100 Fun Facts About Music Genres

Disco's defining drum pattern, a bass-drum thump on every beat of the bar, is known by what name?

Four-on-the-floor was not disco's invention: it was common in jazz drumming until bebop arrived in the 1940s, and the name refers to the drum kit's pedal-operated bass drum.

By one account the blues is named for 'the blue devils', an old English phrase meaning what?

Melancholy and sadness were 'the blue devils' in a 1798 George Colman farce of that title, decades before the music existed. The same phrase once described the hallucinations of alcohol withdrawal.

Which Cleveland disc jockey started calling the R&B he played 'rock and roll' on air in 1951?

Alan Freed picked up a phrase that already existed as R&B slang for sex and made it the name of a genre; he is thought to have found it on 'Sixty Minute Man' by Billy Ward and his Dominoes.

Which Bowery club, opened by Hilly Kristal in 1973 as a roots-music bar, became New York punk's cradle?

CBGB stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues, the music Hilly Kristal meant to book, until the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith and Blondie made 315 Bowery punk's home instead.

Which industrial English city produced Black Sabbath, whose guitarist lost fingertips at a factory?

Birmingham's Black Sabbath owe part of their heavy sound to that accident: unable to fret normally, Tony Iommi tuned his guitar down and leaned on power chords.

Alongside Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, which band completes the 'Big Four' of US thrash metal?

Megadeth was formed in 1983 by Dave Mustaine after Metallica fired him as lead guitarist, which makes the 'Big Four' a family feud as much as a scene.

In the August 1995 'Battle of Britpop', Blur's 'Country House' outsold which Oasis single?

'Roll with It' sold 216,000 copies to 'Country House's 274,000 in the best week for UK singles sales in a decade, and Oasis had to settle for number two. Their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? won the longer war.

Which Seattle label founded by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman sold the local sound as 'grunge'?

Sub Pop sold Green River's Dry as a Bone in its mail-order catalogue as 'ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation', though the word had been used of rock music for decades.

Cumbia, now danced right across Latin America, began on the Caribbean coast of which country?

Colombia's Caribbean coast is cumbia's cradle, where one tradition traces the dance to funeral rites. Its classic line-up is three drums and three flutes, including the gaita.

Bossa nova, the hushed samba offshoot of late-1950s Rio, has a name that literally means what?

New trend, or new wave, is the literal sense: 'bossa' was old Brazilian slang for doing something with special flair, and João Gilberto's guitar pared the samba beat down to match.

Early-1960s surf rock got its dripping 'wet' guitar tone from a spring reverb unit by which maker?

Fender's separate Reverb Unit of 1961 was the first 'wet' surf tone, meant to mimic crashing waves, and from 1963 the company built reverb into its amplifiers. It is the sound on Dick Dale's records.

Emo began in the mid-1980s as 'emotional hardcore', a softer turn in which US city's punk scene?

Washington, D.C.'s hardcore scene produced Rites of Spring and Embrace, the bands credited with pioneering emo. The musicians themselves, by one account, bitterly detested the 'emo-core' tag.

Amapiano, South Africa's 2010s dance export, rides the booming bassline of which percussion sound?

Log drum basslines carry a genre whose name is Zulu for 'pianos': the sound is a synthesised take on the wooden slit drum, laid under keys borrowed from deep house and kwaito.

Bhangra, the Punjabi harvest-dance music, is driven by which two-sided drum played with two sticks?

The dhol once marked the spring Vaisakhi harvest in Punjab; with synthesizers and guitars added, its beat now anchors the music of the Punjabi diaspora from Britain to Canada.

Ska pairs a walking bass line with guitar or piano chops that land on which part of the beat?

The offbeat chop, known as the upstroke or skank, is what makes ska bounce; in 1950s Jamaica it grew out of copying American shuffle blues records played on sound systems. Horns usually take the lead over it.

What name is given to K-pop's method of housing and drilling would-be idols for years before they debut?

The trainee system was popularised by Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment, who called his star-making method 'cultural technology' and had it written into a manual for staff to follow.

Which novelist's 1922 collection Tales of the Jazz Age helped pin that name on the speakeasy decade?

F. Scott Fitzgerald did not coin 'Jazz Age', which was already in popular use before 1920, but his story collection fixed it as the name of the decade he went on to portray in The Great Gatsby.

