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Soul music has its roots in traditional African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues and as the hybridization of their respective religious and secular styles – in both lyrical content and instrumentation – that began in the 1950s.
With its roots in gospel music and the broader Black church culture, soul music captured the spirit, emotions, and chaos of the 1960s civil unrest that continued into the early 1970s. The soul sound began to take shape during the 1950s, the beginning of the modern Civil Rights movement.
May 17, 2024 · soul music, term adopted to describe African American popular music in the United States as it evolved from the 1950s to the ’60s and ’70s. Some view soul as merely a new term for rhythm and blues.
- David Ritz
Jun 7, 2021 · Soul Music Guide: History and Sounds of Soul Music. Various genres of popular Black-pioneered music—gospel, blues, R&B, and forms of jazz—are often grouped together in a category known as soul music.
If defining soul music proved elusive, its origins were not. Soul music emerged during the 1950s as a cross between rhythm and blues and gospel music. Soul music combined the Saturday-night sinner and the Sunday-morning repentant into one person or one song, just as they existed in real life.
Soul music evolved from African – American gospel and rhythm and blues, blending emotional vocals with powerful instrumentation to reflect the struggles and triumphs of the African American experience during civil unrest in the 1960s.
Soul music emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a fusion of traditional blues, rhythm & blues, and gospel music. Influenced by African American church music and born out of urban areas, soul pioneers like Ray Charles and Etta James played a significant role in its development.
