The great musical genres of the 20th and 21st centuries

The last 100 years has seen, and heard, a flowering of music like never before, as communications – physical and virtual – allowed hitherto local traditions to reach new audiences. From the 1920s, radio and record-pressing technologies provided artists in cities across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America with millions of listeners. The arrival of the jet age allowed musicians to tour distant countries. From international collaborations, new hybrids were born. Music lovers today have access to a diverse array of genres, sub-genres, dance styles and experimental fusions, as well as retro and roots-focused artists and scenes that endeavour to conserve cultural forms threatened by globalisation.

The seedbed of many of the best-known music genres – from tango to fado, guoyue to Gypsy music – was almost always local. Often the roots were social and political, tied to historical change and landmark events. A lot of the most powerful sounds and most stirring lyrics have been a response to violently changing conditions: revolution or repression, decolonisation and national liberation.

Music is rarely a direct response to, or symptom of, history; too many factors are at stake, and sounds migrate and metamorphose, commercial interests overlap with artistic integrity. But it’s been a very rich and rhythmic century, as well as a restive one. Here comes more than a hundred years of dancing, singing, drumming and dreaming.

Carlos Gardel

1910s

Time to tango on the River Plate

Gotan Project’s Argentinian guitarist Eduardo Makaroff has called tango the “first world music.” Born on the Río de la Plata at the end of the 19th century, tango and its many variations – tango canción, tango vals, milonga – sprang from the meeting of freed African slaves, deracinated gauchos and immigrants from Europe and the Levant in the slums and outskirts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. A mélange of local guitar music, habanera, candombé, polka, mazurka and other popular musical types, it travelled from the street corner and tenement patio to the brothel and bar, and finally to dance salons and elegant cafés. Afro-Argentinian pioneer Ángel Villoldo spiced things up with witty lyrics; ‘El Choclo’ is ostensibly about eating a tasty corn-on-the-cob, but a more innuendo-laced reading is tempting.

From 1917, Carlos Gardel popularised sung tango, with superb poets providing slangy lyrics that covered all aspects of daily life as well as the passions and sorrows of the night. Tango was already a craze in Paris by 1910, which helped convince bourgeois South Americans that the homegrown dance was, after all, socially acceptable. Soon it would take over many major cities, from New York to Berlin, Helsinki to Istanbul.

Key recording:

‘El Choclo’ by Ángel Villoldo

This track premiered in 1903 and countless versions exist, perfectly illustrating tango’s ability to adapt and evolve over time.

Rita Abadzi

1920s

Greece is the way we are feeling

At the end of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the razing of ancient Smyrna by Kemal Ataturk’s out-of-control cavalries and irregular soldiers, the belligerents agreed to an exchange of populations. An estimated 1.5 million Christians were sent to Greece and 500,000 Muslims living in Greece were sent to Turkey. Professional musicians, many of them formally trained in the café aman styles of Smyrna, Constantinople and other cities, brought their knowledge, instruments and the rhythms of rebetika with them.

Rebetika has always had an outlaw quality. The name derives from rebétis, denoting a person (usually a man) who has a haughty disregard for the law and moves in marginal milieus – from Athenian prisons to Turkish slums and bohemian cafés. Rebetika is an umbrella term and its lyrics often have a bluesy quality, encompassing drink, drugs and prostitution but also themes of exile and love, motherhood and the joys and pains of life. Greek and Anatolian dance rhythms underpin the music, and in the 1920s the mandolin and piano were woven into bouzouki melodies to produce a rich, affecting sound.

Smyrna-born Rita Abadzi, Spyros Peristeris and Panagiotis Toundas, and a host of other virtuosos exiled in Greece’s port cities, joined forces with gifted producers to create a scene and lay down a style that would be recognised as classical; from 1936, the Metaxas regime censored song lyrics and closed down dive bars and tekes (hash dens) – but by then shellac discs were already changing hands. Rebetika would be revived and reconfigured time and again over the warring 1940s, troubled 1950s and repressive 60s.

Key recording:

‘Hanoumakia’ by Rita Abadzi

This is a 1925 classic by one of the most celebrated vocalists of the time. ‘On the beach you had a tekes, there I went every morning to get rid of my longing…’

Woody Guthrie

1930s

Dust bowl blues and railroad rhythms

Hardship and poverty have always driven rebels to find the words and music to express the truth and, maybe, offer a balm to the long-suffering. Between 1930 and 1940, a series of terrible dust storms, combined with inept farming techniques and land management, devastated the American and Canadian prairies. It was the era of the so-called Great Depression, following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and thousands of farmers and their families took to the road in search of work. Woody Guthrie, set adrift when his family fell apart, left Okemah, Oklahoma while still in his teens, got married in Pampa, Texas, and tried staying put for a short while in the early 1930s. But the open road and the rattling boxcar lured him away and he learned his craft while travelling with Okies – destitute farm families – heading west to find a promised land. In 1940, Guthrie released the fruit of this odyssey – the Dust Bowl Ballads album, mixing talking blues, first-person narratives, dry humour and spiritual messages to tell a social and political story that millions could identify with. Bob Dylan once said, “you could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.” He, as well as Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Nanci Griffith, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen, are hugely indebted to Guthrie.