Whose glittery 'Hot Love' on Top of the Pops in March 1971 is often cited as the start of glam rock?

Marc Bolan had led an acoustic psychedelic folk act, Tyrannosaurus Rex, before going electric; critic Ken Barnes called him 'the man who started it all', and 'Hot Love' was his first UK number one.

Which squeezebox, named by a German dealer and intended for church music, became the voice of tango?

The bandoneón is named for Heinrich Band, who meant it for religious and popular music; emigrants and sailors are thought to have carried it to Argentina around 1870, where 25,000 arrived in 1930 alone.

Which group's 1969 B-side 'Amen, Brother' gave jungle and drum and bass their favourite drum break?

The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother' was the flip side of 'Color Him Father', and the band earned no royalties from one of the most sampled breaks ever; its leader only learned of the sampling in 1996.

Juan Atkins borrowed the name for Detroit's machine music from which futurist's book The Third Wave?

Alvin Toffler's writing supplied Atkins with 'techno' and also the names Cybotron and Metroplex, so the genre's vocabulary came from a futurist's bookshelf rather than from a club.

Trip hop, the slow, dub-heavy sound of Portishead and Tricky, emerged from which English port city?

Bristol's sound-system DJs, steeped in Jamaican dub, favoured laid-back, heavy 'down tempo' beats, and when hip-hop seeped into that subculture in the late 1980s the result was trip hop. Its gloom owes something to post-punk too.

Which Michigan band behind '96 Tears' did critic Dave Marsh call 'punk rock' in Creem in 1971?

? and the Mysterians earned the phrase years before the Ramones had a record out, when Marsh praised their 'landmark exposition of punk rock' in May 1971. Lester Bangs had already called Iggy Pop 'that Stooge punk' in the same magazine.

Jerry Dammers founded 2 Tone Records, home of Britain's ska revival, in 1979 while in which band?

The Specials' Dammers turned down a straight signing and got Chrysalis to fund up to 15 singles a year on his own label, whose mascot Walt Jabsco was named after an old American bowling shirt he owned.

Which Manchester band's funky 1989 single 'Fools Gold' was that year's biggest-selling indie single?

The Stone Roses took 'Fools Gold' to number 8 in November 1989, the same month as Happy Mondays' Madchester Rave On EP and 808 State's 'Pacific State', the moment the scene got its name. The band had thrown warehouse parties since 1985.

Northern soul's famous all-nighters ran from 1973 to 1981 at the Casino in which Lancashire town?

Wigan Casino became the scene's flagship, alongside Blackpool Mecca's Highland Room and the Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, for dancing to obscure 1960s American records. The name 'Northern soul' was coined in a London record shop.

Skiffle, the 1950s craze Lonnie Donegan set off, built a bass from a broom handle, string and what?

A tea chest with a broom handle and a single string stood in for the double bass, and that freedom from expensive instruments, after Lonnie Donegan's 1956 hit 'Rock Island Line', is what set off the craze.

Which keyboard, replaying tapes of strings and flutes, became a signature of 1970s progressive rock?

The Mellotron played a strip of pre-recorded tape for every key, giving King Crimson, Yes and Genesis an orchestra in a box, though it was designed for homes and clubs rather than for touring bands.

Which Austin band printed 'psychedelic rock' on its business cards in January 1966, the first known use of the term?

The 13th Floor Elevators put a third eye on the cards, and their open advocacy of LSD made them a police target, ending in singer Roky Erickson's 1969 arrest for drug possession.

Which 1967 film gave Flatt and Scruggs's bluegrass 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' a worldwide audience?

Bonnie and Clyde played the tune over its car chases, though Flatt and Scruggs recorded it in 1949, fifteen years after the real outlaws were shot dead.

Big beat, Fatboy Slim's late-1990s sound, was named for a Concorde club night in which seaside city?

Brighton's Big Beat Boutique ran on Fridays from 1995 to 2001; a year later Fatboy Slim's party on the city's beach drew about 250,000 people, four times the number expected.

Dubstep's first producers, Skream and Benga among them, gathered at Big Apple Records in which town?

Croydon's Big Apple Records was the hub: Hatcha and later Skream worked in the shop, and its label was among the first to adopt the word 'dubstep' after it appeared in 2001.

Whose 2003 debut Boy in da Corner took grime from pirate radio to a Mercury Prize win?

