GENERAL HISTORY
20th century music
Although in the period from the end of the Civil War to the end of the 19th century, there were already bands that played something similar to rudimentary jazz, Buddy Bolden is often considered the first figure of the defined style. This early form of jazz is called the "New Orleans style". It has not yet detached itself from the influences of the minstrel and contains the characteristics of hot.
The closure by New Orleans authorities of the Storyville neighborhood in 1917 was a major setback for most of the jazz musicians in the area, since almost all the live music venues were concentrated in this entertainment district.18 This fact started the migration of musicians to northern cities, and especially to Chicago in the early 1920s.
In the last third of the 1920s a new form was developing in New York, which was consolidated mainly as a result of the massive migration of musicians from Chicago to the "city of skyscrapers" .19 The big bands were the that set the course for a new style.
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The bebop musicians put the accent on the role of the soloist, who was no longer that of entertainer of past eras, but a creator at the service only of his own music.
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The birth of cool took place in the late 1940s. The new style was derived from bebop, but it was a more cerebral music, which had as its main objective the establishment of a "meditative" atmosphere.
Bop evolved and some musicians developed formulations similar to those that had already occurred in classical music in the 1920s, with the emergence, for example, of atonality in jazz in the 1960s. It is accepted by the critics that free jazz takes a letter of nature in 1960, with the publication of the homonymous album by Ornette Coleman.
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Rock and roll was born in the 50s as a fast-paced music that arose fundamentally from a marriage between black rhythm and blues and white country. In the 1960s, the dominant figures of early American rock had to relinquish prominence to the advance of a new wave of British groups that had been influenced by them. What would be called British Invasion emerged, bands that would contribute to the evolution of rock and the emergence of the new face of white popular music: pop music. At the same time, new trends were consolidated among Americans of color, such as soul and funk. There was also a revival of folk music in the United States, with the protest song.
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The 70s saw the birth of new styles, such as hard rock and heavy metal (harder rock variants and more distorted electric guitars), Jamaican reggae, progressive rock, punk, rap, disco music ( that dominated the dance floors), or the first steps of electronic music in the field of the popular.
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The incorporation of synthesized sounds and the popularity of the video clip marked the aesthetics of 80s pop music, which is also considered the golden age of music in all genres. In the 90s, grunge and alternative rock shared the limelight with Britpop on the charts, while the dance scene, linked to the dance floors, developed an increasingly varied progeny of electronic subgenres (trance, drum and bass , chill-out, etc.).
Popular music thus finally enters the 21st century with an already extensive background behind it, characterized by the multitude of genres and styles that have been taking shape decade after decade, and forming an extensive and varied body of music appreciated by people of different tastes, ages, ideologies and social extractions throughout the world.
Musical genres
A musical genre is a category that brings together musical compositions that share different affinity criteria, 1 such as their function (dance music, religious music, film music ...), their instrumentation (vocal music, instrumental music, electronic music ...), the social context in which it is produced or the content of its text.
While the traditional academic classifications in musical genres have mainly attended to the function of the musical composition (what the piece is composed for, as in the previous examples), the classifications by genres of modern music, used by the recording industry, have paid more attention to specifically musical criteria (rhythm, instrumentation, harmony ...) and to cultural characteristics, such as the geographical, historical or social context; Thus, the concept of musical genre has been assimilated to that of musical style, and today it is common for flamenco, rock or country2 to be described as "genres" (example: rock is a musical genre with a very marked rhythm).
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Popular music is opposed to academic music and is a set of musical styles that, unlike traditional or folk music, are not identified with specific nations or ethnicities. Due to the simplicity and short duration of their forms, they do not usually require high musical knowledge to be interpreted and are commercialized and disseminated thanks to the mass media.8 9 This last statement is disputed from many fields of composers and performers and more and more popular music and cultured music tend to be thought of as music of different practices, although they share many characteristics of their language. There are popular musics that require high musical skills and, on the other hand, extremely simple cultured music. In general, it can be said that cultured music comes from music written in scores and popular music from the unwritten tradition, be it popular or professional. In part, the rise of the mass media and the music business have contributed to blurring the lines between these types of music.10
In short, it can be said that popular music emerged in Europe with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, when technological improvement made it possible for manufacturers to start producing musical instruments in series and selling them at a reasonable price, thus reaching to the middle class. Another important advance in the development of this type of music occurred in the 19th century thanks to Edison's phonograph and Berliner's gramophone, which allow the general public to record their own music or listen to music composed by others without having to attend. a live concert. In fact, by the late 1920s of the following century, many prestigious composers and popular performers had already made multiple recordings that they were able to disseminate through other modern inventions of the time such as radio and, later, television. But it will not be until the 1950s when popular music really reaches the popularity it has today thanks to the development of rock and roll and the popularity of jukeboxes in bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants. In addition, it did not take long before new styles such as pop music, electronic music, heavy metal, punk, hip hop, and reggaeton appeared in the sector, to such an extent that currently the musical styles are so many and so varied, and the borders so diffuse that it is difficult to know when one is talking about one and when the other.
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Currently there are a multitude of musical styles in constant evolution. From those who present an established conception (tango, blues, salsa, hip hop, among others); to broad and diffuse musical categories that cover an absolutely heterogeneous framework musically, newly created by record companies to bring music closer to the layman and facilitate its classification in what they call "genres": (rock music, universal music or world music , electronic music, among others).
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The main genres of popular music are: (Taking into account that these have in turn many subgenres)
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JAZZ, POP, ROCK, AFRO AMERICAN MUSIC, LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC, ELECTRONIC MUSIC AND WORLD MUSIC.
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Source: Wikipedia