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soul

Soul

United States · 1950s

Romantic Dancing Sentimental Happy Sad

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Description

Soul is a genre of popular music that blends the spiritual fervor and vocal techniques of African‑American gospel with the grooves and song forms of rhythm & blues and the harmonic palette of jazz and blues.

It is defined by impassioned, melismatic lead vocals; call‑and‑response with backing singers; handclaps and a strong backbeat; syncopated bass lines; and memorable horn or string riffs. Typical instrumentation includes drum kit, electric bass, electric guitar, piano or Hammond organ, horns (trumpet, saxophone, trombone), and sometimes orchestral strings. Lyrically, soul ranges from love and heartbreak to pride, social commentary, and spiritual yearning.

Regionally distinct scenes—such as Detroit’s Motown, Memphis/Stax, Muscle Shoals, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia—shaped different flavors of soul, while the style’s emotional directness and rhythmic drive made it a cornerstone of later funk, disco, contemporary R&B, and hip hop.

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Gospel is a family of Christian sacred music that emerged from African‑American church traditions in the United States. It centers the voice, communal participation, and a message of faith, hope, and testimony. Musically, gospel is characterized by call‑and‑response, powerful lead vocals answered by choirs, rich harmonies, handclaps, and a propulsive backbeat or 12/8 shuffle. Typical ensembles include voice, piano or Hammond organ, drums, bass, and guitar, with occasional horns. Harmonically it blends simple I–IV–V frameworks with blues inflections and sophisticated chord extensions, turnarounds, and modulations that heighten emotional intensity. The genre encompasses several streams, notably traditional Black gospel, Southern (white) gospel rooted in shape‑note singing, and contemporary/urban gospel that integrates R&B, soul, and hip‑hop. Its sound and spirit have profoundly influenced American popular music—from soul and R&B to rock and roll.

Blues is an African American musical tradition defined by expressive "blue notes," call-and-response phrasing, and a characteristic use of dominant-seventh harmony in cyclical song forms (most famously the 12‑bar blues). It is as much a feeling as a form, conveying sorrow, resilience, humor, and hard-won joy. Musically, blues commonly employs the I–IV–V progression, swung or shuffled rhythms, and the AAB lyric stanza. Melodies lean on the minor/major third ambiguity and the flattened fifth and seventh degrees. Core instruments include voice, guitar (acoustic or electric), harmonica, piano, bass, and drums, with slide guitar, bends, and vocal melismas as signature techniques. Over time the blues has diversified into regional and stylistic currents—Delta and Piedmont country blues, urban Chicago and Texas blues, West Coast jump and boogie-woogie—while profoundly shaping jazz, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, and much of modern popular music.

Doo-wop is a vocal harmony–driven style of rhythm and blues that blossomed in mid-century urban America. Built around lead-tenor melodies, lush background harmonies, and playful nonsense syllables (the source of its name), the genre blends church-bred gospel techniques with street-corner spontaneity. Musically, doo-wop favors simple, singable chord cycles—especially the “’50s progression” (I–vi–IV–V)—a steady 4/4 or lilting 12/8 feel, and call-and-response between lead and backing parts. Arrangements range from a cappella to small combos with guitar, piano, bass, light drums, and occasional saxophone. Lyrically, the songs are often teen-centered: romance, longing, heartbreak, and devotion. The sound emerged in the late 1940s within African-American communities and soon resonated across ethnic lines, inspiring groups in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Its polished harmonies, sweet ballads, and hooky refrains helped shape early rock and roll and later pop harmony traditions.

Jazz is an improvisation-centered music tradition that emerged from African American communities in the early 20th century. It blends blues feeling, ragtime syncopation, European harmonic practice, and brass band instrumentation into a flexible, conversational art. Defining features include swing rhythm (a triplet-based pulse), call-and-response phrasing, blue notes, and extended harmonies built on 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Jazz is as much a way of making music—spontaneous interaction, variation, and personal sound—as it is a set of forms and tunes. Across its history, jazz has continually hybridized, from New Orleans ensembles and big-band swing to bebop, cool and hard bop, modal and free jazz, fusion, and contemporary cross-genre experiments. Its influence permeates global popular and art music.

R&B (Rhythm and Blues) is a vocal- and groove-centered popular music tradition that blends blues tonality, jazz harmony, and gospel-inflected singing with a steady backbeat. It emphasizes expressive lead vocals, call-and-response, lush harmonies, and danceable rhythms. From its 1940s roots in African American communities to its later evolutions, R&B has continually absorbed and reshaped surrounding sounds—from jump blues and swing in the early days to soul, funk, hip hop, and electronic production in the contemporary era. Today, R&B ranges from intimate, slow-burning ballads to club-ready tracks, all tied together by a focus on feel, melody, and vocal performance.

A ballad is a narrative song form that tells a story in simple, singable stanzas, traditionally using quatrains in ballad meter (alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter with an ABCB rhyme scheme). Ballads typically recount dramatic events—love, betrayal, tragedy, murder, the supernatural—or notable historical incidents. Early ballads were often sung unaccompanied or with minimal accompaniment, carried by memorable, modal melodies and refrains that aided oral transmission. Over time, the term also came to describe slow, sentimental popular songs in the 20th century, but the core of the genre remains the storytelling focus and strophic, easily learned structure. Ballads are central to the English- and Scots-language folk traditions, migrated to North America where they flourished in Appalachian singing, and continue to be performed, adapted, and reinterpreted in contemporary folk and roots scenes.

