Music Genres and Styles

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Opera

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A classical style dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists.

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Musical

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A popular theater play with singing and dancing.

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Orchestral Music

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Music written for a large ensemble, with multiple players on the string parts, performed in larger concert halls.

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Choral Music

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Music for a group of singers who sing together, often in a church or school or community group.

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Soundtrack

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The music from a movie or a musical, or video game, or cartoon.

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Blues

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Evolved from African American spirituals, shouts, work songs and chants. Usually laid-back, about life, and includes certain instruments to create a bittersweet, personal kind of sound.

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Country Music

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Originally referred to as hillbilly music, this genre evolved out of Irish and Scottish folk music, Mississippi blues, and Christian gospel music. Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms, folk lyrics, and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars, and fiddles as well as harmonicas.

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Folk

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Music by and of the common people, a down-to-earth style focusing on universal truths, often with traditional instruments and a simple melody.

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Rock

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Often musically crude, but conveyed great passion and energy. Most use simple chord progressions, pounding drums, and short, repetitive lyrics.

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Hip-Hop

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A style of popular music of US black and Hispanic origin, featuring rap with an electronic backing. It combines spoken street dialect with cuts (or samples) from older records and is influenced by social politics, boasting, and comic lyrics carried forward from blues, R&B, soul, and rock and roll. Consists of four main elements: rapping (also known as emceeing), disk jockeying, breakdancing and graffiti.