| Style | Description |
|---|
| Batcave (club) | The Batcave was a nightclub in London, England at Meard Street Soho. It is considered as the birthplace of the English goth subculture. As one of the most famous meeting points for early goths, it lent its name to the term Batcaver, used to describe fans of the original gothic rock music. |
| Batucada | Batucada is a substyle of samba and refers to an African influenced Brazilian percussive style, usually performed by an ensemble. It is considered by some to be the epitome of the percussive ensemble. Batucada is characterized by its repetitive style and fast pace. |
| Batuco | Batuco is a locality of Chile, situated in the commune of Lampa, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. |
| Bayin | Taiwanese Hakka instrumental music |
| Beach music | Beach music, also known as Carolina beach music, is a regional genre which developed from various musical styles of the forties, fifties and sixties. |
| Beat | Beat, also known as Merseybeat (for bands from Liverpool (in Merseyside)), Brumbeat (for bands from Birmingham) etc., is a pop music genre that evolved in the UK in the early 1960s. |
| Beatboxing | Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion connected with hip hop culture (it has been called the "fifth element" of hip hop) although it is not limited to hip hop music. It is primarily concerned with the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. |
| Bebop | Bebop or bop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. It first surfaced in musicians' argot some time during the first two years of the Second World War. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music. |
| Bedouin | Bedouin music is the music of nomadic Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. It is closely linked to its text. It is usually accompanied by sung poetry. |
| Beiguan | Beiguan (北管; pinyin: Běiguǎn) is a type of traditional music, melody and theatrical performance between the 17th and mid-20th centuries. It was widespread in Zhangzhou (the southern part of China's Fujian province) and Taiwan. By the early 21st century its popularity had declined precipitously. |
| Bel canto | Bel canto (Bel-Canto) (Italian, "beautiful singing"), an Italian musical term, refers to the art and science of vocal technique which originated in Italy during the late seventeenth century and reached its pinnacle in the early part of the nineteenth century during the Bel Canto opera era. |
| Bend-skin | Bend-skin (bend skin) is a kind of urban Cameroonian popular music. Kouchoum Mbada is the most well-known group associated with the genre. Several other artists have over the years contrubuted to the growth and popularity of bend skin. |
| Benga | Benga is a musical genre of Kenyan popular music. It evolved between the late 1940s and late 1960s, in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi. |
| Bhajan | A bhajan or kirtan is a Hindu devotional song, often of ancient origin. Great importance is attributed to the singing of bhajans with Bhakti, i.e. loving devotion. |
| Bhangra | Bhangra is a lively form of music and dance that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent in South Asia. Bhangra means a person intoxicated with joy. |
| Bhangragga | Bhangragga is a slang term for the style of music incorporating elements of Bhangra and dancehall (or Ragga, short for the word Raggamuffin) created by British Asian producers Simon and Diamond Duggal on the debut album by Apache Indian "No Reservations" (1993). The style is also known as Bhangramuffin and may also be known as Bhangra-wine. |
| Bhangra-wine | See Bhangragga |
| Bhangramuffin | See Bhangragga |
| Big band music | A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. A big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and contains saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. |
| Big Beat | Big beat (sometimes called chemical breaks) is a term deployed in the mid 1990s by the British music press to describe the work of artists such as The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method and The Prodigy. |
| Biguine | Biguine is a style of music that originated in Martinique in the 19th century. By combining the traditional bélé music with the polka, the black musicians of Martinique created the biguine, which comprises three distinct styles, the biguine de salon, the biguine de bal and the biguines de rue. |
| Biguine moderne | Martinican biguine adapted to pop forms and including reggae and other influences |
| Black ambient | Black ambient is a musical form and direction that is at times difficult to define. A job made harder by those that would profess to be a part of this particular milieu associated by the sparsest of characteristics. |
| Blackened death metal | Blackened death metal is a fusion genre of extreme metal utilizing elements of death metal and black metal; bands often hail from Europe. |
| Black metal | Black metal is an extreme heavy metal subgenre. It is typically sonically characterized by the use of heavily-distorted guitars, high-pitched shrieking vocals, fast-paced rhythms and melodies, and unconventional song structures. |
| Bleak house | downbeat techno |
| Blair beat | a little knowen type of music founded by Sir Blair Mason |
| Bluegrass | Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music. It has its own roots in Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the British Isles (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), as well as that of rural African-Americans, jazz, and blues. |
| Blue-eyed soul | Blue-eyed soul (also known as white soul) is a term used to describe R&B or soul music performed by white artists. |
| Blues | Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed English and Scots-Irish narrative ballads. |
| Blues ballad | The blues ballad creates the sound of the blues usually using a blues scale and often incorporating blues standard chord progressions though often with a bridge using a different chord progression) with the conventional 32-bar popular song from Tin Pan Alley. |
| Blues-rock | Blues-rock is a hybrid musical genre combining elements of the blues with rock and roll, with an emphasis on the electric guitar. It began to develop as a particular style in the mid-1960s in England and the United States through the work of bands such as Cream and The Rolling Stones, who experimented with music from the old bluesmen like Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. |
| Biomusic | Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by living things. The definition is also sometimes extended to included sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. |
| Bitpop | Bitpop is a type of electronic music, where at least part of the music is made using old 8-bit computers, game consoles and little toy instruments. Popular choices are the Commodore 64, Game Boy, Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System. |
