North-America

Bluegrass
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and it is a sub-genre of country music. It has its own roots in Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass, as in jazz, each instrument takes a turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others revert to backing; this is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Bluegrass is distinctively acoustic in instrumentation, not using electrical instruments of any kind.

First Generation

 * Bill Monroe Considered the father of bluegrass music. Can be a little harsh to listen for beginners.
 * Stanley Brothers Contemporary with Bill Monroe. Carter Stanely, in my opinion, had one of the most purest voices in bluegrass.
 * Jimmy Martin played with Bill Monroe. Commonly called the King of Bluegrass. He was a hard living man, but an amazing singer and frontman.
 * Flatt and Scruggs. Some people say that when they joined Bill Monroe, that's when bluegrass started. They left Bill Monroe and started their own band, doing VERY well in the bluegrass world.
 * Reno and Smiley. Reno ALMOST joined Bill Monroe, but went to war and Scruggs filled his spot. Red Smiley is another voice that is amazing.
 * Osborne Brothers. These guys added drums and steel guitar to bluegrass. They also did a vocal stack of high lead, low baritone and lower tenor. One of my favourite bands.
 * Jim and Jesse. Brought those amazing "brother harmonies" like this Louvin Brother song. Also brought cross picking (mandolin and George Shuffler on guitar) to bluegrass.
 * [The Country Gentlemen]
 * [The Stanley Brothers]

Second Generation

 * [Doc Watson]
 * [J.D. Crowe]
 * [Doyle Lawson]

Third Generation

 * [Tony Rice Unit]
 * [The Bluegrass Album Band]
 * Newgrass Revival - second iteration. Bela Fleck with Sam Bush and John Cowan on vocals. Pat Flynn floating guitar picking. Crazy stuff.
 * Nashville Bluegrass Band. Stuart Duncan sold his soul to play fiddle like that.
 * Johnson Mountain Boys. Let's go back to the roots. With Dudley Connell. I love Dudley.

Current

 * [Alison Kraus]
 * [Dolly Parton]
 * [Ricky Skaggs]
 * [ Steve Martin]

Sub-Genre

 * [Bluegrass Gospel]
 * [Newgrass]

Cross-overs

 * Slaughter of the Bluegrass is a band that plays unplugged versions of metal hit songs. The first hit song recorded was At The Gates - Blinded By Fear, which drew some attention on the internet, and was aired on swedish radio. The song was recorded in Studio Precision, Stockholm, Sweden in July 2008.
 * Redgrass Chinese classical and Bluegrass.
 * Gangstagrass Bluegrass and Hip-Hop

Essential compilations

 * The Rough Guide To Bluegrass This Rough Guide features some of the greatest contemporary Bluegrass artists, from Ricky Skaggs to Kathy Mattea.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * [Foggy Mountain Bluegrass Greats (vol. 1, 2 & 3)]
 * Listen on: Deezer, Spotify


 * American Gothic : Bluegrass Songs of Death & Sorrow This is a great collection of songs. They are mostly newer recordings, made in the last 30 years, or so, but they still retain that old-time sound. Sad songs are not really en vogue, anymore, especially in country music. Not that the sad songs are no longer relevant, but people choose not to confront the unpleasant side of life, these days. When these songs were written, people didn't have a choice. Death, disease and misery were constants, especially in rural America. Definitely not an album to listen to if you need cheered up, but still great, nevertheless.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the soundtrack of music from the 2000 American film of the same name, written, directed and produced by the Coen Brothers and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Goodman. With the film set in Mississippi during the Great Depression, the soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett, uses bluegrass, country, gospel, blues, and folk music appropriate to the time period. With the exception of a few vintage tracks (such as Harry McClintock's 1928 single "Big Rock Candy Mountain"), most tracks are modern recordings.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Down From The Mountain (Soundtrack) Down from the Mountain is a 2000 documentary and concert film featuring a live performance by country and traditional music artists who participated in the Grammy-winning soundtrack recording for the Joel and Ethan Coen film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? The concert, held on May 24, 2000 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, was a benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The documentary was directed by Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker. The artists in the concert also participated in a Down from the Mountain concert tour.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Classic Bluegrass from Smithsonian Folkways It all began in 1956 with the release of the historic Folkways album American Banjo: Three-Finger and Scruggs Style (SFW 40037), the first-ever full-length bluegrass LP. From that point on, Folkways Records was synonymous with great bluegrass music. Folkways founder Moses Asch released scores of bluegrass albums, and this collection comprises the cream of the crop from these recordings, including works from giants of the genre such as Red Allen & Frank Wakefield, Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, the Stanley Brothers, and The Country Gentlemen. It serves as an outstanding introduction to the wealth of great bluegrass Smithsonian Folkways has to offer.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Reddit Essential Bluegrass Collaborative playlist on Spotify

Foundations

 * Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys 1950-1958 This set is split over multiple CDs: A, B, C & D
 * Listen on: Deezer, Spotify


 * The Stanley Brothers - Bluegrass Swing
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify

Blogs

 * Bill's Blog
 * CMT Blog: Bluegrass on the fence
 * Doppelstopp (streaming)
 * Lonesome Lefty's Scratchy Attic
 * Second Cousin Curly (streaming video)

News

 * Bluegrass Today

Cajun
Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Cajun music is often mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based, Cajun-influenced zydeco form, both of Acadiana origin. These French Louisiana sounds have influenced American popular music for many decades, especially country music, and have influenced pop culture through mass media, such as television commercials.

