What Type of Country Singer Are You?

Bluegrass is what happens when you influence traditional American string-band music with Irish, Scottish, and English traditional music. Your higher (tenor) voice is strong enough to complement an acoustic sound usually accomplished with banjos, mandolins, guitars, and bass. Your personality is also broad enough to express the emotion of its jazz and blues undertones.

When francophone refugees from Canada combined their music and instruments with Louisiana's African drums and beats inherited from slaves, a unique genre emerged. You have to have a lot of personality in your voice to compete with the fiddles, accordions, triangles, washboards, and drums that create the dancing rhythm of this cool music.

Your swinging, sexy voice can carry the rockabilly style that originated in southern USA in the early 1950s. For this genre, you will need to dance and sing fast! If you don't already know how, learn to breathe from your diaphragm, so you have the power to shake your booty while you sing.

Western swing became popular in the 1930s when country music adopted some of the instruments and styling of jazz. You think (and sing) quickly on your feet, a skill perfect for the improvisations that make this style surprising and unique.

When you think country, don't forget what's south of the border. Cross-cultural singers like Selena and Oscar Martinez made Tejano famous when they explored the possibilities of mixing languages, instruments, and rhythms to create something fresh and new. This music is about telling a story with your voice, and your rich tone and control fit well with this genre.

You love to innovate, so country rap is the newest way to express your creativity. Sometimes called kuntry or rural rap, country rap blends the sick beats and poetic diction of rap with the emotion-laden Southern drawls of country singers. This music will challenge you, but you may surprise yourself with what opening your mind to this genre can produce.