Music Genres

Music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or ‘basic musical language’. It can be defined by the techniques, the style, the context and the themes (content and spirit).

Criteria to classify music genres are:

• The art/popular/traditional distinction
• Regional and national distinction
• Fusional origins

The art music, also known as serious music, primarily refers to classical music, including european classical music. Contemporary classical music or others listed at list of classical music styles (including no-european classical music). Art music also includes some forms of jazz, electronic art music and experimental music (including minimalist music).

Popular music (not to be confused with pop music) is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media.

Traditional music is the modern name for what used to be called ‘folk music’ before the term ‘folk music’ was expanded to include a lot of non-traditional material.