Soul is a genre of music, that combines R&B, gospel and spiritual, in dance forms. From disco come disco, pop and hip hop. The most important forerunner of this kind of music is considered to be Ray Charles, while its most famous musicians are James Brown, Otis Reading, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Rooney and Amy Winehouse.
History :
The soul was created by merging gospel, R&B, spiritual and doo-woop music. The first soul musicians (shortly after World War II), by innovating, essentially transformed the gospel into a more secular art form, with loud vocals and the use of brass instruments. However, its direct dependence on the skills of the orchestrators led to its transformation from a vocal-driven genre to one based on the musicians and the sounds of their instruments.The end of the soul’s immediate dependence on vocals took place mainly in New York, Memphis, Detroit and Philadelphia, due to the founding of the record companies Atlantic (1947), Stax (1959), Tamla (1959), which in 1960 evolved into Motown, and International (1971), respectively. In New York, a very important role was played by producer and critic Jerry Wexler, who discovered Aretha Franklin. Nevertheless, the soul movement was supported by many whites, who, despite the stereotypes of the time, did not consider African culture bad or degrading, but simply different, unlike most, something that’s helped. jazz, along with its social and political achievements. Initially, it was the music that young blacks listened to at their parties and gatherings. But as the black civil rights movement began to grow, the soul became one of their symbols. Although this musical genre was not political in nature, its rise helped it to represent one of the first and most important successes of these movements. Thus, many elements of rock and roll were adopted, such as personal expression and political revolt. So, as the blues lost their glamor, soul introduced a new style, in which the elegance of the dance played the most important role. During the 1970s, the soul phenomenon began to disappear, due to the rise of funk and the advent of disco music. Nevertheless, the next decade saw an indirect revival, with the rise of hip hop. A few years later, soul seemed to be reborn when the urban soul genre emerged and dominated the music scene.
Name :
The soul took its name in the 1960s. Until then, it was known as one of the most popular genres of black music, which had its roots in R&B, and was categorized as Race music. It experienced great prosperity, mainly, during the period 1965-1970.
Characteristics :
The main characteristics of the soul are the loud voice of the singer and the brass wind instruments (saxophone, trumpet), whose high-pitched riffs give it dynamism and make it stand out from the rest of the genres. However, her direct dependence on orchestrators and producers (as in most related pop music genres) led her to evolve into a genre that relied on instrumental sounds rather than vocals.
Soul wind instruments :
The saxophone that comes from the name of the creator (Adolf Sachs) of this musical instrument is a wooden wind instrument despite its external appearance which is bronze. The saxophone is one of the most important instruments for soul music because every artist can improvise on the notes that this is the essence of jazz music.
