American popular music had a profound effect on music across the world. The country has seen the rise of popular styles that have had a significant influence on global culture, including
ragtimeRagtime is an originally American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being...
,
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
,
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
, rock, R&B, doo wop,
gospelGospel music is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
,
soulSoul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
,
funkFunk is an American music genre that originated in the late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
,
heavy metalHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States...
,
punkPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
,
discoDisco is a genre of dance music that that had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, psychedelic and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
,
houseHouse is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American and Latino American communities, first in Chicago, then in New York City, New Jersey, Detroit and Miami...
, techno,
salsaSalsa music is a diverse and predominantly Cuban Caribbean genre that is popular across Latin America and among Latinos abroad that was brought to international fame by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term has been used to describe most any...
,
grungeGrunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
and
hip hopHip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commonly based on concepts of loop, rapping, freestyle, DJing, scratching, sampling and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues...
. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse, supporting a number of regional styles like
zydecoZydeco is a form of American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of Louisiana Creole music...
,
klezmerKlezmer is a musical tradition which parallels Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism...
and slack-key. The appeal of these styles lies in their supple, energetic rhythms, their appealing vocal lines, and in many cases their symbolic associations with the plight of the underprivileged.
Distinctive styles of American popular music emerged early in the 19th century, and in the 20th century the American music industry developed a series of new forms of music, using elements of blues and other genres of
American folk musicAmerican folk music, also known as roots music, is a broad category of music including Bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music...
. These popular styles included country, R&B, jazz and rock. The 1960s and '70s saw a number of important changes in American popular music, including the development of a number of new styles, including heavy metal, punk, soul, and hip hop. Though these styles were not
popular in the sense of
mainstream, they were commercially recorded and are thus examples of
popular music as opposed to
folkThe term folk music originated in the 19th century as a term for musical folklore. It has been defined in several ways; as music transmitted by word of mouth, music of the lower classes, music with no known composer...
or classical music.
Early popular song
The earliest songs that could be considered
American popular music, as opposed to the popular music of a particular region or ethnicity, were sentimental parlor songs by Stephen Foster and his peers, and songs meant for use in
minstrel showThe minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
s, theatrical productions that featured singing, dancing and comic performances. Minstrel shows generally used African instruments and dance, and featured performers with their faces blackened, a technique called
blackfaceBlackface, in the narrow sense, is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to take on the appearance of certain archetypes of American racism, especially those of the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation" or the "dandified coon "...
. By the middle of the 19th century, touring companies had taken this music not only to every part of the United States, but also to England, Western Europe, and even to Africa and Asia. Minstrel shows were generally advertised as though the music of the shows was in an
African American styleAfrican-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of music and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large ethnic minority of the population of the United States...
, though this was often not true.
Black people had taken part in American popular culture prior to the Civil War era, at least dating back to the African Grove Theatre in New York in the 1820s and the publication of the first music by a black composer,
Francis JohnsonFrancis "Frank" Johnson was an African American musician and prolific composer during the Antebellum period. African American composers were rare in the U.S. during this period, but Johnson was among the few who were successful...
, in 1818. However, these important milestones still occurred entirely within the conventions of European music. The first extremely popular minstrel song was "
Jump Jim CrowJump Jim Crow is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white comedian Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. The first song sheet edition appeared in the early 1830s, published by E. Riley. The number was supposedly inspired by the song and dance of a crippled African in Cincinnati...
" by
Thomas "Daddy" RiceThomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice was an American comedian, notable for his act in minstrel shows. He was born in New York City, where he would die aged fifty-two.-Career:...
, which was first performed in 1832 and was a sensation in London when Rice performed it there in 1836. Rice used a dance that he copied from a stable boy with a tune adopted from an Irish
jigThe Jig is a form of lively folk dance, as well as the accompanying dance tune, originating in England in the sixteenth century and today most associated with Irish dance music and Scottish country dance music...
. The African elements included the use of the
banjoThe banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslaved Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments.The name banjo is commonly thought to be derived from the Kimbundu term mbanza...
, believed to derive from West African string instruments, and accented and additive rhythms. Many of the songs of the minstrel shows are still remembered today, especially those by Daniel Emmett and
Stephen FosterStephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music," was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...
