituals and gospel1890 · Southern US Spirituals emerged in the nineteenth century among enslaved African Americans in the southern United States; in the Black churches of the 1920s and 1930s they grew into gospel: religious songs in several voices, with call and response.
Delta blues1890 · Mississippi Delta The blues grew up around 1890 out of the work songs, hollers and spirituals of the Black rural population of the South, with the Mississippi Delta as a key region.
Ragtime1895 · Sedalia (Missouri) Ragtime was the first African American musical style to be sold on a large scale as sheet music.
Appalachian folk (mountain music)1900 · Appalachia From the eighteenth century onwards, immigrants from Scotland, England and Ireland brought ballads and dance music with them to the Appalachians.
Classic blues1920 · New York In the 1920s the best-selling blues records were made by women.
Boogie-woogie1928 · Chicago Boogie-woogie is a piano style that grew out of the blues, played in bars and at house parties in the South and later in Chicago.
Chicago blues1948 · Chicago After the Second World War many Black Americans moved from the South to Chicago, and the blues went with them.
Celtic folk1962 · Dublin Celtic folk is Irish traditional music played as a band.
Jazz
New Orleans jazz1900 · New Orleans In New Orleans, around 1900, jazz grew out of the brass bands; later it was also called Dixieland or hot jazz.
Swing and big band1930 · New York In the 1930s the New Orleans band grew into the big band of twelve to seventeen musicians, with an arranger who wrote riffs for the sections.
Bebop1940 · Harlem, New York In the early forties young jazz musicians held jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem after their work in the big bands.
Latin jazz1947 · New York From 1943 Machito and Mario Bauzá mixed jazz with Cuban music in New York.
Cool Jazz and modal jazz1949 · New York In 1949 and 1950 Miles Davis recorded with a nonet the sessions that were later called Birth of the Cool, with French horn and tuba alongside the usual horns and arrangements by Gil Evans, among others.
West Coast jazz1952 · Los Angeles In the fifties Cool Jazz developed its own variant in California, played by musicians who also worked in the film and television studios.
Hard bop1954 · New York On the East Coast many Black musicians found Cool Jazz too restrained.
Bossa nova1958 · Rio de Janeiro In Rio de Janeiro, guitarist and singer João Gilberto and composer Antônio Carlos Jobim created bossa nova from 1958: a soft, restrained version of samba, with jazz chords and a voice that almost whispers.
Free jazz1959 · New York Free jazz let go of the agreements about theme, chord progression, time signature and tempo: musicians often improvise at the same time and dissonance becomes raw material.
Fusion and jazz rock1969 · New York Miles Davis listened to Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown, and played electric instruments on In a Silent Way (1969) and, on Bitches Brew (1970), several drummers at once as well.
Smooth jazz1975 · United States In the mid-seventies a softer variant of fusion emerged, which became hugely popular in the eighties.
Nu jazz1990 · London In London from the late eighties DJs such as Gilles Peterson played acid jazz: jazz, funk and soul for the dance floor.
Country & folk
Country1927 · Nashville In the 1920s radio and the gramophone record turned mountain music into country.
Honky-tonk1940 · Beaumont Honky-tonk is country for the bar room.
Bluegrass1945 · Kentucky and Nashville From the forties a fast, acoustic variant emerged within country: bluegrass, named after the band of mandolin player Bill Monroe from Kentucky, the Blue Grass Boys.
Folk revival1955 · Greenwich Village, New York In the 1950s and 1960s young white musicians in Greenwich Village, New York, rediscovered the old folk music: the folk revival.
Nashville sound1957 · Nashville In the late fifties, country was losing its audience to rock 'n' roll.
Folk rock1965 · Los Angeles In folk rock, folk melodies are played on electric guitars.
Country rock1968 · Los Angeles At the end of the 1960s some rock musicians went back to the roots of American music; in 1968 The Byrds, with Gram Parsons, recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
Outlaw country1972 · Austin In the early seventies, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson felt that the Nashville studios had too much say.
Indie folk2008 · Seattle Around 2008, young musicians brought back acoustic folk with the approach of indie rock: recording themselves and releasing on small record labels.
Rock
Rock 'n' roll1951 · Memphis Rock 'n' roll grew out of rhythm and blues, with influences from jump blues, boogie-woogie, gospel and country.
Rockabilly1954 · Memphis Rockabilly is the fast, stripped-down form of rock 'n' roll in which country and rhythm and blues come together.
Skiffle1956 · London In the mid-1950s skiffle swept through Britain as a craze, with roots in American folk and blues; Lonnie Donegan had a hit with Rock Island Line in 1956.
Indorock1957 · The Hague After 1949 Indo-Dutch people, who came to the Netherlands from the former Dutch East Indies, brought kroncong and the Hawaiian guitar with them; in the Netherlands this fused with American country and rock 'n' roll into indorock.
Surf rock1961 · Southern California In the early 1960s, young musicians in Southern California made surf rock: instrumental guitar music drenched in reverb, in which fast, repeated notes imitate the roar of the waves.
