Jazz
It's the genre where breaking the rules, in real time, in front of an audience, is the entire point.
Blues
Three chords, twelve bars, and a bad day: the recipe that ended up underneath almost everything you hear on the radio.
Classical Music
You already know more classical music than you think — most of it, you've just heard it in a movie trailer.
Country Music
Country's "outlaw" rebels weren't rejecting the genre, just Nashville's polished, studio-controlled way of making it.
Hip-Hop
A genre born from DJs looping the same ten seconds of a record over and over — now the single most-streamed music genre in America.
Electronic Dance Music (EDM)
Before "EDM" became a festival-sized brand, Black and queer DJs were building its sound in underground clubs.
Punk
A genre whose entire founding philosophy was that you didn't need to be good at your instrument to start a band — you just needed something to say.
Reggae
Reggae's signature move is stressing the offbeat, the very beat most other popular music glosses over.