, the latter being, according to David Ewen, "America's first major composer, and one of the world's outstanding writers of songs" . Foster's songs were typical of the minstrel era in their unabashed sentimentality, and in their acceptance of slavery. Nevertheless, Foster did more than most songwriters of the period to humanize the blacks he composed about, such as in "Nelly Was a Lady", a plaintive, melancholy song about a black man mourning the loss of his wife.
The minstrel show marked the beginning of a long tradition of African American music being appropriated for popular audiences, and was the first distinctly American form of music to find international acclaim, in the mid-19th century. As Donald Clarke has noted, minstrel shows contained "essentially black music, while the most successful acts were white, so that songs and dances of black origin were imitated by white performers and then taken up by black performers, who thus to some extent ended up imitating themselves". Clarke attributes the use of blackface to a desire for white Americans to glorify the brutal existence of both free and slave blacks by depicting them as happy and carefree individuals, best suited to plantation life and the performance of simple, joyous songs that easily appealed to white audiences.
Blackface minstrel shows remained popular throughout the last part of the 19th century, only gradually dying out near the beginning of the 20th century. During that time, a form of lavish and elaborate theater called the
extravaganzaAn extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
arose, beginning with Charles M. Barras'
The Black CrookThe Black Crook is considered to be the first piece of musical theatre that conforms to the modern notion of a "book musical". The book is by Charles M. Barras , an American playwright...
. Extravaganzas were criticized by the newspapers and churches of the day because the shows were considered sexually titillating, with women singing bawdy songs dressed in nearly transparent clothing. David Ewen described this as the beginning of the "long and active careers in sex exploitation" of American musical theater and popular song . Later, extravaganzas took elements of
burlesqueBurlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction.-Etymology and early history:...
performances, which were satiric and parodic productions that were very popular at the end of the 19th century .
Like the extravaganza and the burlesque, the
variety showA variety show or variety entertainment is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and comedy skits, and normally introduced by a compère or host. The variety format made its way from Victorian era stage to radio to television...
was a comic and ribald production, popular from the middle to the end of the 19th century, at which time it had evolved into
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
. This form was innovated by producers like
Tony PastorAntonio Pastor was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid-to-late nineteenth century...
who tried to encourage women and children to attend his shows; they were hesitant because the theater had long been the domain of a rough and disorderly crowd . By the early 20th century, vaudeville was a respected entertainment for women and children, and songwriters like
Gus EdwardsGus Edwards was an American songwriter and vaudevillian. He also organised his own theatre companies and was a music publisher.-Early life:...
wrote songs that were popular across the country . The most popular vaudeville shows were, like the
Ziegfeld FolliesThe Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
, a series of songs and skits that had a profound effect on the subsequent development of
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
musical theater and the songs of
Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century....
.
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century....
was an area called
Union SquareUnion Square is an important and historic intersection in New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road now 4th Avenue, came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the federal union nor labor unions but rather denotes the fact that "here was the union of...
in New York City, which became the major center for music publishing by the mid-1890s. The songwriters of this era wrote formulaic songs, many of them sentimental ballads . During this era, a sense of national consciousness was developing, as the United States became a formidable world power, especially after the
Spanish-American WarThe Spanish–American War was an armed military conflict between Spain and the United States that took place between April and August 1898, over the issues of the liberation of Cuba. The war began after American demands for the resolution of the Cuban fight for independence were rejected by Spain...
. The increased availability and efficiency of railroads and the postal service helped disseminate ideas, including popular songs.
Some of the most notable publishers of Tin Pan Alley included Willis Woodward, the
WitmarkWitmark was a catalog showroom and jewelry/electronics chain that operated in West Michigan from 1969 to 1997. The chain was founded by Paul Leven.Over its nearly 30 year history, Witmark dominated the jewelry market with an average of a 34% market share...
house of publishing,
Charles K. HarrisCharles Kassel Harris was a well regarded American songwriter of popular music. During his long career, he advanced the relatively new genre, publishing more than 300 songs, often deemed by admirers as the "king of the tear jerkers"...
, and Edward B. Marks and Joseph W. Stern. Stern and Marks were among the more well-known Tin Pan Alley songwriters; they began writing together as amateurs in 1894 . In addition to the popular, mainstream ballads and other clean-cut songs, some Tin Pan Alley publishers focused on rough and risqué.
