50 Fun Facts About Music Genres

Disco's defining drum pattern, a bass-drum thump on every beat of the bar, is known by what name?

Four-on-the-floor is the steady bass-drum pulse under nearly every disco record. It is usually paired with a hissing hi-hat and a syncopated bass line, the combination that kept dancefloors moving.

By one account the blues is named for 'the blue devils', an old English phrase meaning what?

Melancholy and sadness were 'the blue devils' in a 1798 George Colman farce of that title, decades before the music existed. The same phrase once described the hallucinations of alcohol withdrawal.

Which Cleveland disc jockey started calling the R&B he played 'rock and roll' on air in 1951?

Alan Freed picked up a phrase that already existed as R&B slang for sex and made it the name of a genre. Several sources trace his find to 'Sixty Minute Man' by Billy Ward and his Dominoes.

Which Bowery club, opened by Hilly Kristal in 1973 as a roots-music bar, became New York punk's cradle?

CBGB was Hilly Kristal's plan for a roots-music bar at 315 Bowery, but the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Blondie and Talking Heads turned it into punk's home instead.

Which industrial English city produced Black Sabbath, whose guitarist lost fingertips at a factory?

Birmingham's noisy factories and metalworking are credited with shaping the chugging, metallic sound of Black Sabbath and of heavy metal in general. Unable to play normally, Tony Iommi tuned down and leaned on power chords.

Alongside Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, which band completes the 'Big Four' of US thrash metal?

Megadeth was formed by Dave Mustaine, Metallica's original lead guitarist, after Kirk Hammett replaced him, which makes the 'Big Four' a family feud as much as a scene. Exodus and Testament were Bay Area peers who never matched them.

In the August 1995 'Battle of Britpop', Blur's 'Country House' outsold which Oasis single?

'Roll with It' sold 216,000 copies to 'Country House's 274,000 in the best week for UK singles sales in a decade, and Oasis had to settle for number two. Their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? won the longer war.

Which Seattle label founded by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman sold the local sound as 'grunge'?

Sub Pop encouraged the media to call the Seattle sound 'grunge', and the 1988 mail-order catalogue describing Green River's Dry as a Bone EP is the first recorded use of the word for the city's bands.

Cumbia, danced today from Mexico to Argentina, began on the Caribbean coast of which country?

Colombia's Caribbean coast is cumbia's cradle, where the dance is said to descend from Afro-Colombian funeral traditions. Its classic line-up is three drums and three flutes, including the gaita.

Bossa nova, the hushed samba offshoot of late-1950s Rio, has a name that literally means what?

New trend, or new wave, is the literal sense of the phrase, and the style was a genuinely new way of playing samba: João Gilberto's stammering guitar rhythm under a near-whispered vocal line.

Early-1960s surf rock got its dripping 'wet' guitar tone from a spring reverb unit by which maker?

Fender's separate Reverb Unit of 1961 was the first 'wet' surf tone, meant to mimic crashing waves, and from 1963 the company built reverb into its amplifiers. It is the sound on Dick Dale's records.

Emo began in the mid-1980s as 'emotional hardcore', a softer turn in which US city's punk scene?

Washington, D.C.'s hardcore scene produced Rites of Spring and Embrace, the bands credited with pioneering emo. The musicians themselves, by one account, bitterly detested the 'emo-core' tag.

Amapiano, South Africa's 2010s dance export, rides the booming bassline of which percussion sound?

Log drum basslines, an electronic take on a West African instrument, are amapiano's signature, sitting under piano melodies borrowed from deep house and kwaito. The genre's name is Zulu for 'pianos'.

Bhangra, the Punjabi harvest-dance music, is driven by which two-sided drum played with two sticks?

The dhol is bhangra's best-known instrument, struck with a stick in each hand. The tumbi and sarangi traditionally play over it; synthesizers and guitars arrived later.

Ska pairs a walking bass line with guitar or piano chops that land on which part of the beat?

The offbeat chop, known as the upstroke or skank, is what makes ska bounce; in 1950s Jamaica it grew out of copying American shuffle blues records played on sound systems. Horns usually take the lead over it.

K-pop idols typically spend years living and drilling under an agency before debut, in what method?

The trainee system was popularised by Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment in the late 1990s, and a 2012 report put the cost of training one idol at an average of three million US dollars.

Which novelist's 1922 collection Tales of the Jazz Age helped pin that name on the speakeasy decade?

F. Scott Fitzgerald popularised 'Jazz Age' as the label for the years between the end of World War I and the 1929 crash, and The Great Gatsby became its defining portrait. Prohibition-era speakeasies were the music's liveliest venues.

Whose glittery 'Hot Love' on Top of the Pops in March 1971 is often cited as the start of glam rock?

Marc Bolan of T. Rex was, in critic Ken Barnes's words, 'the man who started it all', and 'Hot Love' became his first UK number one. David Bowie only began building his Ziggy Stardust persona later that year.

