Ten musicians who took jazz from the dance floor to the concert hall and then blew it wide open, from the swing bands of the 1930s to the bebop revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. For roughly two decades, jazz was not one thing but two revolutions in a row.

Ten groove architects, from the downbeat of funk to the pulse of the discothèque, who turned the 1970s into one long dance floor. No decade before or since has trusted rhythm the way the 1970s did.

Ten poets with microphones who turned the French popular song into an art form, from the music halls of the 1930s to the concept albums of the 1970s. Chanson is the French word for song, but between the 1930s and the 1970s it came to mean something more particular: a song where the words matter as much as the melody, delivered by a performer who stakes everything on them.

Ten voices, bandleaders, and troubadours who turned a small Caribbean republic into one of the most influential musical nations of the 20th century. Haitian music in the 20th century was never just entertainment.

From highlife dance floors in Accra to Ethio-jazz nightclubs in Addis Ababa, ten musicians who turned a continent's liberation into sound. When Ghana lowered the Union Jack in 1957, a highlife band was playing.

Ten voices from ten corners of Latin America, the singers, composers, and bandleaders who turned a continent's songbook into the sound of the twentieth century. No century was kinder to Latin music than the twentieth, and no music did more to define the century's pulse.