New Orleans R&b

New Orleans R&B is a piano-driven, horn-rich strain of rhythm and blues that emerged in the late 1940s and flourished through the 1950s. It blends blues harmony with the lilt of Caribbean rhythms, the swing of jazz, and gospel’s vocal inflections, creating an irresistibly rolling groove. The style is marked by triplet-based piano patterns, parade-inspired backbeats, syncopated horn riffs, and relaxed yet danceable shuffles. Its sound was defined by the city’s storied studio scene (notably Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio), visionary bandleaders and producers like Dave Bartholomew and Allen Toussaint, and charismatic singer-pianists such as Fats Domino and Professor Longhair. Lyrically, New Orleans R&B favors good-time party themes, romance, and streetwise vignettes. Its warm, unhurried feel and rhythmic cross-pollination would prove foundational to rock and roll, soul, funk, ska, and swamp pop.

New Orleans Blues

New Orleans blues is a piano- and horn-driven branch of postwar blues that developed in the clubs and studios of New Orleans. It blends the city’s brass-band and parade traditions with the relaxed swing of jazz, the rolling left-hand figures of boogie-woogie, and the clipped, syncopated “second‑line” feel rooted in Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Characterized by lilting triplet feels, tresillo/habanera accents, and a light yet insistent backbeat, the style favors catchy horn riffs, rolling piano patterns, and conversational, good-natured vocals. Compared with harsher urban blues styles, New Orleans blues feels breezier and more danceable, often straddling an early rhythm-and-blues sound that directly fed rock and roll.

Jubilee is an early African American sacred vocal style characterized by close four-part harmony, polished ensemble blend, and concert-stage presentation of spirituals and hymns. Emerging from Black college quartets and choirs in the post–Civil War era, jubilee arrangements emphasized European-style choral technique while preserving the call-and-response spirit and narrative texts of the Negro spiritual. Performances were typically a cappella, dignified, and restrained compared to later, more improvisatory gospel styles. Its clear diction, homophonic textures, and graceful dynamic swells made the music suitable for formal halls, where groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced spirituals to national and international audiences.

Traditional Black Gospel

Traditional Black Gospel is a sacred African American musical tradition that crystallized in the early 20th century and reached a "golden age" from the 1930s to the 1950s. It pairs blues-inflected melodies and jazz harmonies with congregational call-and-response, handclaps, and testimonies of faith, hope, and deliverance. Rooted in spirituals, ring shouts, hymns, and Holiness-Pentecostal worship, it features powerful lead vocals, responsive choirs or quartets, and driving rhythmic feels (often 12/8 shuffle or swung 4/4) supported by piano or Hammond organ, tambourine, and later rhythm sections. The style is performance-centered and participatory: songs intensify through vamping, ad‑libs, modulations, and dynamic swells, transforming devotional texts into communal, ecstatic praise.

Sermon is a spoken, often improvised, religious oratory recorded as audio, frequently captured live in church services. It centers on scripture exposition, moral exhortation, and personal testimony, delivered with rhetorical devices such as call-and-response, repetition, and dynamic vocal "whooping" that escalates toward a climactic close. While sermons can be purely unaccompanied speech, many historic recordings include musical underscoring—Hammond organ pads, piano punctuations, tambourine, and congregational or choir interjections—to mirror and intensify the preacher’s cadence. The genre’s most documented sound world comes from African American church traditions, where preaching overlaps with gospel aesthetics and communal participation.

Classic blues (often called "classic female blues") is the early, urban, theater-bred form of the blues that flourished primarily in the 1920s. It is characterized by powerful lead vocalists—frequently women—fronting small jazz ensembles or a piano accompanist, with arrangements that translated the blues idiom to vaudeville stages and recording studios. Musically it typically uses the 12‑bar blues form, AAB lyric stanzas, swung or shuffle rhythms in 4/4, and prominent use of blue notes (flattened 3rd, 5th, and 7th). The style sits at the crossroads of Southern blues traditions, ragtime and early jazz, and the songcraft and professionalism of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley. Classic blues differs from country/delta blues by its more formal arrangements, band instrumentation, and theatrical delivery. It launched the commercial “race records” era with Mamie Smith’s 1920 hit "Crazy Blues," and set the template for later jazz and R&B vocal performance.

Spirituals are African American religious folk songs created primarily by enslaved people in the United States during the 19th century. Sung largely a cappella in group settings, they combine call-and-response leadership with communal refrains, handclaps, foot-stomps, and the ring shout—a circular, counterclockwise dance that preserves West and Central African participatory practices. Textually, spirituals draw on biblical narratives—especially Exodus, bondage and deliverance, water and journey motifs—to express both faith and coded hope for freedom. Many songs carried double meanings, functioning as worship and as veiled commentary or guidance (e.g., “Wade in the Water,” “Steal Away”). Musically, spirituals favor pentatonic and modal melodies, blue notes, heterophony and spontaneous ornamentation. Their rhythms often use off-beat clapping and polyrhythmic layering. Unlike later gospel, early spirituals were not instrument-driven or industry-composed; they were orally transmitted, fluid in form, and shaped by community improvisation. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, arrangers adapted them into concert spirituals for choirs and classically trained soloists.

Northern American Music

Northern American music is an umbrella term for the diverse, syncretic musical traditions that developed across the United States and Canada. It emerged from the interaction of Indigenous musical practices, European settler and immigrant folk and sacred music, and West and Central African rhythmic and vocal traditions brought through the African diaspora. Rather than a single style, it is a landscape of practices—spirituals, work songs, fiddle tunes, shape-note hymnody, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rock and roll, R&B, and hip hop—that share core traits: narrative songwriting, emphasis on groove or backbeat, call-and-response, and a strong culture of performance and improvisation. This plural, hybrid character is the defining feature of Northern American music.

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