| Style | Description |
|---|
| Ca din tulnic | Ca din tulnic is a unique type of doina in which the melody resembles a type of Alpenhorn called the tulnic. |
| Ca trù | Ca trù (also known as hát ả đào or hát nói) is an ancient genre of chamber music featuring female vocalists, with origins in North Vietnam. For much of its history, it was associated with a geisha-like form of entertainment. |
| Cabaret | Cabaret is a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue — a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance. |
| Cadence music | Cadence music is a particular series of intervals or chords that ends a phrase, section, or piece of music. |
| Cadence-lypso | Cadence-lypso developed in the 1970s, and was the first style of Dominican music to find international acclaim, eventually becoming a part of styles like zouk. The most influential band in the development of cadence-lypso was Exile One who combined calypso with compas and cadence, styles derived from Haitian music. |
| Cadence rampa | Cadence rampa is a variety of music from the Caribbean country of Haïti. |
| Cai luong | Cải lương, which can be translated as "renovated theatre" in English, is a form of modern folk opera in Vietnam. It blends southern Vietnamese folk songs, classical music, hát tuồng (a classical theatre form based on Chinese opera), and modern spoken drama. |
| Cajun music | Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Catholics 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. |
| Cakewalk | Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers. |
| Calenda | Calinda (Kalinda) is martial art, as well as kind of folk music and dance in the Caribbean which arose in the 1720s. Calinda is the French spelling, and the Spanish equivalent is calenda; it is a kind of stick-fighting dance tradition commonly seen practiced during Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. |
| Calentanos | folk music of the Balsas River Basin, Mexico |
| Calgia | Čalgija (Macedonian language: Чалгија) is a subgenre of the old urban traditional folk music (starogradska muzika) of Republic of Macedonia. |
| Calipso | Venezuelan calypso music |
| Calypso | Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music which originated in Trinidad and Tobago at about the start of the 20th century. |
| Calypso-style baila | Calypso-style baila is a genre of Sri Lankan music. It grew out of Sri Lankan musicians' fascination with the music of the Caribbean in the 1960s, particularly Harry Belafonte and calypso music. |
| Campursari | Indonesian modern folk music, a fusion of dangdut, langgam, and pop music |
| Candombe | Candombe is a drum-based musical style of Uruguay. Candombe originated among the African population Montevideo and is based on Bantu African drumming with some European influence and touches of Tango. |
| Canon | In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g. quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader, while the imitative melody is called the follower which is played in a different voice. |
| Cantata | A cantata (Italian, 'sung') is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment and generally containing more than one movement. |
| Cante flamenco | The cante flamenco is part of the musical tradition in the Andalusian region of Spain, and traces its roots back to east Indian, Arabic and European Gypsy music. |
| Cante jondo | Cante jondo is a vocal style in flamenco. An unspoiled form of Andalusian folk music, the name means deep song (Spanish hondo = "deep"). It is genereally considered that the common traditional classification of flamenco music is divided into three groups of which the deepest, most serious forms are known as cante jondo. |
| Canterbury Scene | The Canterbury scene (or Canterbury sound) is a term used to loosely describe the group of progressive rock, avant-garde and jazz musicians, many of whom were based around the city of Canterbury, Kent, England during the late 1960s and early 1970s. |
| Cantiñas | The Cantiñas is a group of flamenco palos (musical forms), originated in the area of Cádiz in Andalusia (although some styles of cantiña have developed in the province of Seville). |
| Cantiga | A cantiga (cantica, cantar) is a medieval monophonic song from Spain or Portugal. It was differentiated from the decir, which was considered a poetic form. |
| Canto livre | Portuguese modernized fado |
| Canto nuevo | The Canto Nuevo or Nueva canción is a form of folk music that developed in South America. Originally practised by artists like Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, and Argentinian singer Atahualpa Yupanqui, it gained prominence in Chile where it became a method for resistance under Pinochet in the 1970s. |
| Canto popular | Uruguayan singer-songwriter nativity music |
| Cantopop | Cantopop (Chinese: 粵語流行曲) is a colloquial abbreviation for "Cantonese popular music". It is also referred to as HK-pop, short for "Hong Kong popular music". It is categorized as a subgenre of Chinese popular music within C-pop. |
| Canzone napoletana | Canzone Napoletana, sometimes referred to as Neapolitan song, is a generic term for a traditional form of music sung in the Neapolitan language, ordinarily for the male voice singing solo, and expressed in familiar genres such as the lover's complaint or the serenade. It consists of a large body of composed popular music—such songs as O sole mio, Torna a Surriento, Funiculì, Funiculà and others. |
| Capoeira music | In capoeira, music sets the rhythm, the style of play, and the energy of a game. In its most traditional setting, there are three main styles of song that weave together the structure of the capoeira angola roda. |
| Carimbó | dance music of Belém, Brazil; Carimbo (Carimbó in Portuguese) is an African drum. It is made of a hollow trunk and covered with a deerskin. |
| Cariso | Cariso is a kind of Trinidadian folk music, and an important ancestor of calypso music. The word may come from carieto, a Carib word that means joyous song. Cariso used satirical and insulting lyrics, and is related to the picong tradition. Cariso singers, called chantwells, sang primarily in French. |
| Carnatic music | Carnatic music is one of the two styles of Indian classical music, the other being Hindustani music. |