Which squeezebox, named by a German dealer and intended for church music, became the voice of tango?

The bandoneón takes its name from Heinrich Band, the German instrument dealer who intended it for religious and popular music; emigrants and sailors carried it to Argentina around 1870. By 1930 Germany was shipping 25,000 a year there.

Which group's 1969 B-side 'Amen, Brother' gave jungle and drum and bass their favourite drum break?

The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother' was the flip side of their single 'Color Him Father', and the band received no royalties for what became one of the most sampled drum breaks ever. In 2026 it entered the US National Recording Registry.

Juan Atkins borrowed the name for Detroit's machine music from which futurist's book The Third Wave?

Alvin Toffler's writing supplied Atkins with 'techno' and also the names Cybotron and Metroplex, so the genre's vocabulary came from a futurist's bookshelf rather than from a club.

Trip hop, the slow, dub-heavy sound of Portishead and Tricky, emerged from which English port city?

Bristol's sound-system DJs, steeped in Jamaican dub, favoured laid-back, heavy 'down tempo' beats, and when hip-hop seeped into that subculture in the late 1980s the result was trip hop. Its gloom owes something to post-punk too.

Which Michigan band behind '96 Tears' did critic Dave Marsh call 'punk rock' in Creem in 1971?

? and the Mysterians earned the phrase years before the Ramones had a record out, when Marsh praised their 'landmark exposition of punk rock' in May 1971. Lester Bangs had already called Iggy Pop 'that Stooge punk' in the same magazine.

Jerry Dammers founded 2 Tone Records, home of Britain's ska revival, in 1979 while in which band?

The Specials' Dammers persuaded Chrysalis, which had wanted to sign his band outright, to fund a label releasing 15 singles a year instead. Its rude-boy mascot Walt took his name from an old American bowling shirt Dammers owned.

Which Manchester band's funky 1989 single 'Fools Gold' was that year's biggest-selling indie single?

The Stone Roses took 'Fools Gold' to number 8 in November 1989, the same month as Happy Mondays' Madchester Rave On EP and 808 State's 'Pacific State', the moment the scene got its name. The band had thrown warehouse parties since 1985.

Northern soul's famous all-nighters ran from 1973 to 1981 at the Casino in which Lancashire town?

Wigan Casino became the scene's flagship, alongside Blackpool Mecca's Highland Room and the Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, for dancing to obscure 1960s American records. The name 'Northern soul' was coined in a London record shop.

Skiffle, the 1950s craze Lonnie Donegan set off, built a bass from a broom handle, string and what?

A tea chest with a broom handle and a single string stood in for the double bass, and that freedom from expensive instruments, after Lonnie Donegan's 1956 hit 'Rock Island Line', is what set off the craze.

Which keyboard, replaying tapes of strings and flutes, became a signature of 1970s progressive rock?

The Mellotron played a strip of pre-recorded tape for every key, giving King Crimson, Yes and Genesis an orchestra in a box. The Moody Blues' Mike Pinder used one on every album from Days of Future Passed in 1967 to Octave in 1978.

Which Austin band put 'psychedelic rock' on third-eye business cards, then in a 1966 album title?

The 13th Floor Elevators formed in late 1965 to spread LSD consciousness, and The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, released that October, is the earliest known use of 'psychedelic' on an album cover.

Which 1967 film gave Flatt and Scruggs's bluegrass 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' a worldwide audience?

Bonnie and Clyde used the tune so frequently that a banjo breakdown became the sound of 1930s outlaws on the run. Deliverance and its 'Dueling Banjos' came later.

Big beat, Fatboy Slim's late-1990s sound, was named for a Concorde club night in which seaside city?

Brighton's Big Beat Boutique, run on Friday nights by Damian Harris of Skint Records from 1995 to 2001, gave the genre its name, and Norman Cook's Fatboy Slim records were the label's calling card.

Dubstep's first producers, Skream and Benga among them, gathered at Big Apple Records in which town?

Croydon's Big Apple Records was a crucial early hub, and after releasing 12-inch singles on its label the Digital Mystikz crew founded DMZ Records. The word 'dubstep' itself first appeared in 2001.

Whose 2003 debut Boy in da Corner took grime from pirate radio to a Mercury Prize win?

Dizzee Rascal's win put a pirate-radio sound on the national stage, and Wiley, Kano and Lethal Bizzle followed him into the spotlight within a year. He claims his 2000 track 'Crime' was the first grime song.

Which Chicago blues label, run by Polish-born brothers Leonard and Phil, recorded Howlin' Wolf?

Chess Records grew out of Aristocrat Records, in which Leonard Chess bought a stake in 1947, and its catalogue is regarded as central to the rock canon. Sam Phillips brought Howlin' Wolf to the label in 1951.

