Truly outstanding musicians never limit themselves to a particular style or genre. Moreover, these frameworks are very blurred. However, music lovers, and even more so those who are engaged in music themselves, should understand the abundance of musical genres in order to find it easier to navigate this diversity.
Before you begin to understand the genres, of which such a great variety has accumulated in music that they are already difficult to classify, you need to understand what a musical genre is. In music, genre (from the French Genre or from the Latin Genus - species, genus) is a broad and multifaceted concept denoting one or another kind of works. Recently, we have often seen how the word "classic" is used as the name of a genre. For example, in many players, the equalizer has settings by genre, and among them - "classic". In reality, a classic, of course, is not a genre, but a broad concept that should be understood from the context. Classical music - any time-tested music, academic, folklore, etc. Within the classics itself, several hundred genres can be distinguished. In academic music, the most famous of them are opera, operetta, vocalise, symphony, oratorio, cantata and others. In folklore (or folk music), genre differentiation is somewhat different, due to the antiquity of its origin. Instrumental, song and dance genres are distinguished in it. Folk should not be confused with ethnic music. Ethnicity (ethno) is the adaptation of the music of the peoples of the world (mainly Africa and Asia) to Western standards, that is, not quite authentic music.
A colossal number of new genres were born throughout the 20th century. First of all, it is blues and jazz. The blues originated in the late 19th century and is a mixture of African American folk music and Anglo-Saxon musical tradition. As one of the greatest bluesmen, Willie Dixon, put it, "the blues are the roots, the rest of the music is the fruit." Indeed, it was thanks to the blues that jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and roll, rock and a number of other genres were born.
Jazz, based on blues and ragtime, is characterized by great incendiary, improvisation, syncopated rhythm. Some subgenres of jazz - bebop, then cool jazz - approached the professional-academic genres. Jazz has become elite music.
In the 50s, rock and roll emerged in the USA. It was an incredible mixture of many seemingly incongruous genres from country to boogie-woogie. It was from rock 'n' roll that pop and rock were born, and from rock - that huge number of subgenres and sub-styles that exist now.
Separately, we need to talk about electronic music and its genres. Electronics is much older than ordinary people are used to thinking. The first steps in this area were made back in the first half of the 20th century, when first theremin was invented, then magnetic tape for sound recording. But the turning point came in the 1950s and 60s, when the first computers began to appear in the studios, with the help of which it was possible to create completely electronic compositions. The music of avant-garde composers who used the latest computer technology is classified as academic electronics. Many different genres were subsequently born from it, the most significant of which are: ambient, industrial, noise, synth-pop, etc.
Finally, such a popular genre as rap cannot be ignored. The word rap itself is not an abbreviation, in English it means "knock", "light blow". Rap is the most important genre of hip-hop style, which originated in the 80s. In rap, rhythmized lyrics are read to music with a heavy beat. Rap artists are called either rappers or MC (Master of Ceremonies).