British beat and the British Invasion1962 · Liverpool After hundreds of hours in the clubs of Hamburg, The Beatles became the biggest band in Britain in 1963.
Nederbeat1964 · The Hague Around the time of the Beatles' visit in June 1964, beat bands sprang up all over the Netherlands, with The Hague as the centre: the Golden Earrings, Q65, the Motions and Shocking Blue.
Raga rock1965 · London In the mid-1960s Western bands began to use Indian instruments and scales: raga rock.
Garage rock1965 · United States After the British Invasion, teenagers all over America started bands, rehearsed in the garage and recorded raw singles with a few chords, a screaming singer and a cheap organ.
Blues rock1966 · London Cream, the trio of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, took the blues into the big halls, with long solos and loud amplifiers; Clapton played Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues as Crossroads.
Psychedelic rock1966 · San Francisco Around 1966 and 1967 bands drew inspiration from Indian music, the classical avant-garde and LSD.
Art rock1967 · New York In New York, Lou Reed and John Cale's band The Velvet Underground worked with the artist Andy Warhol, who designed the cover with the banana.
Symphonic rock1967 · London Symphonic rock brought classical music into pop: orchestras, church organ, Mellotron and themes by Bach or Beethoven.
Hard rock and heavy metal1968 · London Hard rock grew out of the blues rock of Cream, Jimi Hendrix and The Yardbirds.
Progressive rock1969 · London Progressive rock turned the album into a composition, with long tracks, classical influences and complex time signatures.
Krautrock1970 · Düsseldorf In West Germany bands such as Can, Neu!
Southern rock1970 · Jacksonville (Florida) Southern rock emerged in the southern United States around 1970, with The Allman Brothers Band as its pioneers.
Soft rock and AOR1971 · Los Angeles From the late 1960s radio stations on the FM band played whole album sides: album-oriented rock.
Glam rock1972 · London Around 1972 rock developed a theatrical side: costumes, make-up and a stage persona became just as important as the music.
Powerpop1972 · Cleveland and Memphis Powerpop is guitar pop with the melodies and vocal harmonies of the early Beatles and the force of loud guitars.
Heartland rock1975 · New Jersey Bruce Springsteen from New Jersey made rock about ordinary people, work, cars and the dream of getting away.
Punk1975 · London Punk was the answer to rock that had become big, expensive and complicated: short, fast, loud songs with few chords, and the idea that anyone can start a band.
Boerenrock1975 · Achterhoek Normaal was founded in 1975 in the Achterhoek, a rural region in the east of the Netherlands, around singer Bennie Jolink, and sang in the local Achterhoek dialect.
Yacht rock1976 · Los Angeles Yacht rock is the smooth West Coast rock of the late seventies and early eighties.
New wave1977 · London New wave is an umbrella term for musicians who wanted to move on after punk, with more attention to atmosphere, melody and sound.
Postpunk1978 · Manchester Postpunk kept the energy and the do-it-yourself attitude of punk, but let go of the three chords.
Gothic rock1980 · Crawley Out of postpunk grew gothic rock: dark, echoing and slow.
Neo-prog1981 · Aylesbury Neo-prog emerged around 1981 in England, when progressive rock had gone out of fashion.
Alternative rock1983 · Athens (Georgia) Alongside the stadiums, a rock world of small labels, clubs and college radio grew up in the 1980s: alternative rock, known in America as college rock.
Rock in Dutch1984 · The Netherlands After Doe Maar, Dutch also became the language of rock.
Dream pop1984 · Grangemouth Dream pop sounds like a dream: soft, drenched in reverb, with vocals floating above the music.
Dialect pop and rock1985 · America (Limburg) From the 1980s onwards, more and more bands sang in their own regional language, not as a joke but to tell stories close to home about the village, the countryside and the family.
Emo1985 · Washington Emo began in the mid-1980s in Washington, when bands such as Rites of Spring played hardcore with personal, emotional lyrics: emotional hardcore.
Death metal1985 · Tampa Death metal emerged in the mid-eighties, when bands in Florida pushed the speed of hardcore punk and the darkness of heavy metal to the extreme.
Indie pop and shoegaze1986 · London From the late 1970s onwards, small British labels such as Rough Trade and Creation released guitar music outside the major record companies: indie, short for independent.
Power metal1987 · Hamburg Power metal is heavy metal that sounds fast, high and hopeful.
Funk rock1988 · New York Living Colour from New York mixed hard rock with funk on Cult of Personality (1988); guitarist Vernon Reid was part of the Black Rock Coalition.
Madchester1988 · Manchester Madchester was the dance scene of Manchester around 1989.
Grunge1989 · Seattle Around the small label Sub Pop in Seattle, a scene emerged in the late 1980s that mixed punk and heavy metal into a raw, heavy sound.
Riot grrrl1991 · Olympia (Washington) In the early 1990s, a feminist punk movement emerged in Olympia, in the state of Washington: riot grrrl.
