Lunar Boom Music Atlas
Music Genre Database
Explore the traditions behind the music. Choose a country, set an era, and discover genres shaped by place and time.
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Genre results
Find a sound with a history.
Showing 12 of 150 genres

2-Step
A late-1990s UK garage offshoot that traded four-on-the-floor certainty for a more elastic, skipping groove, 2-Step became one of the defining sounds of its scene.
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A cappella
A cappella is one of those terms that sounds technical until you hear it: voices carrying the whole piece, with no instruments to lean on. Its roots are old and church-bound, but its modern life is broad, from Renaissance sacred music to polished pop and gospel vocal groups.
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Adult Alternative
A radio-born umbrella term for polished, adult-facing alternative music, strongest in the 1990s and still useful as a listening shorthand.
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African Blues
This entry treats African Blues as a broad, lightly standardized umbrella rather than a sharply bounded genre, and keeps the strongest documented anchors in Mali, Ali Farka Touré, and Tinariwen.
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Aggrotech
Aggrotech is best understood as a harsh club-oriented branch of dark electro and electro-industrial, shaped by the late-1990s industrial scene and carried by acts like Hocico, Suicide Commando, and Combichrist. The term is real and useful, but it’s also a scene label with fuzzy borders rather than a tightly policed style.
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Alternative Folk
A porous, scene-crossing folk label that covers acoustic singer-songwriters with a modern edge. The evidence suggests it overlaps more than it contains, so the safest story is one of adjacency: folk tradition filtered through indie, anti-folk, and contemporary songwriting cultures.
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Alternativo & Rock Latino
Alternativo & Rock Latino is a vibrant and diverse genre that combines traditional Latin music elements with rock and alternative influences. It often features electric guitars, energetic rhythms, and a fusion of cultural sounds, creating a unique and dynamic musical experience.
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Anatolian Rock
A Turkish rock fusion rooted in the 1960s, Anatolian Rock still sounds vivid and handmade: folk melody against electric grit, with the bağlama often sitting right beside fuzz and feedback.
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Arena Rock
A polished, crowd-sized strain of hard rock that came into focus in the mid-1970s, arena rock is less about raw grit than about lift, sheen, and the instant communal charge of a giant chorus. Its center of gravity sits with bands that learned how to make FM-ready songs feel stadium-sized.
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Art Rock
A British-born, album-minded strain of rock that prizes scope, texture, and formal ambition over easy category lines.
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Australian Country
A rooted, story-first country tradition shaped by the bush, the pub, and the long road between them.
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Bachata
A Dominican genre that moved from stigma to international stature, bachata keeps its intimate pulse even when it turns glossy and global.
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