Which Billboard writer, later a producer at Atlantic, is credited with coining 'rhythm and blues'?

Jerry Wexler is credited with the coinage in 1948, though Billboard had printed the phrase as early as 1943. It replaced 'race music', a label coined by Okeh producer Ralph Peer.

Which pianist, once billed as 'Georgia Tom' beside Tampa Red, is called the father of gospel music?

Thomas A. Dorsey toured with Ma Rainey and cut racy 'hokum' records before campaigning to get blues-inflected songs sung in Black Protestant churches. He did not invent gospel so much as spawn the movement that spread it.

Soca, created in 1970s Trinidad by Lord Shorty to win back young listeners, contracts which phrase?

Soul of calypso was Lord Shorty's own definition, and he originally spelled the word s-o-k-a-h. He spent nearly a decade fusing calypso with Indo-Trinidadian rhythms before the new sound caught on.

Reggaeton's 'dembow' beat is named for a Bobby Digital production by which Jamaican dancehall star?

Shabba Ranks's 'Dem Bow' rides a riddim built by Steely & Clevie in the late 1980s, and elements of it have been worked into more than 80 percent of all reggaeton productions. The genre itself grew up in Puerto Rico.

Which New York label, begun in 1964 by Johnny Pacheco hawking LPs from his car, marketed 'salsa'?

Fania Records was Pacheco's answer to meagre royalties, financed by his Brooklyn-born lawyer, and it became the engine of New York salsa. Pacheco insisted salsa 'is, and always has been' the music of Cuba.

Which pianist and bandleader, after moving to Mexico in 1949, popularised mambo in big-band form?

Pérez Prado borrowed the name mambo from Antonio Arcaño, whose charanga had pioneered the style in late-1930s Cuba, then topped the American charts with 'Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)' as the craze peaked in the early 1950s.

Dominican merengue pairs an accordion and a tambora drum with which metal scraper of Taíno origin?

The güira is a metal scraper that sounds like a maraca, and the trio reads as a map of the nation: the accordion European, the tambora African, the güira from the indigenous Taíno. Folk merengue began on bandurria and guitar.

Which 1984 Mariya Takeuchi song led the YouTube revival of city pop, Japan's glossy 1980s sound?

'Plastic Love' became the gateway for millions of listeners abroad, alongside anime-backed playlists, after decades in which many Japanese dismissed the genre as cheesy. Miki Matsubara's 'Mayonaka no Door' enjoyed a similar revival in 2020.

Which Pakistani singer took qawwali to the West after a 1988 film score with Peter Gabriel?

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sang on Gabriel's soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, then signed to Gabriel's Real World label in 1989 and released five albums of traditional qawwali there.

Which French composer was famously captivated by a Javanese gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exposition?

Claude Debussy is the most famous Western composer the gamelan won over, hearing Central Javanese musicians play in the slendro scale during the 1889 premiere of a Bourgault-Ducoudray work. Satie heard the same ensemble that year.

Which Peruvian percussion instrument did Paco de Lucía bring into flamenco in the 1970s, alongside the transverse flute?

The cajón now seems inseparable from flamenco even though it arrived from Peru only in the 1970s, during the years Paco de Lucía and Camarón were remaking the form. He also opened it to Brazilian, Arabic and jazz influences.

The 'motorik' beat of Neu! and Can defines which 1970s West German scene, a British press coinage?

Krautrock began as a British journalists' joke, credited to John Peel or Melody Maker, and many of the bands hated it; Faust even recorded a 12-minute track called 'Krautrock'. The motorik groove also drives Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'.

Gabber, the pounding Dutch hardcore of 1990s Rotterdam, takes its name from slang meaning what?

Mate, or friend, is the sense of 'gabber' in Amsterdam's Bargoens slang, borrowed from the Hebrew chaver by way of Yiddish. An Amsterdam DJ dismissed the harder Rotterdam scene as 'a bunch of gabbers having fun', and the name stuck.

Polka, the 2/4 craze that swept 1840s Europe, began in which Central European region?

Bohemia's origin story for the dance appeared in the periodical Bohemia in 1844, crediting a young woman, Anna Slezáková, though Vienna's composers soon made the craze their own. The name entered Europe's major languages in the early 1840s.

Which 1972 compilation by critic Lenny Kaye defined 1960s garage rock, a style unnamed at the time?

Nuggets did much to define and memorialise a style nobody had recognised as a genre while it was happening, and Greg Shaw's 1973 Rolling Stone review of it called punk rock 'a fascinating genre'. Kaye later played guitar for Patti Smith.

Enrique Jorrín created cha-cha-chá in the early 1950s by simplifying which older Cuban dance form?

Danzón, in its danzón-mambo form, was the starting point: Jorrín saw dancers struggling with heavy syncopation and simplified his pieces, adding short refrains sung in unison by the band. His signature piece was 1951's 'La engañadora'.