Black metal1991 · Oslo The name comes from Venom, who released the album Black Metal in 1982.
Post-rock1991 · Glasgow Post-rock uses rock instruments, but not the form of the rock song.
Britpop1993 · London Around 1993, British bands deliberately took a different direction from American grunge: back to the Beatles, The Kinks, The Who and the mods.
Pop punk1994 · Berkeley (California) Pop punk combines the speed and guitars of punk with pop melodies and sing-along choruses.
Post-grunge1994 · Seattle Post-grunge is rock that takes over the heavy, raw guitar sound of grunge, but without the darkness, and with slickly produced choruses made for radio.
Nu metal1995 · Los Angeles Nu metal is metal combined with hip hop and electronics.
Symphonic metal1996 · The Netherlands Symphonic metal combines heavy guitars and drums with orchestral sounds, choirs and a classically trained voice.
Metalcore1998 · Boston Metalcore combines the riffs of heavy metal with the rage and the breakdowns of hardcore punk.
Garage rock revival2001 · New York (Lower East Side) In 2001 guitar rock suddenly sounded raw and short again.
Pop & songwriting
Fado1840 · Lisbon (Mouraria and Alfama) Fado emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century in the poor harbour districts of Lisbon, such as Mouraria and Alfama.
Minstrel shows1843 · New York From the 1830s onwards, white performers with blacked-up faces appeared in minstrel shows: blackface entertainments in which Black Americans were ridiculed, with songs, dances and sketches supposedly drawn from life on the plantation.
Tin Pan Alley1885 · New York From around 1885 music publishers set up shop close together in Manhattan, and from the 1890s mainly on West 28th Street.
Barbershop1895 · United States Barbershop is singing for four men without instruments: the lead sings the melody, the tenor sings above it, and the baritone and bass fill out the chord.
Rebetiko1922 · Piraeus (port of Athens) Rebetiko is the music of the Greek harbour districts, above all Piraeus near Athens.
Chanson1930 · Paris French chanson is song in which the lyrics take centre stage, sung with great expression, often with a small orchestra or just a piano or accordion.
Schlager1950 · Germany and the Netherlands Schlager is the German word for a hit, and it became the name for melodic, sentimental popular songs in German and Dutch.
Levenslied and smartlap1950 · Amsterdam (Jordaan) The levenslied, literally 'song of life', is the Dutch-language song about love, sorrow, mother and the city, with a simple melody that everyone can sing along to.
Brill Building and girl groups1958 · New York (Broadway) In the late 1950s, young songwriting duos such as Carole King and Gerry Goffin worked in small rooms with a piano in and around the Brill Building on Broadway, writing about what was on teenagers' minds.
Indopop1960 · The Netherlands Alongside the fast indorock, Indo-Dutch musicians in the Netherlands also made soft, melodic pop, with two-part vocal harmonies in the style of the Everly Brothers.
Kleinkunst1965 · The Netherlands Kleinkunst ('small art') is the Dutch-language song from cabaret and theatre, with the lyrics at the centre and a small accompaniment; in the 1950s, Wim Sonneveld, Toon Hermans and Jules de Corte were the big names.
Singer-songwriters1967 · Los Angeles Singer-songwriters wrote their own songs, sang them themselves and told of their own lives in the first person.
Swedish pop (ABBA)1974 · Stockholm ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest in April 1974 with Waterloo.
New Romantic1979 · London In the late 1970s, you only got into the London club Blitz if you looked striking.
Neue Deutsche Welle1979 · West Germany Around 1979, a wave of German-language rock and pop grew out of punk and new wave in West Germany, which journalist Alfred Hilsberg called Neue Deutsche Welle ('New German Wave').
Nederpop1981 · The Netherlands Nederpop is the umbrella term for Dutch pop music.
Celtic new age1987 · Dublin Enya was a member of Clannad from 1980 to 1982 and then went solo, with producer Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan.
Boy bands and girl groups1990 · London Every decade has its teen idol, with a recognisable face, a simple hook and a production that suits the medium; the 1990s brought the cast boy band and girl group.
Dutch-language song1994 · The Netherlands In the 1990s, the Dutch-language song grew to reach a large audience: from 1994 onwards, Marco Borsato had hit after hit with ballads.
Stockholm pop (Max Martin)1995 · Stockholm At the Cheiron Studio in Stockholm, Max Martin and his colleagues wrote and produced the hits of the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Britney Spears from the mid-1990s onwards.
Streaming pop2018 · Atlanta and the internet Streaming pop is pop made for the way people have listened since the 2010s: through Spotify, YouTube and TikTok.
Hyperpop2019 · London and the internet Hyperpop exaggerates everything about pop: high, distorted voices with Auto-Tune, garish synthesisers, hard bass and sudden twists.
R&B, soul & funk
Jump blues1942 · New York Jump blues is the swing of a small band with horns: fast shuffles, boogie-woogie on the piano and a singer who entertains the audience.
