instrument zach ashton
Antoine " Fats " Domino , Jr . ( born February 26 , 1928 ) is an American pianist and singer - songwriter of French Creole descent . Five of his records released before 1955 sold over a million copies and were certified as gold records , and he had 35 records in the U . S . Top 40 . His musical style is based on traditional rhythm and blues , accompanied by saxophones , ___MASK67___ , piano , electric ___MASK5___ , and drums . Ska ( Jamaican ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae . Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues . It is characterized by a walking ___MASK67___ line accented with rhythms on the off - beat . Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster , Clement " Coxsone " Dodd , and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs . Some suggest ska dates to earlier times , however . In the early 1960s , ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods . Later it became popular with many skinheads . Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence , which exist in time . The common elements of music are pitch ( which governs melody and harmony ), rhythm ( and its associated concepts tempo , meter , and articulation ), dynamics ( loudness and softness ), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ( which are sometimes termed the " color " of a musical sound ). Different styles or types of music may emphasize , de - emphasize or omit some of these elements . Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and vocal techniques ranging from ___MASK87___ to rapping ; there are solely instrumental pieces , solely vocal pieces ( such as songs without instrumental accompaniment ) and pieces that combine ___MASK87___ and instruments . The word derives from Greek  (" mousike "; " art of the Muses "). In its most general form , the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music ( songs , tunes , symphonies , and so on ), the criticism of music , the study of the history of music , and the aesthetic examination of music . Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies . Common sayings such as " the harmony of the spheres " and " it is music to my ears " point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to . However , 20th - century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music , saying , for example , " There is no noise , only sound ." Ragtime  also spelled rag - time or rag time  is a musical genre that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1918 . Its cardinal trait is its syncopated , or " ragged ", rhythm . The genre has its origins in African - American communities like St . Louis years before being published as popular sheet music for ___MASK51___ . Ernest Hogan ( 1865  1909 ) was a pioneer of ragtime music and was the first to compose ragtime into sheet music . The composition was called " LA Pas Ma LA " and it was released in 1895 . Hogan has also been credited for coining the term " ragtime ". The term is actually derived from his hometown " Shake Rag " in Bowling Green , Kentucky . Ben Harney , who is also a Kentucky native has often been credited for introducing the music to the mainstream public . His first ragtime composition " You ' ve been a good old wagon but you done broke " helped popularize the musical genre . The composition was published in 1895 but released in 1896 . Ragtime was also a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa , with additional polyrhythms coming from African music . The ragtime composer Scott Joplin (" ca ." 1868  1917 ) became famous through the publication of the " Maple Leaf Rag " ( 1899 ) and a string of ragtime hits such as " The Entertainer " ( 1902 ), although he was later forgotten by all but a small , dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s . For at least 12 years after its publication , " Maple Leaf Rag " heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its melody lines , harmonic progressions or metric patterns . Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s . The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora . A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals " Do the Reggay " was the first popular song to use the word " reggae ," effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience . While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music , the term " reggae " more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues , especially the New Orleans R & B practiced by Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint , and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady . Reggae usually relates news , social gossip , and political comment . Reggae spread into a commercialized jazz field , being known first as  Rudie Blues , then  Ska , later  Blue Beat , and  Rock Steady . It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the ___MASK67___ and drum downbeat , and the offbeat rhythm section . The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rock steady ; from the latter , reggae took over the use of the ___MASK67___ as a percussion instrument . Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century . The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions , African - American work songs and European - American folk music . Blues incorporated spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts , chants , and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The blues form , ubiquitous in jazz , rhythm and blues and rock and roll , is characterized by the call - and - response pattern , the blues scale and specific chord progressions , of which the twelve - bar blues is the most common . Blue notes ( or " worried notes "), usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch , are also an essential part of the sound . Blues shuffles or walking ___MASK67___ reinforce the trance - like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove . Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans , United States , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries . Since the 1920s jazz age , jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression . It emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles , all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical parentage with a performance orientation . Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression , and in African - American music traditions including blues and ragtime , as well as European military band music . Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States , different cultures have contributed their own experience and styles to the art form as well . Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as " one of America ' s original art forms ". Mento is a style of Jamaican folk music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music . Mento typically features acoustic instruments , such as acoustic ___MASK5___ , banjo , hand drums , and the rhumba box  a large mbira in the shape of a box that can be sat on while played . The rhumba box carries the bass part of the music . Zach Ashton is a self - taught musician , recording artist and producer . His musical genres include pop , bossa nova , jazz , reggae and acoustic pop . He is noted for using elements of world music within his compositions . Rhythm and blues , often abbreviated as R & B or RnB , is a genre of popular African - American music that originated in the 1940s . The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans , at a time when " urbane , rocking , jazz based music with a heavy , insistent beat " was becoming more popular . In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s , the bands usually consisted of ___MASK51___ , one or two guitars , ___MASK67___ , drums , saxophone , and sometimes background vocalists . R & B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African - American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy . Lyrics focus heavily on the themes of triumphs and failures in terms of relationships , freedom , economics , aspirations , and sex . A musician ( or instrumentalist ) is a person who plays a musical instrument or is musically talented . Anyone who composes , conducts , or performs music may also be referred to as a musician .