20th century music genres today

The music of the 20th century is a treasure, and there are many songs that we remember and still perform and listen to. many of those songs are considered to be “immortal” songs – as in they lasted more than 50 years, and are still part or the cultural repertoire of the world.

As those immortal songs were created with them were born multiple genres of music – from Jazz, Swing, Hip-Hop, Rock, Metal, Funk, Punk and so much more…

One of the biggest characteristics of immortal songs is that they are still being performed, covered, and re-imagined – so that begs the question: are the genres of the 20th century immortal too? and where are they today? and perhaps most importantly – how have they evolved?

we’ll focus on a few genres and we’ll observe their modern state:

We’ll start by asking the all-important question: are the genres that we knew back then still being listened to and played as they were in the past?

The answer to that question is obviously – Yes.

documentation and recordings of music from the 20th century exist in modern days, and even now – people still listen to them, be it when they study music or when they just listen to it for fun – and the existence of various modern tech to listen to music is only a proof for that.

for example, the song “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan has gathered 131,047,383 times played and the song “Over The Rainbow” by Judy Garland gathered over 39 million times played on Spotify, which is a music streaming service that launched in 2008 and started becoming popular in the early 2010s – which means that song (both of which are considered immortal songs).

Now that we know that 20th-century genres still live today in the songs from the 20th century that are still being played today, there’s an important question to ask – is a genre still alive if no one writes and makes new songs in that genre?

that’s an interesting discussion. luckily, that is not the case for the genres of the 20th century, as they are quite alive and breathing and people still write new music in that genre.

A good example of old genres being a very active and productive community is the Jazz genre – where even today people study to learn the techniques used when Jazz was still in its “infancy”. musicians such as Jacob Collier are still using the harmonic technique and various rhythms that so often define the various Jazz genres – and as a showcase of that here is his 2016 release of “In My Room”

Now, just as with 20th-century songs, which have received many covers and crossed genres, let us see how the genres evolved too, keeping a lot of inspiration and characteristics from the 20th century, but also adding something new and modern, and gaining a path of their own.

usually, the way that it happens is that with the introduction of new technology comes an exploration of that technology within the established genres – providing a new and interesting variant, and perhaps even gaining a new purpose, vibe, and *Aesthetic*.

I’m going to provide 2 examples of that –

Electro Swing which has evolved from swing, and Argent Metal which has evolved from the Metal genre.

both have been formed with the introduction of various electronic instrumentation and recording technics but in very different ways.

Let us start with Electro Swing.

Swing was originally developed in the 1930s, and due to the danceability of its rhythms and groove, became a very popular genre of dance music.

Electro Swing was developed to serve a similar purpose, adding a bit of a cheeky swing rhythm to electronic house music, which created a very enjoyable movement base groove, but with sounds more in line with modern house music, which is used in a lot of dance clubs.

Here are a few examples of Electro Swing:

The first example is an example of a cover of the song “Black Betty” which has gone through many evolutions but started in 1939 as a work song

but also, there is obviously new music written – one of them being a quite popular song called “Little Swing” by AronChupa

As for Argent Metal, let’s talk about Metal first

Metal was a genre that originated in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and is generally defined by using thick sounds and very distorted guitars, and a very quick drum beat. in the way that it plays, it invokes a lot of powerful overload of senses and emotions.

Argent Metal is a rather new genre that expands upon that – originally being first used in the soundtrack DOOM 2016, it is characterized by a lot of mechanical and distorted sounds in addition to its guitars and beats, to grant the vibe of unstoppable and intense power.

The two greatest examples of Argent Metal are the artists Mick Gordon and Geoffrey Day (GeoffPlaysGuitar), who popularized the genre.

Mick Gordon is the original composer for the DOOM 2016 soundtrack, and here is one of his tracks from that game: BFG Division:

Geoffrey Day was one of the people who took that genre and “made it a thing”. he started by creating various covers of other video game music and songs in the style of DOOM and eventually started a series of songs that is called “Fight Between Realms” where he creates original music inspired by various story worlds and created Argent Metal music for that theme. here is his track “Maker’s Hand”

So to close off this discussion, just like the songs of the 20th century, the genres of music created then are also immortal – and clearly exist even now, both as their original self, and also evolved, as a new variant of the original thing.