Rhythm and blues1947 · Los Angeles After the Second World War big bands were too expensive to take on tour.
Doo-wop1950 · New York Doo-wop is harmony singing from the rhythm and blues of the fifties.
Soul1955 · Southern US Soul emerged in the mid-1950s from gospel, jazz and rhythm and blues.
Stax and Memphis soul1957 · Memphis In Memphis, Jim Stewart started the label Satellite in 1957; his sister Estelle Axton joined a year later, and from 1961 it was called Stax (STewart + AXton).
Motown1959 · Detroit In 1959, Berry Gordy started a label in Detroit that he organised like a car factory, with staff songwriters, the house band The Funk Brothers and a weekly quality control meeting.
Blue-eyed soul1964 · Los Angeles Blue-eyed soul is soul sung by white singers.
Funk1965 · United States Funk grew out of jazz, rhythm and blues and soul in the second half of the 1960s, with James Brown in the leading role.
Philly soul1968 · Philadelphia In Philadelphia, the songwriters and producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff began making their own kind of soul in the late 1960s, and in 1971 they founded Philadelphia International Records.
Disco1970 · New York Disco emerged around 1970 in New York clubs for Black, Latino and gay audiences, such as The Loft and later the Paradise Garage, where the DJ blended records seamlessly into one another.
Northern soul1970 · Wigan In clubs in the north of England, such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester and Wigan Casino (1973-1981), young people danced all night to fast American soul from the 1960s, often obscure singles that had sold poorly in America.
Go-go1975 · Washington D.C. Go-go is the funk of Washington D.C., a music that never stops.
Quiet storm1976 · Washington D.C. Quiet storm is soft, sensual soul for late at night.
Contemporary R&B1980 · United States The term rhythm and blues returned as R&B: vocals, production and drum machines take centre stage, and the producer becomes a star.
New jack swing1987 · New York In the late 1980s, in New York, producer Teddy Riley combined the vocals of R&B with the beats of hip hop: new jack swing.
Neo-soul1995 · United States Neo-soul is R&B that reached back to the soul of the 1970s, with Erykah Badu and D'Angelo among others.
Hip hop
Early hip hop1973 · The Bronx, New York On 11 August 1973, Kool Herc, who knew the sound systems of Kingston, played records at a party on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.
Golden age hip hop1987 · New York In the late 1980s, samplers became affordable and producers built beats from fragments of existing recordings: the golden age of hip hop.
Gangsta rap1988 · Compton (Los Angeles) Gangsta rap took shape on the West Coast.
Nederhop1990 · Amsterdam From 1990, Osdorp Posse from Amsterdam rapped in broad Amsterdam dialect: hardcore rap about the street and the city.
Southern hip hop and crunk1990 · Atlanta, Houston and Memphis From the late 1980s, the South of the United States also developed its own hip hop: Geto Boys in Houston, Three 6 Mafia in Memphis and OutKast in Atlanta, who made their debut in 1994.
Boom bap1990 · New York Boom bap is the classic hip-hop of New York in the nineties.
Trap2000 · Atlanta From the early 2000s, trap grew up in Atlanta: a hip hop style from the South of the United States, named after the trap house where drugs were sold.
Grime2003 · East London In the early 2000s, grime emerged in East London: rap in a London accent over fast, stark electronic beats of around 140 bpm, with influences from UK garage, jungle and dancehall.
Cloud rap2010 · New York Cloud rap sounds like hip-hop under water.
Drill2012 · Chicago and London Drill emerged around 2011 in Chicago: hard, dark rap about the violence in the neighbourhood, with Chief Keef as its best-known name.
Lo-fi hip hop2013 · Lyon (Lofi Girl) Lo-fi hip hop is calm, instrumental hip hop to study or relax to.
Electronic & dance
Moog and the first synthesizer pop1964 · Trumansburg (New York) From 1964, in Trumansburg, Robert Moog built synthesizers from separate modules that you connected with cables.
Kraftwerk and the man-machine1974 · Düsseldorf Kraftwerk was founded in 1970 in Düsseldorf and set aside guitar and drum kit for synthesizers, electronic drums and the vocoder.
Synth disco and Hi-NRG1977 · Munich In Munich in 1977, producer Giorgio Moroder made I Feel Love with Donna Summer, without a band: the bass line comes from a Moog driven by a sequencer.
Synthpop1978 · Sheffield Synthpop is the poppiest branch of new wave: Kraftwerk was the model for Gary Numan, OMD and The Human League, and later for the Pet Shop Boys.
Italo disco1980 · Italy Italy developed its own electronic dance music, a blend of synthpop and Eurodisco, with Giorgio Moroder as its great forerunner.
Garage1980 · New York The Paradise Garage in New York, with DJ Larry Levan, was one of the most important clubs in dance music from 1977 to 1987.
Detroit techno1981 · Detroit In Belleville, near Detroit, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson grew up with the radio show of The Electrifying Mojo, who played Parliament alongside Kraftwerk.
