Watch: How Music Travels (The Evolution of Western Music)

Watch: How Music Travels (The Evolution of Western Music)

This map shows the time and place where each music style in the last hundred years was born and which blend of genres influenced the next. It shows the evolution of top level genres only, and does not delve into all possible sub-genres. It is

This map shows the time and place where each music style in the last hundred years was born and which blend of genres influenced the next. It shows the evolution of top level (dance) genres only, and does not delve into all possible sub-genres.

It is often difficult to pin-point the beginning of a genre to a single year, so the birth of each genre is placed within 5-year periods. When the explosion of music arrived in the 80s, many genres arrived in the same 5-year period as the genres they influenced. In this situation, the ‘influencer’ genre starts to fade in on the map at the time the influencing line appears.

Thanks to World Up for sharing this very insightful infographic with us! Click the static image below to watch the interactive version, and try to keep your eye on hip hop and other genres it influenced.

Just an ordinary guy always on the hunt for extraordinary music. Not just as the founder of The Find Magazine & Rucksack Records, but also as a freelance music journalist (bylines at Tracklib, Bandcamp, Wax Poetics, DIG Mag, among others) and—above all—out of love for all kinds of good music.