Key recording:

‘Do Re Mi’ by Woody Guthrie

This classic is taken from Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads, which is a unique slice of history, chronicling the effect of the Dust Bowl on the country and people of the time.

Amália Rodrigues

1940s 

Fado and the people

Fado evokes the world it originated in – a 19th-century Lisbon of sailors, prostitutes, coachmen and rough, tough guys. A key part of the teatro de revista scene at the turn of the century, it was explored as a dance and as a spoken verse form. Hermínia Silva would emerge from the theatre stage as a fado singer in the 30s and 40s. The enthroning of Salazar as corporatist hard-man from 1932 turned fado into a nexus for working-class stories, saudade-laced nostalgia, bohemian audiences and left-leaning poets. Fado guitarist Armandinho played at Communist party rallies.

By 1940, Amália Rodrigues – in her early 20s – was already a fast-rising star, collaborating with classically-trained Frederico Valério, who tailored compositions suited to Amália’s range and timbre. ‘Fado do Ciúme’ and ‘Ai Mouraria’ (her first big hit) featured lush orchestral ornamentations not typical of fado. She drew on both the Lisbon and Coimbra fado styles, and in 1943 made her first trip abroad to Madrid. The following year, a visit to Rio de Janeiro drew large audiences to the Casino de Copacabana, Teatro João Caetano and Rádio Globo. Back in Lisbon she was crowned as the ‘Queen of Fado.’ She returned to Brazil in 1945-46 to make her first recordings – eight 78rpm discs for the Continental label. Later Amália’s self-confessed conservatism would make her an inevitable target of the left in the build-up to the 1974 revolution. But, for a spell, fado was a refuge – offering darkness as well as light, hope as well as sorrow – from the mirthless dark ages of dictatorship.

Key recording:

‘Ai, Mouraria’ by Amália Rodrigues

Amália’s very first hit. She would go on to become the undisputed ‘Queen of Fado.’

1950s

China and the golden age of guoyue

From the 1920s, China began developing its own orchestral style based on Western principles, and live classical Chinese music became accessible to the general public. The approach created a new, modern style, called guoyue (national music). After the creation of the People’s Republic in 1949, revolutionary songs became de rigueur but a lot of popular music comprised songs imported from the Soviet Union with the lyrics translated into Mandarin. New technologies broadcast the sound to China’s millions and the 1950s is considered a high point in the history of traditional classical Chinese music. Guoyue also flourished in Taiwan.

The expansion of the conservatory system also allowed the solo erhu (two-stringed fiddle) tradition, evolving since the early 20th century, to develop. Everything changed with the so-called Cultural Revolution when Mao Zedong declared that all music ‘belong[s] to definite classes and [is] geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake.’ Foreign culture was banned and musicians and professors of Western or Western-influenced classical music were persecuted and instruments destroyed.

Key recording:

‘Dance of the Yao People’

Written by Liu Tieshan and Mao Yuan in 1952, this is one of the most famous popular Chinese songs of the 20th century.

Víctor Jara

1960s

Nueva canción

The Cuban Revolution had repercussions across the Americas after it ended in 1959. Guerrilla movements were mobilised, left-wing students and intellectuals took inspiration from Fidel Castro’s anti-American stance and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s pan-continental militantism, and musicians were stirred to re-evaluate native South American traditions while voicing the hopes and dreams of ordinary people.

In Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Spain, socially committed singers and musicians drew on Andean, African and Caribbean traditions to invigorate folksong, playing quena, charango and cajón along with the guitar, and declaiming on Indigenous, women’s and human rights in anthemic songs. The broad movement would become known as nueva canción or ‘new song.’ Violeta Parra, a Chilean folklorist and ethnomusicologist, gathered and performed songs of peasant origin while composing her own material. Víctor Jara, also from Chile, met Parra in 1957, and played at the cultural centres she helped establish. He played covers of folk songs from Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Inti-Illimaní, also from Chile, released the song ‘Venceremos’, which became the anthem of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government, the first democratically elected Socialist government in Latin America. Jara was murdered on September 16 1973, five days after the coup by Pinochet.

Across the Andes, mestiza singer Mercedes Sosa became a figurehead of Argentina’s ‘new song’ scene. In Uruguay, José Carbajal and Alfredo Zitarrosa wrote and performed ideologically progressive songs, at home and in exile. In Cuba, Silvio Rodriguez led a movement that had its roots in traditional trova from eastern Cuba.

