Where did the terms retro-nuevo and skronk originate? Or hip-hop? Michaelangelo Matos runs through an exhaustive catalogue of music's phrasemakers and trendsetters Music comes from everywhere, and so do the names we call it by. There's a longstanding cliche that only the music business needs genre names everyone else either likes it or they don't. That is, of course, bunk, as anyone who's heard enough people trot out lines such as "I like all music except for rap and country" is aware. Not least because quite a lot of those genre names come from the artists themselves. Gospel, for example, was more or less invented by Rev Thomas A Dorsey . As Georgia Tom , Dorsey played jazz and blues piano before turning to the Bible for inspiration in 1932 and selling songs such as Precious Lord, Take My Hand to churches in Chicago, then across America. His group's name was the University Gospel Singers. Similarly, bluegrass originates from the name of the country sin...
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