Coon songCoon songs were a genre of music popular in the United States from 1880 to 1920, that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks.-Rise and fall from popularity:...
s were another important part of Tin Pan Alley, derived from the watered-down songs of the minstrel show with the "verve and electricity" brought by the "assimilation of the ragtime rhythm" . The first popular coon song was "New Coon in Town", introduced in 1883, and followed by a wave of
coon shouters like
Ernest HoganErnest Hogan was the first African American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show and helped create the musical genre of ragtime....
and
May IrwinMay Irwin , was an actress, singer and star of vaudeville.Born Ada May Campbell, her father died when she was 13 years old and her stage-minded mother, in need of money, encouraged May and her younger sister Flora to perform. Creating a singing act, the sisters debuted in nearby Buffalo, New York...
.
Broadway
The early 20th century also saw the growth of
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
, a group of theatres specializing in musicals. Broadway became one of the preeminent locations for musical theater in the world, and produced a body of songs that led Donald Clarke to call the era, the
golden age of songwriting. The need to adapt enjoyable songs to the constraints of a theater and a plot enabled and encouraged a growth in songwriting and the rise of composers like
George GershwinGeorge Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are universally familiar....
,
Vincent YoumansVincent Youmans was an American popular composer and Broadway producer.- Life :Vincent Millie Youmans was born in New York City on September 27, 1898 and grew-up on Central Park West on the site where the Mayflower Hotel once stood. His father, a prosperous hat manufacturer, moved the family to...
,
Irving BerlinIrving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
and
Jerome KernJerome David Kern was an American composer of popular music. He wrote around 700 songs, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", and "Who?", a 6-week number 1 hit for...
. These songwriters wrote songs that have remained popular and are today known as the
Great American SongbookGreat American Songbook is a term referring to the interrelated music of Broadway theatre, Musical theatre, Hollywood musicals, and so-called Tin Pan Alley, for a period that begins during about the 1920s and ending about 1960 with the emerging dominance of rock and roll...
.
Foreign operas were popular among the upper-class throughout the 19th century, while other styles of musical theater included
operettaOperetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Operetta in French:...
s,
ballad operaThe term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...
s and the
opera bouffeOpéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
. The English operettas of
Gilbert and SullivanGilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian era partnership of librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
were particularly popular, while American compositions had trouble finding an audience.
George M. CohanGeorge Michael Cohan , known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Known as "the man who owned Broadway" in the decade before World War I, he is considered the father of American musical comedy...
was the first notable American composer of musical theater, and the first to move away from the operetta, and is also notable for using the language of the vernacular in his work. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, black playwrights, composers and musicians were having a profound effect on musical theater, beginning with the works of
Will Marion CookWill Marion Cook was a composer and violinist from the United States. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák and performed for King George V among others.-Biography:...
,
James Reese EuropeJames Reese Europe was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s.-Biography:...
and
James P. JohnsonJames Price Johnson [also known as Jimmy Johnson] was an American pianist and composer. With Luckey Roberts, Johnson was one of the originators of the stride style of jazz piano playing.-Biography:...
; the first major hit black musical was
Shuffle AlongShuffle Along is the first major successful African American musical. Written by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, with music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the musical premiered on Broadway in 1921.-Plot:...
in 1921.
Imported operettas and domestic productions by both whites like Cohan and blacks like Cook, Europe and Johnson all had a formative influence on Broadway. Composers like Gershwin, Porter and Kern made comedic musical theater into a national pastime, with a feel that was distinctly American and not dependent on European models. Most of these individuals were Jewish, with
Cole PorterCole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin"...
the only major exception; they were the descendants of 19th century immigrants fleeing persecution in the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, settled most influentially in various neighborhoods in New York City. Many of the early musicals were influenced by black music, showing elements of early jazz, such as
In DahomeyIn Dahomey was a landmark American musical comedy, in that it was "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." It featured music by Will Marion Cook, book by Jesse A. Shipp, and lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar...
; the Jewish composers of these works may have seen connections between the traditional black
blue noteIn jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...
s and their own folk
Jewish musicJewish music, the music of Jews, is quite diverse and dates back thousands of years. Sometimes it is religious in nature, other times it is not...
.
Broadway songs were recorded around the turn of the century, but did not become widely popular outside their theatrical context until much later. Jerome Kern's "
They Didn't Believe Me"They Didn't Believe Me" is a song with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Herbert Reynolds.First introduced in the 1914 musical The Girl from Utah it was one of five numbers added to the show for its Broadway debut at the Knickerbocker Theater on August 14, 1914...