Electro1982 · New York Afrika Bambaataa also played Kraftwerk at his parties in the Bronx.
House1984 · Chicago From 1977 Frankie Knuckles played a mix of disco, soul and European synthpop at The Warehouse in Chicago, for a crowd that was mostly Black and gay.
Acid house1987 · Chicago On Acid Tracks (1987) the Chicago group Phuture turned the knobs of a Roland TB-303, a flopped bass-line machine, while it was playing.
Rave1987 · England In 1987 English DJs came back from Ibiza and started clubs playing acid house; the summers of 1988 and 1989 became the Second Summer of Love.
Trance1990 · Frankfurt and Berlin Trance emerged around 1990 in Germany, mainly in Frankfurt and Berlin: electronic dance music with long build-ups, floating synthesiser chords and melodies that keep coming back.
Eurodance1991 · Belgium In the early nineties the European mainland danced to Eurodance: a solid house beat, a rapped verse and a sung chorus.
Trip hop1991 · Bristol Trip hop is a form of downtempo from the Bristol producer scene, where sound systems mixed reggae, hip hop, soul and punk.
Berlin techno1991 · Berlin After the fall of the Wall in 1989, many buildings in East Berlin stood empty.
Gabber and happy hardcore1992 · Rotterdam In the early nineties gabber emerged in Rotterdam: hardcore at 160 to more than 200 bpm, with a distorted bass drum that sounds like a hammer.
Jungle and drum and bass1992 · London In the early 1990s London producers sped up the breakbeats of rave to 160 to 180 bpm and set a deep, slow bassline beneath them, borrowed from reggae and dub: jungle.
IDM1992 · Sheffield IDM, intelligent dance music, is electronic music for listening to rather than dancing to.
Goa trance and psytrance1992 · Goa Goa trance emerged in the early nineties on the beaches of Goa in India, where travellers from Europe and Israel partied.
Big beat1995 · Brighton Big beat combined the breakbeats of hip hop with rock guitars, samples and the sound of rave.
French house1997 · Paris From the mid-nineties producers in France such as Daft Punk, Cassius and Étienne de Crécy made French house: house tracks with filters and samples from old disco and funk.
UK garage1997 · London In the late 1990s, London DJs and producers turned American garage and house into a faster style of their own, with influences from jungle: UK garage, and later 2-step, with a skipping rhythm in which the kick drum does not fall on every beat.
Dutch trance2000 · The Netherlands Around 2000 trance became a Dutch export product.
Hardstyle2000 · Zaandam (Qlubtempo) Around 2000, hardstyle emerged in the Netherlands, out of German hard trance and Dutch hardcore.
Electroclash2001 · New York (Williamsburg, club Luxx) Around 2001, electroclash was a collision between electronic dance music and punk.
Dubstep2002 · London (Croydon) Dubstep emerged in the early 2000s in South London, around Croydon, out of UK garage, jungle and dub: a tempo of around 140 bpm, a rhythm with the snare on the third beat, so that it feels half as fast, and a heavy sub-bass.
Nu-disco2005 · Oslo Nu-disco brings back the dance floor of the seventies and eighties, but with modern machines.
Synthwave2006 · Paris Synthwave is electronic music that recreates the sound of the 1980s: analogue synthesizers, reverb-drenched drums, arpeggios borrowed from Italo disco, and images of neon and old films.
Dutch house2008 · Amsterdam Around 2008, Dutch DJs such as Chuckie, Afrojack, Laidback Luke and Hardwell made their own kind of house, also called dirty Dutch, after Chuckie's parties.
Moombahton2009 · Washington D.C. In late 2009, DJ Dave Nada was playing at a party thrown by his cousin in Washington.
EDM2010 · United States Around 2010 electronic dance music became the big new genre in the United States, under the name EDM.
Vaporwave2011 · Portland (Oregon) Vaporwave emerged on the internet around 2010.
Caribbean & Latin
Habanera1850 · Havana The habanera is a nineteenth-century Cuban dance, named after Havana.
Tango1890 · Buenos Aires Tango originated in the late nineteenth century in the port districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, where European immigrants, Afro-Argentines and people from the countryside came together.
Samba1917 · Rio de Janeiro Samba was born in the Afro-Brazilian neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro; Pelo Telefone (1917) is regarded as the first recorded samba.
Son1920 · Santiago de Cuba and Havana Son comes from the east of Cuba and became popular in Havana in the twenties.
Merengue1930 · Santo Domingo Merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic: fast music in 2/4 with accordion, the tambora, a two-headed drum, and the güira, a metal scraper.
Calypso1930 · Trinidad Calypso comes from Trinidad, where singers at carnival used humour and mockery to comment on politics and everyday life.
Mambo1938 · Havana and Mexico City Mambo grew out of danzón and son in Havana in the late thirties.
Mento1950 · Jamaica Mento is the folk music of rural Jamaica, played on banjo, guitar and the rumba box, a large thumb piano that provides the bass.
