42 Obscure Music Genres To Discover For Real Melomaniacs

If you have ever played Nintendo, you will recognize its very specific music and sound effects wherever you go. Yet, Nintendocore is more than that. Combining retro video game music with chiptune, adding hardcore punk and heavy metal, it first appeared in the early 2000s.

Born in the street carnivals of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the early 1980s, zouk is full of tropical vibes and upbeat tempo. The most prominent names of the genre include Pierre-Edouard Decimus, George Decimus, Jacob Desvarieux, and the band Kassav’.

Taking its influences from soul, cadence, and funk, soca became exceedingly popular in Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Guyana, and Barbados in the 1970s. If you listen to it, it will become very clear why this genre is often referred to as “the soul of calypso.”

Chap Hop is a mixture of hip-hop, Chappism (a style established by the British humorous magazine The Chap), steampunk, and all things British (think tea, weather, and cricket). If this sounds like your cuppa, check out Professor Elemental and Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer.

When playing music with electronic instruments or recording it through computers and other devices, musicians use MIDI files. A group of musicians took these files to create compositions that are said to be impossible to play by humans. A similar type of music emerged in 1947 when composer Conlon Nancarrow would punch holes in player piano rolls, thus creating complex musical pieces. 

A lot of new genres and elements emerged in the 1960s, and freakbeat was one of them. Combining British rhythm & blues, pop rock, beat music, and psychedelia, freakbeat is often considered the British version of American garage and psychedelic rock.

We’re not discussing typography here. In 2001, Steven Roden created a new style of ambient music that he called lowercase. One of the prominent examples is his album Forms of Paper, where he recorded various types of paper being handled, and then modified the sound in various ways. 

With electronic music being around since the late 1960s and folk music much longer, it was inevitable that one day someone would try to merge them. They may sound mutually exclusive, but folktronica often employs acoustic instruments.

In science, the term hypnagogic defines a state you are in just before you fall asleep. That said, hypnagogic pop doesn’t mean you have to listen to it before bed. This name was created by UK journalist David Keenan for bands who slowed down, looped and heavily affected sounds from the 1980s, creating a dreamlike psychedelia.

Originating from Sweden and Finland, skweee is mostly instrumental and combines synth leads and funk and soul-sounding rhythms. The name implies that when you play skweee, you try to “squeeze out” the grooviest sound possible. It is also believed to have had a huge influence on the birth of dubstep.

If you thought hardcore techno was heavy, welcome to gabber. It was created in the Netherlands in the 1990s in protest against overly pop-based techno music. Starting out as an underground, anti-establishment genre, gabber continuously works to stay as non-mainstream as possible. 

Hardcore punk was well known for its excesses back in the ’80s. Opposing this, straight edge punk, taking its name from a punk song, came to exist. Fans and followers would abstain from alcohol and recreational drugs, and some even would maintain a strict vegan diet and refrain from caffeine. However, they were often seen as pretentious by traditional punks.

Even Spotify labels this genre as “solo laptop experimentalists,” and it doesn’t get more hipster than that. Those who have tried this genre single out an artist named Mystery Skulls.

The easiest way to describe neurofunk is drum and bass. Emerging in London in the late ’90s, this genre is, in fact, much more than that. Breakbeats to backbeats, influences that include house, techno, and jazz, but also a hard funk foundation, it is a pretty complex and inexplicable genre.

Screamo, or skramz, might be a subgenre of emo, but unlike the former’s expressive lyrics, it goes deeper into emotional pain and human rights. Sound-wise, screamo is heavily inspired by hardcore punk.

Qawwali is largely popular in India, Pakistan, and some other South Asian countries; however, not many have heard about it in the West. It has been around for over 700 years. With a complex lyrical component that often has layers of meaning, this devotional music is devoted to the mysticism of Islam.

Soukous emerged in the 1960s as dance music in the Congo Basin. Its high tempo, somewhat resembling rumba, helped it grow in popularity. During the 1980s, soukous reached France where it also became very popular.

No, not the filming device. Drone is best described as a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment, with one note or chord sounding constantly. Drone also claims to let dopamine flow through you when you listen to it. This style comes with multiple subgenres such as drone ambient, drone techno, and drone metal. 

A lot of music genres owe their existence to hip-hop, and glitch hop is one of them. It includes beat repeats, lo-fi sound, chopping, and other glitch techniques, as well as elements of hip-hop. 

Rapper Lil B is often credited for the birth of this genre. Commonly, it includes atmospheric, ambient synthesizers with the lyrics rapped on top of it. Later, Yung Lean added a trap beat to the sound, giving it a whole new feel.