Originating in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, it has similar roots in the call and response characteristics between the soloist and the chorus and the use of improvisation that can be found in the jazz and Blues genres.
The term “soul” in black American speak has reference to black pride and culture - in the 1940s and 1950s, Gospel groups would occasionally use the term “soul” in their names. Jazz that was derived from gospel became known as soul jazz and as singers and composers began using techniques from gospel and soul jazz in the black popular music in the 1960s, soul music began to be widely seen as the black popular music of the time.
The northern inner cities of the United States, such as Chicago, New York, Detroit and Memphis are often looked upon as where soul music originated from, with each state creating their own soul styles based upon their regional gospel roots.
During the 1970s, Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson all contributed to the evolution of soul music and by the early 1970s, soul music had been influence d by psychedelic rock and other musical genres.
Throughout the 1970s, groups such as Earth, Wind and Fire, the Commodores and Hall & Oates began to achieve mainstream success in the charts. Although disco and funk began to dominate during the late 1970s and early 1980s, once this style of music started to decline in the early 980s, soul music became influenced by electro music – more slickly produced and with less of the raw style – resulting in the introduction of a genre that became known as contemporary R&B which had a very different sound to it from the original rhythm and blues style.
There are numerous subgenres of soul music – Detroit soul (known as Mowtown); Memphis soul, Chicago soul, New Orleans soul, Philadelphia soul, British soul, Northern soul and modern soul, to name but a few.
Neo soul emerged in the mid-1990s and as hip hop began to take a more prominent place in the music industry during the 2000s, record label marketing support for the soul genres began to cool. Listen in to Mick Brown’s Soul show every Friday and Saturday night from 7-10p.m