Dizzee Rascal had self-produced his first single, 'I Luv U', at 16, after appearing on local pirate stations, and he claims his 2000 track 'Crime' was the first grime song.

Which Chicago blues label, run by Polish-born brothers Leonard and Phil, recorded Howlin' Wolf?

Chess Records grew out of Aristocrat Records, in which Leonard Chess bought a stake in 1947, and its catalogue is regarded as central to the rock canon. Sam Phillips brought Howlin' Wolf to the label in 1951.

Which Billboard writer, later a producer at Atlantic, is credited with coining 'rhythm and blues'?

Jerry Wexler is credited with the coinage, though Billboard had printed the phrase as early as 1943; at his suggestion the magazine renamed its 'Race Records' chart Rhythm & Blues in June 1949.

Which pianist, once a racy blues partner of guitarist Tampa Red, is called the father of gospel music?

Thomas A. Dorsey toured with Ma Rainey and cut 'hokum' records as Georgia Tom before a spiritual awakening; he did not invent gospel so much as spawn the movement that spread it.

Soca, created in 1970s Trinidad by Lord Shorty, is popularly said to stand for which phrase?

Soul of calypso is the popular reading, though Lord Shorty said he spelled it s-o-k-a-h, to reflect the East Indian rhythms he had mixed into calypso.

Reggaeton's 'dembow' beat is named for a Bobby Digital production by which Jamaican dancehall star?

Shabba Ranks's 1990 'Dem Bow', patois for 'they bow', rides a riddim built by Steely & Clevie, and its drum pattern became the core of the reggaeton that grew up in Puerto Rico.

Which New York label, begun in 1964 by Johnny Pacheco hawking LPs from his car, marketed 'salsa'?

Fania Records was Pacheco's answer to meagre royalties, financed by his Brooklyn-born lawyer, and it became the engine of New York salsa. Pacheco insisted salsa 'is, and always has been' the music of Cuba.

Which pianist and bandleader, after moving from Cuba to Mexico, popularised mambo in big-band form?

Pérez Prado took a style pioneered by the charanga Arcaño y sus Maravillas in late-1930s Cuba, rearranged it for big band and topped the US and UK charts in 1955 with 'Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)'.

Dominican merengue pairs an accordion and a tambora drum with which metal scraper of Taíno origin?

The güira completes a trio often read as a map of the nation: the accordion European, the tambora African, the güira Taíno. Before the accordion arrived, merengue was played on bandurria and guitar.

Which 1984 Mariya Takeuchi song led the YouTube revival of city pop, Japan's glossy 1980s sound?

'Plastic Love' found millions of new listeners in the late 2010s, when YouTube's algorithm kept recommending an eight-minute remix; Miki Matsubara's 'Mayonaka no Door' enjoyed a similar revival in 2020.

Which Pakistani singer took qawwali to the West after a 1988 film score with Peter Gabriel?

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sang on Gabriel's soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, then signed to Gabriel's Real World label in 1989 and reached a far wider audience with albums such as Mustt Mustt.

Which French composer evoked the Javanese gamelan in his piano piece 'Pagodes'?

Claude Debussy first heard a gamelan at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, and the experience found its way, fourteen years later, into 'Pagodes', which opens his Estampes.

Which Peruvian percussion instrument did Paco de Lucía bring into flamenco in the 1970s, alongside the transverse flute?

The cajón now seems inseparable from flamenco even though it arrived from Peru only in the 1970s, during the years Paco de Lucía and Camarón were remaking the form. He also opened it to Brazilian, Arabic and jazz influences.

The 'motorik' beat of Neu! and Can defines which 1970s West German scene, a British press coinage?

Krautrock began as a humorous British coinage, credited to John Peel or to Melody Maker; Faust then opened their 1973 album with a 12-minute track called 'Krautrock'. The motorik beat also turns up in Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'.

Gabber, the pounding Dutch hardcore of 1990s Rotterdam, takes its name from slang meaning what?

Mate, or friend, is the sense of 'gabber' in Amsterdam's Bargoens slang, borrowed from the Hebrew chaver by way of Yiddish. An Amsterdam DJ dismissed the harder Rotterdam scene as 'a bunch of gabbers having fun', and the name stuck.

Polka, the 2/4 craze that swept 1840s Europe, began in which Central European region?

