| Style | Description |
|---|
| Habanera | The habanera is a musical style or genre from Cuba with a characteristic "Habanera rhythm"; it is one of the oldest mainstays of Cuban music and the first of the dances from Cuba to be exported all over the world. |
| Haiducesti | The Haiducesti is Romanian folk music inspired by medieval vigillantes' stories and is a variant of the doina. |
| Hambo | The hambo is a traditional dance that originated in Sweden in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is a couple dance in ¾ time, danced to music played with a strong accent on the first beat and a tempo that varies from moderate to fast (100 to 120 beats per minute). |
| Hapa haole | Hapa haole is a mixture of traditional Hawaiian music and English lyrics |
| Happy hardcore | Happy hardcore is a form of dance music typified by a very fast tempo (usually around 165-180 BPM), often coupled with male or female vocals, and sentimental lyrics. |
| Hard bop (hard bebop) | Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Hard bop incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. |
| Hard house | UK Hard House or simply Hard House is a style of House music that emerged in the 1990s. |
| Hard rock | Hard rock is a variation of rock and roll music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage and psychedelic rock. It is typified by a heavy use of distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards and drums. The term "hard rock" is often used as an umbrella term for genres such as grunge or metal and in order to distinguish them from pop rock genre. |
| Hard trance | Hard Trance originated in Germany in the early to mid-90's and is one of the earliest forms of trance. It was one of the most common forms of Trance throughout the decade, characterized by strong kicks, with a very dry and heavy sound. Now it is much more rare compared to other forms of Trance and House music, but still has a close fanbase in Japan, Germany, and other parts of Europe. |
| Hardcore hip hop | Hardcore hip hop is a form of hip hop music characterized by confrontation and aggression in its subject matter, heavy beats, raw sampling and production, or any combination thereof. |
| Hardcore punk | Hardcore punk, commonly known as hardcore, is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in North America in the late 1970s. |
| Hardcore techno | Hardcore techno, often referred to as just "hardcore", is a style of electronic music that originated in the early-to-mid-1990s in multiple locations including Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Newcastle, Australia. |
| Hardstyle | Hardstyle, sometimes referred to as hardbass, is a sub-genre of trance music that is closely related to nu style gabber and hard trance. Its sound is usually characterized by a four to the floor kick beat and an off-beat gabber style bass line, trance like synth stabs and sweeps and miscellaneous samples. |
| Harepa | harp-based music of Pedi people of South Africa |
| Harmonica blues | Harmonica blues is used to describe any style of blues music that features the harmonica player (aka blues harp) as the central performer. Musicians that perform in the genre do not necessarily always play the instrument, but instead might just perform or have performed regularly with a harmonica player. |
| Hát cai luong | Vietnamese popular opera |
| Hat chau van | Hát chầu văn, or hát văn, is a traditional Vietnamese folk art which combines trance singing and dancing. Its music and poetry are combined with a variety of instruments, rhythms, pauses, and tempos. |
| Hát tuồng (Hát bôi) | Vietnamese operatic music |
| Hawzi | evolved form of al-andalous classical music which developed in Tlemcen |
| Heartland rock | In the late 1970s and 1980s, one of the most popular forms of rock and roll was heartland rock. It was characterized by a straightforward musical style, a concern with the average, blue collar American life, and a conviction that rock music has a social or communal purpose beyond just entertainment. |
| Heavy metal | Heavy metal (often referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion and fast guitar solos. |
| Hi-NRG | Hi-NRG (High Energy) is a type of electronic dance music which emerged and then became popular in nightclubs in the early 1980s. It continues to be popular today. |
| Highlife | Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana and spread to Sierra Leone and Nigeria in the 1920s and other West African countries. It is very popular in Liberia and all of English-speaking West Africa, although little has been produced in other countries due to economic challenges brought on by war and instability. "Joromi" is a sub-genre. |
| Hiplife | Hiplife music is an innovative Ghanaian fusion of highlife and hip hop. It can also be compared to a mix of reggaeton, dancehall, reggae and Ghanaian highlife music. Recorded in Ghanaian languages (Ga, Twi etc...), hiplife is rapidly gaining popularity through out West Africa and abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Germany. |
