Music Genre Names Explained

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

[nickimontie]

Classical music has genres, too, but technically it's not all "classical" music. There's Baroque and Romantic, as well as Classical. Perhaps a video on these next?

[squidwardstesticles]

Small correction from a metal head: metal and heavy metal are not always viewed as the same. Heavy metal is sometimes viewed similarly to how you described “rock and roll” in that it describes the earlier style that the rest of the genre evolved from

[bf]

Dubstep is a reference to dub music not double. Dub comes from Jamaican reggae where they would use studio effects to trip out the production and beef up the bass and have sound system parties. This would have a huge influence on dance music starting with disco / boogie in the late 70a early 80sm. Some twenty years later there was a genre called two step which came from UK garage. It had swingy beats. Well people started making dark and moodier two step with an emphasis on sub bass. Hence the dub in dubstep.

[christopherantonio]

Lo-fi means low-fidelity. While hi-fi comes from high-fidelity. Fidelity being the crispness and "fidelity" to high quality souding audio.

[HalfEye]

You haven't mentioned Industrial.
In Germany is the genre "Schlager" (which can be translated with "Beat"), which may be a bit between Pop, Country and Folk. But it is never really dying.
In the 80s there was the style "NDW" for "Neue Deutsche Welle" ("New German Wave"). In the 2000s there was the style "Neue Deutsche Härte" ("New German Hardness"), which follewed in the trails of NDW.

[ScreamingAllTheTime]

An interesting thing that wasn’t really mentioned in this video, but for a long while, R&B and Soul (among a few other sub genres) were labelled under one name in the US, Race Music. This wasn’t changed til the 60s I think, because it’s pretty messed up that a bunch of music got basically called “Black People Music.” It’s definitely an important part of music history though, since so much of our music was built upon African American pioneers whose legacies has since been covered up.

[Zundfolge]

As for the "Rap vs Hip Hop" thing, I had it explained to me by an old rapper that "Rap is the words, Hip Hop is the music". But that's just conjecture.

[TheStroy]

How do we call the vocalist of a Heavy Metal band?








Lead singer.

[timmmahhhh]

I ususlly see Indie Rock spelled accordingly, I-N-D-I-E. Having grown up in Indiana, Indy is short for Indianapolis, as in the Indy 500.

[sampugh]

Dubstep is actually a portmanteau of Dub (from dub reggae) and 2-Step (A style of UK garage)

[espvp]

Was expecting at least a mention of the many latin american genres like bachata, salsa, merengue, cumbia, tango, ranchera, bolero, and many more. There's also flamenco from Spain.

[rianantony]

Weird that you didn't mention the many types of metal. I'd imagine there's a lot to the etymology of that

[SuprousOxide]

I remember hearing the term Acid Rock and imagining it applied to some sharp hard edge sound, only later to learn that the acid in question is LSD and it tends to be pretty mellow music

[laser]

"Classical" music when it was new went by many names since there are actually many different styles that make up what we now call "Classical" (which is more properly a period of music between the Baroque and Romantic periods). The textbook time frame for the Classical period is typically around 1750-1825, and can be broadly categorized by features distinguishing it from previous movements like Baroque (initially a term meaning something like "over-the-top" and was something of a pejorative term for the music). My favorite, though overly general, way to distinguish Classical from other periods is something my high school music theory teacher used: if it sounds like you're riding a horse, it's Classical (unless it's a song about riding a horse. in which case it might be Romantic, which was famous for "text-painting", or making the music sound like the lyrics). The term itself was used in-period, as the music (and other arts, I believe, though that's not my expertise) was meant to evoke ideas of the "Classical" Greco-Roman world, even more old-timey to them than they are to us, and seen as ideal in many ways. Brief overview of what I remember from several music history and musicology courses.

[Kylora]

"Grunge" was more of a scene (specifically from Seattle, WA USA) than a musical style. The Big Four of grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains) have VERY different sounds (Nirvana is punk, Pearl Jam is rock, Soundgarden is acid rock, Alice In Chains is metal); they just all dressed like your typical person from the Pacific Northwest would and all made it big at the same time from the same area (and members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden had a project called Temple of the Dog).

[someguy]

I think rap is an acronym for "Rythm And Poetry"

[metal_nerd]

Awesome video. I was happy to see metal and ska mentioned. There are a lot of genres out there, too many to include all of them of course... But I was surprised there was no mention of funk as popular as that genre is. Never the less, I enjoyed the video

[taitano]

Classical is music that has stood the test of time. What you're talking about with "modern classical" is technically just "orchestral". Though, most non musicians, and a surprising number of musicians, use "classical" to mean pretty much any orchestral music.

[FilthyAnimal]

Interesting one not mentioned here, House music got its name because it was the music provided by the host venue, aka the "house" as filler between live acts setting up and breaking down.

[BoynamedMagnus]

It did exist some few Rock And Roll artists/bands after the 40`s and 50`s like:The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, SAFT and Bloodrock in the 60`s and the 70`s, Slade, ZZ Top, T.Rex, 83 Special, Aerosmith, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Terry Reid, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ACDC and The Outlaws in the 70`s, Def Leppard and Axl Rose in the 80`s,
The Black Crowes, Oasis, The Verve, Drive-By Truckers, Gov`t Mule in the 90`s, Blackberry Smoke, Taylor Swift, Whiskey Myers in the 2000`s and 2010`s,
The Struts, The Kvednabekkjers and Beady Eye in The 2010`s and Olivia Rodrigo in the 2020`s