Cumbia1950 · Colombia (Caribbean coast) Cumbia comes from the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where African drums, Indigenous flutes and Spanish song forms came together.
Cha-cha-chá1953 · Havana The cha-cha-chá is a slower offshoot of the mambo that is easier to dance to, devised by violinist Enrique Jorrín of the Orquesta América in Havana.
Nueva canción1960 · Santiago de Chile Nueva canción, the 'new song', emerged in the early sixties in Chile and Argentina as an alliance of folk music, poetry and protest.
Tropicália and MPB1967 · Salvador In 1967 and 1968, Tropicália was the revolt of young Brazilian musicians against their own country's clichés.
Ska, rocksteady and reggae1968 · Kingston In Kingston, sound systems played American rhythm and blues; when those records became scarce, Jamaican producers started recording their own.
Salsa1970 · New York Salsa is the name that emerged in New York in the late 1960s for the Afro-Cuban dance music of Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians.
Dub1972 · Kingston In Kingston, producers made an instrumental version without vocals for the B-side of their singles.
2 Tone1979 · Coventry Around 1969 the first skinheads adopted the ska and reggae of Jamaican migrants.
Dancehall1980 · Kingston Dancehall emerged in Jamaica in the 1980s, named after the dance venues where sound systems played.
Baile funk1989 · Rio de Janeiro (favelas) Baile funk, known in Brazil as funk carioca, emerged in the late 1980s at the dance parties (bailes) in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
Reggaeton1995 · San Juan (Puerto Rico) Reggaeton grew up in the 1990s in Panama and Puerto Rico out of Jamaican dancehall and hip hop, sung in Spanish.
Latin trap2016 · San Juan (Puerto Rico) Latin trap is trap in Spanish, from Puerto Rico.
Africa & Asia
Indian classical music1700 · North India The classical music of North India is built on the raga, a scale with fixed melodic turns and a mood of its own, and the tala, a rhythmic cycle.
Krontjong1920 · Batavia (Jakarta) Krontjong originated in Batavia, present-day Jakarta, from songs that Portuguese sailors brought with them from the sixteenth century onwards.
Highlife1950 · Accra Highlife grew up in Ghana in the first half of the twentieth century out of West African rhythms, church songs and the music of military bands and sailors.
Bollywood film music1950 · Mumbai In the Hindi films made in Mumbai, known as Bollywood, songs are a fixed part of the story.
Jùjú1950 · Lagos Jùjú is the popular music of the Yoruba in Nigeria.
Congolese rumba and soukous1955 · Kinshasa In the 1940s, Cuban records of son and rumba were popular in the Congo.
Mbaqanga1960 · Johannesburg Mbaqanga, the music of the township, emerged around 1960 in Johannesburg and Soweto.
Afrobeat1970 · Lagos Around 1970, in Lagos, Fela Kuti mixed highlife with jazz and the funk of James Brown: afrobeat.
Dangdut1970 · Jakarta Dangdut is the popular dance music of Indonesia.
Mandopop and Cantopop1970 · Hong Kong Mandopop and Cantopop are pop music in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Mbalax1975 · Dakar Mbalax is the dance music of Senegal.
City pop1978 · Tokyo City pop is the smooth, sunny Japanese pop of the late 1970s and the 1980s, made for a country that was growing rich: influences from American soft rock, funk and disco, played by tight session musicians.
Desert blues1979 · Kidal Desert blues, also called assouf, is the music of the Tuareg of the Sahara in Mali and Niger.
Raï1980 · Oran Raï comes from Oran in Algeria, where singers in cafés and at celebrations sang folk songs about love, drink and life, subjects that had no place in traditional music.
Bhangra1980 · Birmingham and Punjab Bhangra began as a harvest dance from the Punjab, driven by the deep beats of the dhol, a large drum.
J-pop1990 · Tokyo In the late 1980s the term J-pop came into use in Japan for modern Japanese pop music, distinct from the older, schlager-like kayōkyoku.
K-pop1992 · Seoul K-pop is South Korean pop music that grew from 1992 onwards, when Seo Taiji and Boys sang hip hop and rock in Korean.
Kwaito1992 · Johannesburg Kwaito is the music of South Africa's first free generation.
Afrobeats2010 · Lagos, Accra and London Afrobeats is the West African pop music of the 2010s: danceable tracks with a relaxed rhythm, vocals in English, Pidgin and Yoruba, and influences from dancehall, R&B and hip hop.
Gqom2010 · Durban Gqom is the dark, hard dance music of Durban.
Amapiano2015 · Pretoria and Johannesburg Amapiano emerged in the mid-2010s in the townships around Pretoria and Johannesburg, out of South African house and jazz.
Cage and Fluxus1952 · New York John Cage wondered what music still is when the composer steps back.
Radiophonic Workshop1958 · London (Maida Vale) From 1958 the BBC had its own department for electronic sound, the Radiophonic Workshop, which made sounds and music for radio and television.
Minimal music1964 · New York and San Francisco In the 1960s, American composers made music out of short patterns that are repeated endlessly and change slowly.
