Soul
Soul music is a more sensual, emotional and soul type of popular music that originated in the United States in the late 1950s. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, and often jazz.
Birth: 1958 Bloom: 1960
Important innovators whose recordings in the 1950s contributed to the emergence of the soul music include Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, and Etta James. Ray Charles is often cited as popularizing the soul genre with his string of hits starting with 1954`s «I Got a Woman». Other important records of early soul include – James Brown`s «Please Please Please» (1957), and Ray Charles` «Georgia on My Mind» (1960).
In the 1960s soul became the most popular style of Afro music due to African fight for their rights: recordings like «A Change Is Gonna Come» had not only symbolically biblical sound, but also actual and political context. The most notable representatives of the `60s south soul include Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and James Brown; they were involved in social movement headed by Martin Luther King.
Commercial soul of the 1960s has a number of subgenres, the most important of which are Memphis soul (Booker T. & The MG`s, Al Green) and Detroit soul (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye). The main ideologists of Detroit soul were Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson, who was a president of the Motown Records label.
Phil Spector used to experiment with soul in the mid-60s by creating soul symphonies with Tina Turner and The Righteous Brothers.
As disco and funk were dominating the charts in the late 1970s and early 1980s, soul went in the direction of quiet storm. With its relaxed tempos and soft melodies, quiet storm soul took influences from soft rock and adult contemporary. Many European musicians (Van Morrison, sometimes Elton John, David Bowie) used soul motives in their music.
After the decline of disco and funk in the early 1980s, soul music became influenced by electro music. It became less raw and more slickly produced, resulting in a style known as contemporary R&B, which sounded very different from the original rhythm and blues style. The United States saw the development of neo-soul around 1994. Mainstream record label marketing support for soul genres cooled in the 2000s due to the industry`s re-focus on hip-hop (Lauryn Hill, Erykah-Badu, Alicia Keys, John Legend).
Deriative style: Neo-Soul
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