Culture: Cities: New York City

Every year, the CMJ Music Marathon takes over 75 venues in NYC, offering up performances from over a thousand indie and up-and-coming bands. Here's a slice of the notable acts playing CMJ in 2011.

New York City is the birthplace of punk rock, and like the city that birthed it, the punk rock scene in the late 70s was diverse, contentious, noisy and unlike any other in the world. This is the sound of CBGB's and Max's Kansas City.

The underground sound of downtown New York that propelled an era of legendary nightclubs and DJs.

Manhattan was the center of jazz in the 1950s and '60s, from post-bop to modal experimentation to the controversial "New Thing" of free jazz. Revisit that vibrant time and place.

In the '50s and '60s, NYC's Greenwich Village was home to America's folk music revival. With Odetta and Pete Seeger guiding newcomers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the Village proved fertile ground (once again) for seminal bohemian developments.

Whether bigging up the five boroughs or paying tribute to the blocks they grew up on, pioneering rappers, neighborhood heroes and modern-day superstars love to pen odes to NYC. Here's a non-stop blast of Big Apple hip-hop pride.

Dance the night away to the stacked jukebox in a steamy dive bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

This is the funky, abrasive, and distinctive sound of downtown NYC's various post-punk scenes of the late '70s and early '80s.

For the last decade, Brooklyn has been to hipsters what San Francisco was to hippies. From lo-fi noise to electro-dance to old-school soul to ironically glammed-up rock, Brooklyn has something for everyone.

All right B-boys and B-girls, time to windmill over to the Planet Rock where these essential '80s electro hop breakdance jams can help keep your "airswipes" and "l-kicks" looking fresh.

All of the DJ-friendly 12" releases from DFA Records, the taste-making NYC record primarily responsible for reminding all the "rock kids" that dancing can be, you know, kinda fun.

One of the greatest hip hop groups of all time, the Wu-Tang Clan has proved timeless and astonishingly prolific. This mix takes you straight to the slums of Shaolin, covering the work of Wu-Tang's core members, outsiders, and everything in between.

This hybrid genre formed in the '80s when artists from the hip hop and electronic dance music worlds (both burgeoning scenes at the time) began adopting each others' styles and use of primitive synthesizers.

Known for its distinctive vintage sound and house band, Daptone Records has become one of the world's premier independent record labels. Listen to highlights of the best soul, funk, gospel and afrobeat released by this Brooklyn-based label.

Cited by countless rappers, journalists, and fellow producers as one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time, DJ Premier has left an an indelible mark on the genre. Here are Primo's greatest beats.

Along with fellow heavy hitters DJ Premiere and RZA, Pete Rock helped to define the soulful, sample-based sound of '90s East Coast rap. Here is Pete Rock's oeuvre; from his work with CL Smooth to the hits he produced for Biggie, Common, and others.

Hip-hop producers DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and Large Professor helped make Nas's Illmatic a '90s hip-hop classic. Explore the best of the quartet's other work from the same era.

Enjoy the melodies, the laughs, the stars, and the electricity of American musical theater, from its vaudeville birth to this season's biggest musical hits.

For a period in the late '50s and early '60s, Blue Note was the most stylish label in jazz. The music brought both soul and a questing sense of experimentation to bebop, and Reid Miles' gorgeous LP designs remain influential to this day.