Notable artists
Traditional: Blind Uncle Gaspard, Joseph Falcon, Cleoma Falcon, Leo Soileau, Iry Lejeune, Nathan Abshire, Ambrose Thibodeaux, Lawrence Walker, Balfa Brothers, Octa Clark & Hector Duhon, Austin Pitre & Milton Molitor, Aldus Roger & the Lafayette Playboys, Denus McGee & Sady Courville , Mamou Hour Cajun Band , Amedie Breaux, Moise Robin, Revon Reed's Mamou Social Club, Clément Brothers

Less traditional: Ray Abshire, Cory McCauley, David Greely Tribute to Varise Conner , Robert Jardell, Jesse Légé, Chris Miller, Ganey Arsement

Essential compilations

 * Early American Cajun Music
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Louisiana Cajun and Creole Music: The Newport Field Recordings - recorded and edited between 1964 and 1967 by Ralph Rinzler.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * J'ai Ete Au Bal - Vol. 1 The first volume of the soundtrack to the documentary J'ai Ete Au Bal (I Went to the Dance) is an exciting cross-section of the biggest names in New Orleans zydeco and cajun music, featuring first-rate cuts from Walter Mouton, Queen Ida, Nathan Abshire, Iry LeJeune, and Michael Doucet, among many others.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * J'ai Ete Au Bal - Vol. 2 J'ai Ete Au Bal (I Went to the Dance), Vol. 2 is as exciting as the first volume fo the soundtrack, featuring excellent sides from cajun and zydeco artists like Clifton Chenier, Dewey Balfa, Boozoo Chavis, Sidney Babineaux, D.L. Menard and the Louisiana Aces, Rockin' Sidney, and Beausoleil, among many others. It's a fun, intoxicating listen that, in conjunction with the first volume, gives a good sense of what cajun and zydeco is all about.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Rough Guide To Cajun & Zydeco This installment of the Rough Guide's music series features the Cajun and zydeco genres of Louisiana in all their aspects. As with all Rough Guide albums, the spectrum of music featured is really the outstanding feature. The album starts out (as it rightly should) with Clifton Chenier, the founder of modern zydeco and the undisputed king of the form before his death. It then moves on to his heir in Buckwheat Zydeco's "Zydeco Boogaloo." From there, it takes a turn into a section of more Cajun works, with David Doucet's guitar work and Jimmy Newman's country-flavored zydeco. After a quick stop at the Caribbean-influenced zydeco of John Delafose, it returns to Cajun territory with numbers from Beausoleil, Michael Doucet (of Beausoleil), the Savoy-Doucet band (featuring Michael Doucet), and Eddie Lejeune's stripped-down setup of three instruments. After this sojourn in the whiter end, it goes back to zydeco with a piece from the more modern Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas and the ancient Cheese Read. An interesting work follows from the California Cajun Orchestra, with a thicker, more traditional (read: lower speed) sound, possibly due to their home being in the Bay Area. The album then moves back toward the Cajun end with the full-fledged country sound of Jo-El Sonnier, followed by the anthem of both genres in Buckwheat Zydeco's "Let the Good Times Roll." The finale of the album is the old "Cajun Hank Williams" sound of D.L. Menard. Overall, the album is missing a few notable figures in the genres (such as Boozoo Chavis and Beau Jocque), but it still manages to provide a pretty thorough picture of the sound in what it does have. Both sides of the coin (Cajun and zydeco forms) are represented equally, and are given fair shots at showing off their wonders. Anyone looking to get a taste of either genre can find a worthwhile compilation in this one, and those who are already enveloped in the sounds of the region can probably pick out a couple of new finds to listen to at the same time. Enjoyable in all the right ways. ~ Adam Greenberg
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify


 * Folksongs Of The Louisiana Acadians These wonderful 1950s field recordings of Cajun musicians and singers by Dr. Harry Oster have seen the light of day in previous incarnations, but this is by far the most satisfying collection, including a couple of numbers never issued before, in its nearly 80 minutes. This is relaxed, homey Cajun music, not a high energy dance hall wall of sound or slick studio-fication; it really satisfies. Some of the performers are quite well-known: Chuck Guillory, Cheese Read and Austin Pitre, for example. But Shelby Vidrine's hot, rhythmic fiddling on 'Contredanse de Mamou' and Isom Fontenot's all too rarely heard Cajun harmonica (chordal, split-tongue style) on more than half a dozen selections make this a 'must-get' item in my book. No, it's not Steve Riley or Beausoleil, but it is wonderfully heartfelt down home music.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Rdio Spotify

