ELECTRONIC

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production, anelectronic musician being a musician who composes and/or performs such music. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, and the electric guitar. Purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer.

POP/ROCK

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the 1950s, and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s' and 1950s' rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.

URBAN

Hip hop as music and culture formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York City, particularly among African American youth residing in the Bronx. At block parties DJs played percussive breaks of popular songs using two turntables to extend the breaks. Hip hop's early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum-machines became widely available and affordable. Turntablist techniques developed along with the breaks and the Jamaican toasting vocal style was used. Rapping developed as a vocal style in which the artist speaks along with an instrumental or synthesized beat. Notable artists at this time include DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Fab Five Freddy, Marley Marl, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Moe Dee, Kurtis Blow, Doug E. Fresh, Whodini, the Fat Boys, and Spoonie Gee. The Sugarhill Gang's 1979 song "Rapper's Delight" is widely regarded to be the first hip hop record to gain widespread popularity in the mainstream. The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles. Prior to the 1980s, hip hop music was largely confined within the United States. However, during the 1980s, it began its spread and became a part of the music scene in dozens of countries.

ALTERNATIVE/PUNK

Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a genre of rock music that emerged from theindependent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s and 2000s. In this instance, the word "alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream rock music, expressed primarily in a distorted guitar sound, subversive and/or transgressive lyrics and generally a nonchalant, defiant attitude. The term's original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by their collective debt to either the musical style, or simply the independent, D.I.Y. ethos of punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music.At times, "alternative" has been used as a catch-all description for music from underground rock artists that receives mainstream recognition, or for any music, whether rock or not, that is seen to be descended from punk rock (including some examples of punk itself, as well as new wave, and post-punk).

METAL

Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock,the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are often associated with masculinity, aggression, and machismo.

JAZZ

Jazz is a genre of music that originated from African American communities of New Orleans in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It emerged in the form of independent traditional music and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical parentage with a performance orientation.Jazz spans a period of over a hundred years, encompassing a range of music from ragtime to jazz-rock fusion of the 1970s and 1980s, and has proved to be difficult to define. Jazz makes heavy use of improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swing note  as well as aspects of European harmony, American popular music, the brass band tradition, and African musical elements such as blue notesand African-American styles such as ragtime. Although the foundation of Jazz is deeply rooted within the black experience of America, different cultures have contributed their own experience to the music aswhile. Jazz music has led intellectuals from around the world to hail jazz as "one of America's original art forms"

BLUES

Blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in traditional African music, combined with European Americanfolk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scaleand specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. The blue notes (or "worried notes") which are often thirds or fifths which are flatter in pitch than in other music styles, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles orwalking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect called a groove.

WORLD MUSIC

World music is a musical category encompassing many different styles of music from around the globe, which includes manygenres of non-Western music including folk music, ethnic music, traditional music, indigenous music, neotraditional music, and music where more than one cultural tradition, such as when ethnic music and Western popular music intermingle. World music's inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally exotic is encapsulated in Roots magazine's description of the genre as "local music from out there". The term was popularized in the 1980s as a marketing category for non-Western traditional music. Globalization has facilitated the expansion of world music's audiences and scope. It has grown to include hybrid subgenres such as world fusion, global fusion, ethnic fusion andworldbeat

COUNTRY

Country music is a genre of American popular music that originated in the Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the southeastern genre of American folk music and Western music. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout itsrecorded history.Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, dobros and fiddles as well as harmonicas. The term country music gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to the earlier term hillbilly music; it came to encompass Western music, which evolved parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. The term country music is used today to describe many styles and subgenres. The origins of country music are the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans, who blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, and cowboy songs, and various musical traditions from European immigrant communities. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute in the United States.

CLASSICAL/OPERA

Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical (religious) and secular music. While a similar term is also used to refer to the period from 1750-1820 (the Classical period), this article is about the broad span of time from roughly the 11th century to the present day, which includes the Classical period and various other periods. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. The major time divisions of classical music are as follows: the early music period, which includes the Medieval (500–1400) and the Renaissance (1400–1600) eras; the Common practice period, which includes the Baroque (1600–1750), Classical (1750–1820), and Romantic eras (1804–1910); and the20th century (1901–2000) which includes the modern (1890–1930) that overlaps from the late 19th-century, the high modern (mid 20th-century), and contemporary or postmodern (1975–2015) eras