Genres

Country

The dominant genre of the collection. Southern and Western US vernacular song built on fiddle, steel guitar and a plain-spoken vocal, addressed to a working audience. Carries more Vietnam-era recordings than any other genre, on major labels and on hundreds of small regional imprints alike.

Folk

Song in a traditional or traditional-derived idiom, usually acoustic and voice-led, valued for its text. Covers both inherited material and the topical songwriting the revival built on it. Where a record is the work of a named author performing their own material rather than a contribution to a tradition, see Singer Songwriter.

Soul, Gospel & Funk

African-American popular music from the gospel-derived soul of the early 1960s through the rhythm-led funk of the 1970s, together with the sacred singing both grew out of. Held as one parent because the collection’s artists, labels and sessions move freely between them.

Rock

Guitar-led popular music descended from rock & roll, taken here in its broad sense: the electric mainstream and its many specialisations. The heavier, faster and more confrontational branches are held separately under Metal and Punk; the mid-1960s amateur electric scene is held under Garage Rock.

Traditional Pop

The mainstream popular song of the pre-rock era and its continuation — a trained voice, an orchestral or big-band arrangement, and a professionally written song. The idiom of the crooner, the vocal group and the light orchestra. Distinct from Pop, which is the post-rock contemporary market.

Metal

Amplified, distorted, riff-driven music descended from late-1960s hard rock, and the large family of styles that grew from it. Almost entirely a retrospective genre in this collection: metal records about Vietnam are overwhelmingly written after the war rather than during it.

Pop

Popular song written for the broad contemporary market, built on a hook and produced for radio. Distinct from Traditional Pop, which is the pre-rock mainstream, and from Teen Pop, which is aimed specifically at an adolescent audience.

Garage Rock

The amateur and semi-professional electric rock of the mid-1960s, made by young bands on small local labels, characteristically raw in performance and recording. One of the collection’s richest seams: the form put a great many Vietnam songs onto record that the industry would never have released.

Jazz

Improvised music built on swing, blues feeling and harmonic invention, from the small group to the orchestra. Its meeting points with other genres are held here where the jazz side leads and under the other parent where it does not.

Punk

Fast, short, deliberately unpolished rock built on refusal, together with the hardcore, post-punk and anarcho traditions that followed it. Vietnam reaches punk mainly as inherited history and as an argument about later wars.

Hip Hop

Rhythmic spoken verse over a constructed backing track. The genre through which the war is most often invoked as a comparison rather than described — as a yardstick for violence, for a later conflict, or for the era’s protest.

Singer Songwriter

Records defined by an author performing their own material, where the writing and the voice are the point. Overlaps Folk in instrumentation and Pop in production; the distinction is authorship rather than sound.

Blues

The African-American vernacular form built on the blues scale and its verse structure, acoustic and electric. Blues feeling runs through much of the collection; this parent is for records that are blues performances.

Western Classical Music

The European art-music tradition — concert, choral and liturgical writing in notated form.

Electronic

Music whose sound is principally generated or assembled by electronic means — synthesiser, sampler, sequencer, studio. Almost entirely post-war in this collection.

Teen Pop

Popular song written, performed and marketed to an adolescent audience, typically by young performers. A commercial address rather than a musical style, and distinct from Pop, which is aimed at the general market. In the Vietnam years this was the route by which the war reached the youngest record buyers.

Easy Listening

Orchestral and light-vocal arrangements made for undemanding listening — the mood record, the instrumental cover, the album sold for the room rather than the song.

Psychedelia

Music shaped by the psychedelic experience: modal and drone-based writing, studio effects, extended form and altered timbres. Held as a parent in its own right because it crosses rock, pop and folk without belonging to any of them.

Cabaret

Song performed for a small room by a performer working directly on an audience — satirical, theatrical and text-led, in the continental European tradition.

Reggae

Jamaican popular music and its descendants — the offbeat-driven forms from ska through roots reggae to dancehall.

Rockabilly

The 1950s meeting of country and rhythm & blues: slapback echo, upright bass and a country voice at rock & roll tempo. Its later revival carries the same name.

Polka

The duple-time dance music of Central and Eastern European immigrant communities in North America, played by button accordion and brass. A genre with its own circuit of labels, and one that produced patriotic and home-front records the mainstream did not.

Calypso

Trinidadian topical song in which the news is the subject and the commentary is the point — a form built for reporting on public events, which is how the war enters it.

Unknown

A working value for records whose genre has not yet been determined. Not a genre — it marks an open question, and a record should not be left here once it can be placed.

Opera

Staged dramatic work sung throughout, in the European art-music tradition. Distinct from Western Classical Music, which holds the concert, choral and liturgical repertoire.

Cajun

The French-language dance music of south-west Louisiana, led by accordion and fiddle and sung in Louisiana French.

Indie

Music defined by independent production and distribution rather than by a sound. Where the record is guitar rock, see Indie Rock; where it is melodic pop, see Indie Pop.

Vietnamese Music

Music of Vietnam, in Vietnamese. The collection holds the Northern revolutionary repertoire principally, alongside Southern and diaspora recordings.

Hispanic Music

Spanish-language popular and traditional music of Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. A regional tradition rather than a style: its internal categories are its own and do not map onto Anglo-American genre names.

Brazilian Music

The popular and traditional music of Brazil, sung in Portuguese. A regional tradition rather than a style: its categories, samba first among them, do not map onto Anglo-American genre names. A Brazilian record in a style that does map — metal, rock, jazz — stays under that style parent.

Nordic Music

The popular and political song traditions of Scandinavia and Finland. The collection holds a substantial Swedish body in particular, produced by the movement music of the era.

Japanese Music

The popular and traditional song traditions of Japan.

Chanson

The French art of the sung text — the song valued for its words, delivered by a performer working as an interpreter of them.

Chinese Music

Music of China, held here principally as state-issued recordings expressing solidarity with North Vietnam. A regional tradition rather than a style: the parent records where the music comes from and the sub-genre records what it is.

Indigenous American Music

Music of the Indigenous peoples of North America.

Schlager

The German-language popular song of the post-war decades: simple, sentimental, melody-led and made for a mass domestic market.

Greek Music

The popular song traditions of Greece.

Spoken Word

Recordings with no musical performance: speeches and addresses, interviews, poetry readings, reportage, field recordings of speech, comedy routines and radio spots. They hold their own pages in the archive but are counted apart from the songs. A spoken passage carried over music is Narration, and counts as a song.

Film Score

Music written to accompany a film and issued as a recording in its own right. A function rather than a style: it occurs as a sub-genre under the parent that matches the idiom of the score, most often Jazz or Western Classical Music, and also Electronic.

Narration

A spoken narrative, recitation or open letter delivered over music or between musical passages: the recitation single, the answer record read over a backing, the narrated album. These count as songs, because there is a musical performance. A record with no music at all is Spoken Word.

Fanfare

Ceremonial patriotic records in a martial idiom — march tempo, brass and drum or organ, a declaimed or massed vocal, and the flag, the fallen and the fighting man as subject. Almost always a 7" single on a small or private label, made for a commemorative occasion rather than for the chart.

Musical

Songs written for the stage or screen musical, taken from the show rather than from a record made on its own terms.

Novelty

Records made for their joke, gimmick or stunt rather than for their music. Like Spoken Word it occurs on both sides: as a parent for records that are nothing else, and as a sub-genre on a record whose music sits in another genre. A comic country single is Country / Novelty.

Library Music

Music recorded for licensing rather than for release — production-library cues supplied to broadcasters and film-makers, catalogued by mood and subject rather than by artist.

Parent genres, ranked

Sub-genres, ranked