Music informs understandings of place and is an excellent vehicle for teaching cultural geography. A study was developed of geography students' perception of where music genres predominate in the United States. Its approach, involving mental map exercises, reveals the usefulness and importance of maps as an iterative process in teaching cultural geography. Three points are discussed. First, music often serves as a surrogate for cultural understandings of place and regional stereotypes. Second, the combined use of music and maps is an excellent vehicle for teaching cultural geography. Third, maps should be more comprehensively integrated into teaching and researching cultural geography. (Contains 1 table and 7 figures.)