| Hip hop | Hip hop music is a genre of Music typically consisting of a rhythmic style of speaking called rap over backing beats performed on a turntable by a DJ. Hip hop music is part of Hip hop culture, which began in New York City in the 1970s, predominantly among African Americans and Latinos (the other two elements are breakdancing and graffiti art). The term rap is sometimes used synonymously with hip hop music, though it originally referred only to rapping itself. |
| Hip house | Hip-house, also known as house rap, is a musical genre that mixes elements of house music and hip-hop. The style rose to prominence during the 1980s in New York and Chicago. However, the first officially credited hip house track was 1988's Rok Da House by UK producers the Beatmasters featuring British female emcees the Cookie Crew. |
| Hip pop | Hip pop (or pop rap) is a pop music influenced style of hip hop that replaces the jazz, funk, and electronic music-influenced elements of hip hop with pop-influenced melodic hooks. The style became popular in the early 1990s, as hip hop music found commercial success. Pop rappers such as Vanilla Ice were more radio-friendly than the explicit lyrics of gangsta rap such as Ice-T. |
| Hindustani classical music | Hindustani Classical Music is a North Indian classical music tradition that has been evolving from the 12th centuries AD onwards, in what is now northern India and Pakistan, and also Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan. The tradition was born out of a cultural synthesis from several musical streams: the vedic chant tradition dating back to approx. one millennia BCE[1], the equally ancient Persian tradition of Musiqi-e assil, and also existent folk traditions prevalent in the region. |
| Hiva usu | unaccompanied vocal Christian music of Tonga |
| Honkyoku | Honkyoku (本曲, "original pieces") are the pieces of shakuhachi or hocchiku music played by mendicant Japanese Zen monks called komusō. Komusō played honkyoku for enlightenment and alms as early as the 13th century. Honkyoku is the practice of suizen ("blowing Zen"). |
| Hora lunga | Hora lungă (Cîntec lung, Rom., literally 'long song'), is a Rumanian regional folksong style characterized by the union of a lyrical text and improvisational melody. |
| Horrorcore | Horrorcore is a music genre described by Entertainment Weekly in 1995 as a "blend of hardcore rap and bloodthirsty metal". |
| Horror punk | Horror punk is a music genre that was defined by the band The Misfits, blending horror movie lyrical themes and imagery with musical influences from early punk rock, doo-wop, and, to a lesser degree, rockabilly. |
| House music | House music is a style of electronic dance music that was developed by dance club DJs in Chicago in the early to mid-1980s. House music is strongly influenced by elements of the late 1970s soul- and funk-infused dance music style of disco. |
| Hua'er | Shan'ge is a genre of Chinese folk song. They are commonly sung in rural provinces; the word shan'ge means "mountain song". |
| Huasteco | folk music from Huasteco, Mexico |
| Huaynos | Huayño (Quechua: wayñu, Spanish: huaiño, huayño) is a genre of popular Andean music, especially common in Peru ,Bolivia, and Argentina. |
| Hula | Hula is a dance form accompanied by chant or song. It was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesians who originally settled there. The chant or song is called a mele. The hula dramatizes or comments on the mele. |
| Humppa | Humppa is a type of music from Finland. It is related to jazz and very fast foxtrot, played two beats to a bar. Typical speed is about 250 to 280 beats per minute. |
| Hungarian folk music | Hungarian folk music includes a broad array of styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos, the csárdás and nóta. To some extent, the music of ethnic Hungarian people and the music of the Roma in Hungary have been conflated, though the exact degree to which this has occurred is debated. The term cigányzene is used to describe most any form of 19th century Hungarian folk music. |
| Hunguhungu | Hunguhungu or fedu is a form of traditional swaying circular dance performed by the women of the Garifuna people of Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The music for the dance is composed of rhythmic themes performed by three drummers with alternating call-and-response chanting, and displays a clear African heritage. |
| Hyangak | Hyangak, literally "village music," is a traditional form of Korean court music with origins in the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC-668 AD). |
| Hymn | A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. |
| Hyphy | Hyphy is a style of music and dance primarily associated with the Bay Area hip hop culture. |