Bohemia's origin story, first printed in 1844, credits a young woman, Anna Slezáková, whose dancing a music teacher noticed; the dance had reached Prague's ballrooms by 1835 and Paris by 1840.

Which 1972 compilation by critic Lenny Kaye defined 1960s garage rock, a style unnamed at the time?

Nuggets did much to define and memorialise a style nobody had recognised as a genre while it was happening, and Greg Shaw's 1973 Rolling Stone review of it called punk rock 'a fascinating genre'. Kaye later played guitar for Patti Smith.

Enrique Jorrín created cha-cha-chá in the early 1950s by simplifying which older Cuban dance form?

Danzón, in its danzón-mambo form, was the starting point: Jorrín saw dancers struggling with heavy syncopation and simplified his pieces, adding short refrains sung in unison by the band. His signature piece was 1951's 'La engañadora'.

Hip hop was born at 1970s block parties thrown by DJ Kool Herc in which New York City borough?

The Bronx is where Herc's sister Cindy hosted a back-to-school party in their building's recreation room in August 1973, and he stretched out the instrumental breaks the dancers loved.

Which Tennessee city has broadcast the Grand Ole Opry, America's longest-running radio show, since a 1925 barn dance?

Nashville grew into America's country music capital alongside the Opry, which began as the WSM Barn Dance in an insurance company's fifth-floor radio studio.

Which Jamaican genre, carried worldwide by Bob Marley, joined UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2018?

Reggae grew out of mento, ska and rocksteady in the late 1960s, and Marley's 1980 visit to Zimbabwe boosted the genre's profile across Africa.

The 1973 film The Sting revived which syncopated piano style, using Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer' as its theme?

Ragtime had been overshadowed by jazz since the 1920s, and the film is set in 1936, well after its heyday, yet Marvin Hamlisch's take on the 1902 tune reached No. 3 in America.

Jazz was born among the brass bands and Sunday dances of which US city, where Louis Armstrong grew up?

New Orleans let enslaved people gather to play and dance in Congo Square on Sundays, and its brass bands later played both dirges and upbeat tunes at jazz funeral processions.

Bill Monroe's band the Blue Grass Boys, which gave bluegrass music its name, honoured which US state, his birthplace?

Kentucky bluegrass is the meadow grass of Monroe's home state, though the word 'bluegrass' was not formally used for the music until the late 1950s.

Which instrument, patented in 1846 by a Belgian maker who named it after himself, became a signature horn of jazz?

Saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax first saw his creation taken up by French and British military bands, and it reached jazz only decades later by way of vaudeville acts.

Disco Demolition Night, a 1979 stunt that blew up a crate of records and sparked a riot, took place in which sport?

Baseball's Chicago White Sox staged the stunt between games of a doubleheader, and fans wrecked the field so badly that the team had to forfeit the second game to Detroit.

Which folk hero drew boos at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he played his first set with electric instruments?

Bob Dylan played just three electric songs, and Pete Seeger, backstage, said he wanted to take an axe to the microphone cable because the distorted sound buried the words.

Which band's album Nevermind replaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous at number one and carried grunge into the mainstream?

Nirvana's label Geffen hoped the record might sell 250,000 copies and sent American stores an initial shipment of only 46,251.

Merseybeat, the early-1960s sound of the Searchers and the Beatles, takes its name from the river of which city?

Liverpool's Gerry & the Pacemakers reached number one on Britain's official chart before the Beatles did, and the scene shared its name with the Mersey Beat magazine Bill Harry founded in 1961.

Which city's Haight-Ashbury district, home to the Grateful Dead, drew 100,000 young people for 1967's Summer of Love?

San Francisco's hippies closed the season themselves that October with a mock funeral they called 'The Death of the Hippie'.

Which Detroit label did Berry Gordy launch in 1959 with $800 borrowed from his family's savings fund?

Motown takes its name from 'motor' and 'town', a nod to car-making Detroit, and Gordy lived upstairs at its Hitsville U.S.A. studio for the first few years.

Funk began in the mid-1960s when which singer had his band hammer the first beat of every bar, 'the One'?

James Brown said he had switched from the upbeat to the downbeat, accenting beat one instead of the backbeat on two and four that typified earlier African American music.

Which group wrote their disco hits for the film Saturday Night Fever in virtually a single weekend at a French château?