Industrial1977 · London, Sheffield and Berlin In the late 1970s, Throbbing Gristle from London made music out of noise, tape loops and electronics, released on their own label, Industrial Records: industrial.
Noise1979 · Tokyo Noise makes music out of sheer racket: no scale, no metre, no chorus.
Technology
Saxophone1846 · Paris The Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax, born in Dinant, moved to Paris in 1842.
Phonograph1877 · Menlo Park, New Jersey In 1877, in his laboratory at Menlo Park, Thomas Edison built a machine that could capture sound and play it back.
Gramophone and 78 rpm record1887 · Washington D.C. Emile Berliner captured sound not on a cylinder but on a flat disc.
Steel guitar: lap steel and pedal steel1889 · Honolulu According to tradition, the Hawaiian schoolboy Joseph Kekuku discovered around 1889 in Honolulu that he could play a guitar by sliding a piece of metal along the strings.
Tin Pan Alley sheet music1890 · West 28th Street, New York Before the gramophone became commonplace, you bought a song on paper.
Pianola and piano roll1898 · Detroit In 1895, in Detroit, Edwin Votey built a device that made a piano play by itself.
Drum kit with foot pedal1909 · Chicago Around 1900 an orchestra often had several percussionists: one for the bass drum, one for the snare drum and the cymbals.
Radio1920 · Pittsburgh In November 1920 the station KDKA in Pittsburgh began regular broadcasts; in The Hague, Hanso Idzerda had already been broadcasting music in 1919.
Theremin1920 · Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) Around 1920 the Russian physicist Lev Termen built an instrument that you play without touching it.
Electrical recording and the microphone1925 · New York Until 1925 musicians sang into a large horn, which scratched the vibrations directly into the record.
Jukebox1927 · Grand Rapids, Michigan In 1927 AMI put a coin-operated machine on the market that was electrically amplified and could choose from ten records.
Magnetic tape1935 · Berlin At the radio exhibition in Berlin in 1935, AEG showed the Magnetophon, a recorder that captured sound on a tape with a magnetic coating made by BASF.
Hammond organ and Leslie1935 · Chicago In 1935, in Chicago, Laurens Hammond built an electric organ for churches that could not afford a pipe organ.
Electric guitar1936 · Kalamazoo, Michigan In a big band an acoustic guitar disappeared behind the horns.
Vocoder1938 · New York (Bell Labs) In the 1930s, at Bell Labs, Homer Dudley developed the vocoder, intended to send speech efficiently over telephone lines.
Steelpan1939 · Port of Spain, Trinidad In Trinidad, African drums were banned from carnival in the 1880s.
Long-playing record (LP)1948 · New York In 1948 Columbia introduced the long-playing record: a vinyl disc with finer grooves that turns at 33⅓ revolutions per minute.
45 rpm single1949 · Camden, New Jersey In 1949 RCA Victor answered the LP with a small vinyl record with a large hole, turning at 45 revolutions per minute.
Fender Telecaster1950 · Fullerton, California The hollow electric guitar started to feed back when the amplifier was turned up loud.
Sound system1950 · Kingston From the fifties onwards, sound systems played in the poor neighbourhoods of Kingston: mobile discos with home-built amplifiers and enormous speaker cabinets.
Fender Precision Bass1951 · Fullerton, California A double bass is big, quiet and awkward to carry around.
Gibson Les Paul1952 · Kalamazoo, Michigan In 1952 Gibson answered Fender with a solid body of its own, designed together with the guitarist and inventor Les Paul.
Slapback echo1954 · Memphis In his small Sun studio in Memphis, Sam Phillips used two tape recorders to create a short echo: the sound was recorded and played back again a fraction of a second later.
Fender Stratocaster1954 · Fullerton, California In 1954 the Stratocaster followed: a solid body with a rounded shape, three pickups and a tremolo arm that lets you bend the pitch down and spring it back.
Transistor radio1954 · Indianapolis The Regency TR-1 of 1954 was the first transistor radio to go on sale in the shops.
Plate reverb (EMT 140)1957 · Lahr, Germany Reverb is the sound that still hangs in a hall after a note has been played.
Multitrack recording1957 · Redwood City, California As early as around 1950, Les Paul was recording parts on top of one another by copying from one tape recorder to another.
Stereo1958 · New York As early as 1931 the British engineer Alan Blumlein applied for a patent on a way of recording sound on two channels, so that you can hear where an instrument is placed.
Rhythm machine1959 · Cincinnati, Ohio In 1959 the organ maker Wurlitzer released the Side Man, a cabinet with a rotating disc that triggered electronic drum sounds in the rhythm of a waltz, a rumba or a foxtrot.
Amplifier and overdrive1962 · London (Hanwell) An amplifier is supposed to make a signal bigger without changing it.
Fuzz pedal1962 · Nashville During a Marty Robbins recording session in Nashville, one channel of the mixing desk broke down.