Key recording:

‘Gracias a la Vida’ by Violeta Parra

This is from her final album, Las Últimas Composiciones, but it’s also worth checking out Mercedes Sosa’s 1971 cover version.

Fela Kuti

1970s

Pan-Africanism powers up

As African nations broke the shackles of colonialism, artists and musicians forged new sounds and languages of liberation. Pan-Africanism was a positive response to the often narrowly nationalist, and corrupt, regimes that were picking up where the Europeans had left off. Events as disparate as the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle championship boxing match in Zaire (today’s DRC); the 1977 Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77) in Lagos at which Stevie Wonder, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Gilberto Gil and Miriam Makeba performed; and the release, in 1975, of Confusion by Fela Kuti and his Africa 70 band can all be framed within the continent-crossing, diaspora-energised movement of pan-Africanism.

Political congresses took place across Africa to debate the principles of the movement, but Nigerian leaders were never at ease with Kuti’s renegade stance and his declaration of independence for his very own Kalakuta Republic. His extensive touring created an immense legacy, and the influence of Afrobeat, the style he pioneered, can be heard across the world. Hip-hop has been seen as a pan-Africanist movement, and a lot of contemporary Afro-jazz and funk pays homage to Fela’s fertile, free-form approach to music-making.

Key recording:

‘Roforofo Fight’ by Fela Kuti

The title-track of the 1972 album is a 15-minute riot of saxes and bass guitar with Tony Allen’s famous ‘four-drummers’ percussion rippling throughout.

Cheb Khaled

1980s

Rai revival

Rai had its genesis in the Algerian port city of Oran in the 1920s. Like the city, dubbed ‘Little Paris,’ the music scene was a melting pot of styles and cultures, most prominent among which was an all-women Muslim scene – the cheikas, who sang about life’s grittier edges to the accompaniment of flutes and pottery drums. Rai was updated in the 1960s following the country’s independence from France. Trumpets, saxophones and accordions replaced the primitive drumming and a new generation of artists incorporated elements of jazz, flamenco and rock.

The 80s heralded a further renaissance, with drum machines, synths and electric guitars added to the mix, and singers adopting the title of Cheb or Chaba, meaning ‘Young,’ to assert their separate identity. Chaba Fadela, Cheb Hamid and Cheb Mami were major stars, but, by the time of the first international rai festival in Algeria in 1985, Cheb Khaled (later Khaled) had become the global face of the sound. The decade was a period of turmoil, and things got even worse when a bloody civil war erupted in 1992. Rai was both an outlet for and an escape from the trials of being a young Algerian in a shellshocked post-colonial nation where the older elites were turning ominously towards religious fundamentalism and political intolerance. Rai, in its 80s iteration, fed off international currents but became a symbol of Algerian pride and youth.

Key recording:

‘La Camel’ by Cheb Khaled & Safy Boutella

This is a cover version of a song by pioneering rai singer Cheikha Rimitti, and featured on the 1988 album Kutché.

Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González & Omara Portuondo (Christina Jaspars)

1990s

Cuba’s Buena Vista revelation

The release of Buena Vista Social Club in 1997 was interesting in more ways than the obvious one – that here was a bona fide international hit coming from an island long marginalised by the Western musical mainstream. Unlike Graceland, which was but one more mega-seller by a long-established superstar, BVSC saw a biggish name – Ry Cooder – working as mentor and agent, mixer and aide to a group of mainly elderly artists who had either given up performing or pursued it as a quasi-hobby, despite having enjoyed considerable success in pre-revolution Cuba. The mix of old faces, cool hats and beautiful voices, with well-honed son rhythms and rich orchestrations worked its magic on listeners new to Latin American music and offered something like a musical ‘holiday’ from the commercial and the current. Wim Wenders’ well-crafted film provided the release with the most stylish promo imaginable, and a last-chance-to-see tour added piquancy to the whole enterprise.

Cuba was no longer salsa central or a wannabe hip-hop backwater. BVSC showed music could outlive world-impacting political events. Omara Portuondo (91), Eliades Ochoa (76), and Juan de Marcos González (68), along with his Afro-Cuban All-Stars, have continued to play live and release records.

Key recording:

‘Chan Chan’ by Buena Vista Social Club

Love it or hate it, this swaying sultry earworm had become the thinking-drinker’s ‘Guantanamera’ in a million bars and clubs by the end of the decade.