The Bee Gees took three new singles from the soundtrack to number one in America, and it was the best-selling album in history until Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Which New York punk band's unrelated members all adopted the same stage surname, inspired by a Paul McCartney alias?

Ramones members borrowed the name from Paul Ramon, an alias McCartney used in the Beatles' earliest days, and recorded their 1976 debut album in a week for $6,400.

Outlaw country, a 1970s revolt against slick studio production, was led by Waylon Jennings and which Texan singer?

Willie Nelson and Jennings won control of their own recordings, grew their hair long and swapped rhinestone-studded suits for leather jackets.

Which Delta blues guitarist, legend says, made a pact with the devil at a crossroads in exchange for his talent?

Robert Johnson recorded just 29 songs at two sessions in Texas before dying at 27, and he is often counted as the earliest member of the so-called 27 Club.

Reggaeton took shape as 1990s 'underground' mixtape music on which Caribbean island, the home of Daddy Yankee?

Puerto Rico also coined the word itself: by one account Daddy Yankee first said it in 1994 while freestyling on the mixtape Playero 34.

Which K-pop hit by Psy became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views, in December 2012?

Gangnam Style was made only for local fans, Psy said, yet by 2014 it had more views than YouTube's 32-bit counter was built to store.

Which big-band style ruled American pop from 1935 to 1946 and reached Carnegie Hall with Benny Goodman in 1938?

Swing is often said to have begun at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in 1935, when Goodman's band turned a three-week booking into a sensation.

Which fast, intricate 1940s jazz style of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie was made for listening rather than dancing?

Bebop got its name, Gillespie said, from audiences who heard him scat the still-untitled tunes and then simply asked for 'bebop'.

Which trumpeter based his 1959 album Kind of Blue on scales rather than chord changes, a landmark of modal jazz?

Miles Davis called for almost no rehearsal and handed his band only sketches of scales and melody lines, so the players had little idea what they were about to record.

Which 1950s style did Elvis Presley forge at Sun Records, pairing a blues song with a country song on each single?

Rockabilly joins 'rock' to 'hillbilly', the trade's old name for country music, and Presley's Sun sides took their beat from Bill Black's percussive slapped bass.

Which Indian instrument did George Harrison play on the Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood', its debut on a Western rock record?

Sitar music first caught Harrison's ear in April 1965 on the set of the Beatles' film Help!, and a year later he was taking lessons from Ravi Shankar.

Which bluegrass instrument, popularised by Earl Scruggs, descends from gourd-bodied ones built by enslaved Africans?

Banjo ancestors appear in a 1678 record from Martinique, where the colonial council restricted gatherings of enslaved Africans who danced to an instrument called the banza.

Which pitched percussion instrument, born in Trinidad in the 1930s, is made from 55-gallon oil barrels?

Steelpan players first appeared in Laventille in 1937 as an orchestra of frying pans, dustbin lids and oil drums, decades after African percussion had been banned on the island.

Which ballroom dance in triple time shocked onlookers with its close hold before Johann Strauss II became its 'King'?

Waltz dancing was banned by Mission priests in California until 1834 because of its 'closed' position, yet it became the model for many later ballroom dances.

Which unaccompanied Latin singing of the Catholic Church is named for a pope whom legend credits with inventing it?

Gregorian chant was probably not Pope Gregory I's invention: scholars believe he only ordered a compilation of melodies, most of which took shape later under the Carolingians.

Which Mexican-American genre reached mainstream America after the 1995 murder of its 'Queen', the singer Selena?

Tejano had already brought Selena a Grammy for Best Mexican/American Album in 1994, the first won by a female artist in the genre.

Which Louisiana Creole genre is led by the accordion and a specialised washboard known as the vest frottoir?

Zydeco may take its name from 'les haricots', snap beans as pronounced in Louisiana French, and its king, Clifton Chenier, designed the first vest frottoir while working at a Texas oil refinery.

Which Portuguese genre from 1820s Lisbon sings of the sea, the poor and saudade, a longing for what is lost?

Fado possibly takes its name from the Latin 'fatum', or fate, and singers Mariza and Carlos do Carmo served as ambassadors for its 2011 bid for UNESCO heritage status.

Which Mexican ensemble music of violins, trumpets and the bass guitarrón is played in embroidered charro suits?

Mariachi bands took up the charro outfit in the 1920s as the music moved into the cities, and UNESCO recognised the tradition as cultural heritage in 2011.