Mellotron1963 · Birmingham Under every key of a Mellotron sits a strip of tape holding a recording of a real instrument: a violin, a flute, a choir.
Wall of Sound1963 · Los Angeles (Gold Star Studios) At Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, producer Phil Spector had several guitarists, pianists and drummers play the same part at the same time, and sent the sound through an echo chamber.
Compact cassette1963 · Hasselt Lou Ottens's team at Philips in Hasselt developed a small plastic box containing magnetic tape, which was presented in 1963.
Moog synthesizer1964 · Trumansburg, New York From 1964, in Trumansburg, Robert Moog built synthesizers from separate modules that you connected with cables.
8-track1965 · Detroit, Michigan In 1964 aircraft maker Bill Lear designed the Stereo 8: a cartridge with an endless loop of magnetic tape and eight tracks, four stereo programmes side by side.
Fender Rhodes1965 · Fullerton, California Harold Rhodes developed an electric piano without strings.
The studio as instrument1966 · London (Abbey Road) In 1966 the Beatles stopped touring and began working mainly in the studio.
Wah-wah pedal1966 · Sepulveda, Los Angeles In 1966 Brad Plunkett at the Thomas Organ Company developed a pedal with a filter that you open and close with your foot.
Minimoog1970 · Trumansburg, New York The big modular Moog was a cabinet full of cables, made for a studio.
Technics SL-1200 and scratching1972 · Osaka (Kadoma) In 1972 Matsushita released the SL-1200 under the Technics name, a direct-drive turntable.
Talk box1973 · Marissa, Illinois A talkbox makes a guitar talk.
The mixing desk as instrument (dub)1973 · Kingston In Kingston, producers made an instrumental version without vocals for the B-side of their singles.
Sequential Prophet-51978 · San Jose, California The Minimoog could only play one note at a time.
Fairlight CMI1979 · Sydney In 1979 the Australians Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie released the Fairlight CMI, a computer with a keyboard and a light pen.
Sony Walkman1979 · Tokyo Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka wanted to listen to music on long flights.
TASCAM Portastudio1979 · Musashino, Tokyo In the seventies a multitrack studio was expensive and large.
Linn LM-11980 · Los Angeles In 1980 Roger Linn released the LM-1, the first drum machine to use digital recordings of real drums instead of electronically imitated sounds.
Gated reverb1980 · Townhouse Studios, London Gated reverb means reverb with a gate.
Roland TR-8081980 · Osaka The Roland TR-808 came onto the market in 1980 as an aid for making demos.
Roland TB-3031981 · Osaka The TB-303 Bass Line was meant for guitarists who practised alone and missed having a bass player.
MTV and the music video1981 · New York On 1 August 1981 MTV launched in the United States, a television channel that broadcast music videos all day long.
Compact disc (CD)1982 · Eindhoven Philips and Sony jointly developed the compact disc, which came onto the market in 1982.
Yamaha DX71983 · Hamamatsu The Yamaha DX7 of 1983 did not work with filters, but with FM synthesis: one wave makes the frequency of another go up and down very rapidly.
MIDI1983 · Anaheim, California Until 1983, synthesizers from different makers could not talk to each other.
Roland TR-9091983 · Osaka The TR-909 of 1983 was the successor to the 808.
Beat sampler (SP-1200, MPC)1987 · Scotts Valley, California With the E-mu SP-1200 of 1987 and the Akai MPC60 of 1988, a producer could record a snippet of a record, chop it into pieces and assign them to pads.
Pro Tools and the DAW1991 · Menlo Park, California In 1991 Digidesign released Pro Tools, a system that let you record and edit multiple tracks on an Apple computer without tape.
Breakbeat sampling (the Amen break)1992 · London In 1969 drummer Gregory Coleman played a drum solo lasting a few seconds on Amen, Brother by The Winstons.
Auto-Tune1997 · Los Gatos, California Andy Hildebrand used mathematics from the oil industry to measure the pitch of a voice.
FL Studio (FruityLoops)1998 · Ghent At Image-Line, a software company in Ghent, nineteen-year-old Didier Dambrin wrote a simple program for making drum rhythms.
MP3 and Napster1999 · Boston At the Fraunhofer-Institut in Erlangen, Karlheinz Brandenburg and his colleagues, among others, developed the mp3: a file format that leaves out what the ear can barely hear.
Ableton Live2001 · Berlin Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke made techno in Berlin as Monolake.
iPod and the iTunes Store2001 · Cupertino, California In October 2001 Apple unveiled the iPod: a small player with a hard drive and a scroll wheel, putting 'a thousand songs in your pocket'.
YouTube2005 · San Mateo, California YouTube started in 2005 as a website where anyone could share videos.
SoundCloud2007 · Berlin SoundCloud was founded in 2007 by the Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss and made its home in Berlin.
Streaming (Spotify)2008 · Stockholm In October 2008 Spotify launched in Stockholm.
TikTok2018 · Beijing TikTok, the short-video app from the Chinese company ByteDance, broke through worldwide in 2018.
School of Rock