Fanfare Ciocărlia

2000s

The Balkan Gypsy brass global sensation

The 1991-2001 Yugoslav Wars made the word ‘Balkanisation’ familiar to all and its bloody consequences painful to millions. Ordinary people in Western Europe and the US, for whom the countries east of Austria and south of the Eastern Bloc were a nebulous nowhere or a cheap holiday, suddenly took an interest in the ethnic and political rivalries that were tearing the region apart. The raucous Serbian music they heard on Emir Kusturica’s 1988 film Time of the Gypsies and 1995’s Underground (with soundtracks by Goran Bregović) seemed to capture the raucous energy and hidden history of Yugoslavia – and foregrounded a culture that knew a lot about repression and segregation. But these were the commercial and export expressions of a deep seam of sound that had actually flourished under Tito.

As modernisation and industrialisation wiped out much that was unique about Yugoslav culture and traditions, Gypsy folk bands, with their scratched cornets, tubas, accordions and booming bass drums, evoked past times, and were much appreciated by bar-hopping urbanites, wedding guests and funeral goers not limited to mourning. UK and US markets wanted more. Piranha Records and then Asphalt Tango, a German music agency with its feet firmly in the Balkans, released six studio albums by Romanian 12-piece brass band Fanfare Ciocărlia between 1998 and their Balkan Brass Battle with the Boban Markovic Orkestar in 2011. In 1999, Gogol Bordello unleashed so-called Gypsy punk on American audiences. Boris Kovač formed La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica, shortened to LaDaABa Orchest, in 2001. World Music Network released The Rough Guide to the Music of Balkan Gypsies in 2005. In 2013, two British producers compiled Tito-era Roma Gypsy pop songs for Stand Up, People. What happened with Balkan music is a classic post-modern multi-faceted scene encompassing folk, new fusions and the revisiting of back catalogues. It all happened because of the wars.

Key recording:

‘The Last Balkan Tango’ by Boris Kovač & the LaDaABa Orchest

The opening track of the album of the same name, released by Piranha in 2001. The album was Serbian composer and saxophonist Kovač’s response to the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith

2010s

Eco-protest music

In the January/February 2020 issue, Songlines featured a cover story I wrote about climate-crisis-themed music and song, with an Essential 10 of Climate Conscious Artists at the back of the magazine. The listed discs had all been released between 2011 and 2020, indicative of a rising tide of protest music. The natural environment had long been a source of inspiration to folk singers, but the new scene was especially wide ranging. Chris Watson & Marcus Davidson sampled field recordings of animal sounds in South Africa’s Kalahari desert; Malagasy singer Raza Said spliced personal stories about family and community life with messages about the devastation wreaked by slash-and-burn agriculture and the government’s sale of land to Chinese and Korean investors; and a Penguin Cafe commission from Greenpeace corresponded four pieces of new music to four breeds of endangered Arctic penguin. By turns heated and glacial, eloquent and enraged, these new voices of planetary alarm are sure to be followed by generations of like-minded artists.

Key recording:

‘Turning of the Year’ by Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith

From the English folk duo’s 2018 album Many a Thousand, this track captures the stormy weather of the times.

Lido Pimienta

2020s

Women of the world, gender fusions, war in Europe, plague and poverty… take your pick

We’re only two years into the 2020s and musicians have a full roster of on-trend topics to pick from. While the pandemic feels a bit like ‘history’ already in Europe, it’s way too early to talk of a post-COVID era. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could spiral into an even darker phase. The MAGA movement is not dead yet and everywhere democracy is in tatters as populists trump (pun intended) the rule of law. Brexit-ised Britain has witnessed the rise of the worst generation of political leaders in modern times. Worldwide economic woes, linked to the preceding factors as well as the climate crisis, are impacting music as a business as well as an artform.

The songbook of this decade is likely to be tinged with darkness and despair, but One hopeful strand relates to gender. This subject has many faces: rising LGBTQ+ artists from countries where not conforming is dangerous, gender-fluid artists taking full control of fashion, personal pronouns and the way they are projected; and women, driven by the #MeToo movement, standing up and shouting “enough!”

Women have been writing and performing songs of liberation for decades, but there is a new urgency in music and the arts. Peru’s Susana Baca, in a recent interview, told us, “these trying times in which we now live demand combative women willing to risk it all to give us our freedom.” News items, profiles and interviews in Songlines have ranged across Colombian joropo band Cimarrón – now fronted by Ana Veydó following the death of their co-founder and lead harpist, Carlos Rojas – to artist-activist Lido Pimienta and unpigeonholeable young musicians like Palestinian singer-songwriter Haya Zaatry, Havana-born cellist, vocalist and composer, Ana Carla Maza and Karnatic singer Sushma Soma. None of these women are backing singers or bit-parts or halves of duets; they are upfront, centre-stage and in the lead.

Key recording:

‘Coming Thru’ by Lido Pimienta

From the Colombian-Canadian activist’s 2020 album Miss Colombia. Of the track Pimienta has said, “the song is about surviving.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2022 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today