Which genre of chanted vocals and intersecting rhythms did Nigeria's Fela Kuti pioneer with drummer Tony Allen?

Afrobeat was the sound of Kuti's Kalakuta Republic, a commune he declared independent of military rule until soldiers destroyed it in a 1977 raid.

Shoegaze, the hazy guitar style of Slowdive and Ride, peaked in 1991 with which My Bloody Valentine album?

Loveless arrived just as the British press was mocking such bands as 'shoegazers' for standing motionless and looking down at their effects pedals.

Which Düsseldorf pioneers of 'robot pop' filled most of a 1974 album with a 22-minute ode to motorway driving?

Kraftwerk, whose name means 'power plant', saw the track spread across America after a Chicago radio station played the single, and the album peaked at number 5 there.

Which producer left N.W.A and made G-funk's slow, synth-laced sound famous with his 1992 solo debut The Chronic?

Dr. Dre quit the group and its label Ruthless over a financial dispute, then leaned on the synthesizer-heavy 1970s funk of Parliament-Funkadelic for his new sound.

Which trio introduced rap to a wide audience when their 1979 debut single 'Rapper's Delight' reached the US top 40?

The Sugarhill Gang were recorded by producer Sylvia Robinson, a singer and studio owner who had struggled to find anyone willing to make a rap record.

Which Southern hip-hop style takes its name from Atlanta slang for a house where drugs are sold?

Trap named a real place before it named a genre, and its signature mix of synth and string swells over bass-heavy kick drums took hold in Atlanta during the mid-2000s.

Which former Roxy Music keyboardist coined the term 'ambient music' and made an album to calm anxious air travellers?

Brian Eno, a self-described 'non-musician', built Music for Airports from tape loops of differing lengths, designed to repeat endlessly as a sound installation.

Which DJ, often called the godfather of house music, became resident at Chicago's Warehouse club in 1977?

Frankie Knuckles drew crowds of up to 2,000 to the Warehouse, and in 2004 Chicago renamed the stretch of street where the club had stood Frankie Knuckles Way.

Wendy Carlos's 1968 album Switched-On Bach, a three-time Grammy winner, was performed on which make of synthesizer?

Moog sounds carried the record to number 10 on the Billboard 200 and to the top of the classical chart from 1969 to 1972, and it later went platinum.

Which Italian producer swapped disco's usual orchestra for synthesizers on Donna Summer's 1977 hit 'I Feel Love'?

Giorgio Moroder's track influenced David Bowie, the Human League and Blondie, and Bowie recalled a collaborator rushing in to announce he had heard the sound of the future.

Which drum machine flopped on release in 1980, then became a cornerstone of hip hop once used units sold for under $100?

Roland TR-808 sounds struck producers as unrealistic, so fewer than 12,000 were sold, but in 1982 Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' and Afrika Bambaataa's 'Planet Rock' made them hits.

Which Indian state, a hippie capital of the late 1960s, gave its name to a trance style born at its beach parties?

Goa held the first such parties on Anjuna, Vagator and Arambol beaches around 1991, and organisers who tried to turn them commercial found they had to pay baksheesh to the local police.

Which instrumental tradition of Eastern Europe's Ashkenazi Jews grew up around the dances of the traditional wedding?

Klezmer comes from the Hebrew for 'musical instruments', and early record labels sold it simply as Hebrew, Jewish or Yiddish dance music.

Which Algerian pop genre, born in the port city of Oran, calls its young singers 'cheb' and crowned Khaled its king?

Raï takes its name from an Algerian Arabic word for 'opinion' or 'advice', which singers repeated to fill time while improvising their next line.

In Indian classical music, which melodic framework for improvisation is tied to a mood, a season or a time of day?

Raga comes from a Sanskrit word for colouring or dyeing, because in the Indian tradition the music is said to colour the mind of the listener.

What name does Indian cinema give vocalists like Lata Mangeshkar, who pre-record songs for actors to lip-sync?

Playback singers never appear on screen, yet the best became household names: in 2011 Guinness recognised Asha Bhosle as the most recorded artist in music history.

Which South African choir took isicathamiya, a soft Zulu a cappella style, worldwide on Paul Simon's album Graceland?

Ladysmith Black Mambazo grew out of dreams in which founder Joseph Shabalala heard a choir in perfect harmony, and the group went on to win nearly every competition it entered.