Blogs

 * Cajun Music mp3 Not a blog but contains a lot of music
 * Western Swing on 78 cajun, swing, hillbilly

Country
Country music is a broad term, covering a great many styles of music predominantly created in the United States of America - however there are growing traditions of country music elsewhere, particularly in Canada and Australia and Njgeria

Country music is generally characterized by its use of the guitar and its heavily-accented vocals describing life’s hardships. A common joke runs that if one plays a country song backwards, the singer’s child recovers from an illness, he gets his job back, his wife returns to him and his dog isn’t run over by a car.

Common lyrical themes deal with cowboys and other anti-heroes, often presented as common men and women just trying to make it through the day.

Country music was an influence on early rock music, along with blues, jazz, and gospel. Many different varieties of country music have arisen over the years, from the slick production of the Nashville sound to the rougher edges of outlaw country. There have been several cycles from periods of experimentation and fusion with other genres giving way to returns to traditionalism and back again. Recently, there has been a great deal of crossover between country and pop, beginning with Shania Twain in the mid-1990s and continuing through to Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. On the other hand, there is also a loosely-defined group of alt-country artists operating outside the mainstream of country and incorporating influences from other genres ranging from folk to punk.

Blogs

 * Allen`s archive of early and old country music
 * Frances Favorite 45's streaming
 * LoneStarStomp (streaming only)
 * Mellow Log Cabin
 * Uncle Gil's Rocking Archive
 * Westex, Country & Western (streaming only)

Folk
In North-American culture, folk music refers to the American folk music revival, music exemplified by such musicians as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez, who popularized, encouraged and revolutionized in many ways the lyrical style in the 1950s and 1960s.

Blogs

 * Cornbread, molasses & sassafras tea
 * Common Folk Music (streaming/scrobbles)
 * The Old Weird America
 * Wired For Sound (streaming)

Old-time music
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of various cultures of the British Isles, Africa, and Continental Europe. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, flatfoot dancing, buck dancing, and clogging. The genre also encompasses ballads and other types of folk songs. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments (most often the guitar and banjo).

Blogs

 * Bopping (hillbilly, cajun)
 * Hillbilly Researcher

Rockabilly
Rockabilly and Rock n Roll evolved side by side during the late 40’s and early 50’s, but it was rock n Roll that would become the commercial success of the day, resulting in Rockabilly becoming a cult fashion. Rockabilly has never gone away, it has always had a cult following enabling it to survive the 60 years it has, with periods of commercial success.

The genre came about when poor white kids in the southern states of the US grew up listening to hillbilly, gospel and blues, and mixed these musical influences and developed the sound that would later be known as Rockabilly.

The influence and popularity of the style waned in the 1960s, but during the late 1970s and early 1980s, rockabilly enjoyed a major revival of popularity that has endured to the present, often within a rockabilly subculture. It was the new generation of kids that became interested in the genre that spawned Neo and Psychobilly to the tree of Rock n Roll.

Blogs

 * The Ohio Valley Sound A celebration of the recordings made in the Ohio Valley area from 50's, 60's, and 70's

Zydeco
Zydeco (French: “les haricots” or “le zaricot”, English: “green beans”) is a form of American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 20th century from forms of Louisiana Creole music. The rural black Creoles of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas still sang in Creole French.

Usually fast tempo and dominated by the button or piano accordion and a form of a washboard known as a “rub-board,” “scrub-board,” or frottoir, zydeco music was originally created at house dances, where families and friends gathered for socializing.

Sometimes the music moved to the Catholic church community center, as Creoles were mostly Catholic. Later it moved to rural dance halls and nightclubs. As a result, the music integrated waltzes, shuffles, two-steps, blues, rock and roll, and most dance music forms of the era. Today, the tradition of change and evolution in the music continues. It stays current while integrating even more genres such as R&B, soul, brass band, reggae, urban hip-hop, ska, rock, Afro-Caribbean and other styles, in addition to the traditional forms.

Notable artists: Amédé Ardoin, Buckwheat Zydeco, Clifton Chenier, Queen Ida & Her Zydeco Band.

Foundation

 * Mama, I'll Be Long Gone: The Complete Recordings of Amédé Ardoin 1929-1934 Tompkins Square has released this set from Amédé Ardoin, the Depression-era accordion player considered by most to be the godfather of both the Cajun and zydeco genres. Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone, which collects for the first time each of the thirty-four tracks recorded by Ardoin, ought to play the same role for young Cajun musicians that Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music did for Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Like many of the songs captured by Smith, Ardoin’s songs have entered what we might call the social domain; songs like “Two-Step de Eunice” and “Les Blues de Prison” have been passed around and reinterpreted for generations, and are genre standards.
 * Listen on: Deezer, Spotify