" was an early song that became popular nationwide. Kern's later innovations included a more believable plot than the rather shapeless stories built around songs of earlier works, beginning with
Show BoatShow Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. One notable exception is the song Bill, which was originally written by Kern and author-lyricist P. G. Wodehouse in 1917 but reworked by Hammerstein for Show Boat...
in 1927. George Gershwin was perhaps the most influential composer on Broadway, beginning with "Swanee" in 1919 and later works for jazz and orchestras. His most enduring composition may be the opera
Porgy and BessPorgy and Bess an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and the play of the same name which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
, a story about two blacks, which Gershwin intended as a sort of "folk opera", a creation of a new style of American musical theater based on American idioms.
Ragtime
RagtimeRagtime is an originally American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being...
was a style of
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
based around the piano, using syncopated rhythms and
chromaticismIn music, chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
s ; the genre's most well-known performer and composer was undoubtedly
Scott JoplinScott Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist, born near Texarkana, Texas, into the first post-slavery generation. He achieved fame for his unique ragtime compositions, and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his brief career, he wrote forty-four original ragtime pieces, one...
. The ragged rhythms of ragtime are documented to at least as far back as 1886, at
Congo SquareCongo Square is an open space within Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The Tremé neighborhood is famous for its history of African American music....
in New Orleans, where African American and Caribbean dances mixed in wild celebrations. Author Gunther Schuller sees ragtime as a mixture of African elements with the 2/4 pattern of European marches , while others point to the importance of
jigThe Jig is a form of lively folk dance, as well as the accompanying dance tune, originating in England in the sixteenth century and today most associated with Irish dance music and Scottish country dance music...
s and other dance styles among the music of large African American bands in many northern cities during the end of the 19th century. Donald Clarke considers ragtime the culmination of
coon songCoon songs were a genre of music popular in the United States from 1880 to 1920, that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks.-Rise and fall from popularity:...
s, used first in
minstrel showThe minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
s and then
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, and the result of the rhythms of minstrelsy percolating into the mainstream; he also suggests that ragtime's distinctive sound may have come from an attempt to imitate the African American banjo using the keyboard .
Due to the essentially African American nature of ragtime, it is most commonly considered the first style of American popular music to be truly black music; certainly, it was also strongly influenced by European elements, but ragtime brought syncopation and a more authentic black sound to popular music. Popular ragtime songs were notated and sold as sheet music, but the general style was played more informally across the nation; these amateur performers played a more free-flowing form of ragtime that eventually became a major formative influence on
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
.
Early recorded popular music
Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb...
's invention of the
phonograph cylinderPhonograph cylinders were the earliest medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was played on...
kicked off the birth of recorded music. The first cylinder to be released was "Semper Fidelis" by the U.S. Marine Band. At first, cylinders were released sparingly, but as their sales grew more profitable, distribution increased. These early recorded songs were a mix of vaudeville,
barbershopBarbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era , is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture...
quartets, marches, opera, novelty songs, and other popular tunes. Many popular standards, such as "The Good Old Summertime", "Shine On Harvest Moon", and "Over There" come from this time. There were also a few early hits in the field of jazz, beginning with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1917 recordings, and followed by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, who played in a more authentic New Orleans jazz style.
BluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
had been
around a long timeLittle is known about the exact origins of the music now known as the blues. No specific year can be cited as the origin of the blues, largely because the style evolved over a long period of time and existed in approaching its modern form before the term blues was introduced, before the style was...
before it became a part of the first explosion of recorded popular music in American history. This came in the 1920s, when
classic female bluesThe classic female blues - blues subgenre. It was spanned from 1920 to 1929 with its peak from 1923 to 1925. The most popular of these singers were Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ethel Waters, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter, Clara Smith, Edith Wilson, Sara Martin,...
singers like
Ma RaineyGertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey , was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues...
,
Bessie SmithBessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as "The Empress of the Blues", Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent...
and
Mamie SmithMamie Smith was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, who appeared in several motion pictures late in her career. As a vaudeville singer she performed a number of styles including jazz and blues...
grew very popular; the first hit of this field was Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues". These urban blues singers changed the idea of
popular music from being simple songs that could be easily performed by anyone to works primarily associated with an individual singer. Performers like
Sophie TuckerSophie Tucker , an American singer. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risque songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first two-thirds of the 20th century...
, known for "Some of These Days", became closely associated with their hits, making their individualized interpretations just as important as the song itself.
At the same time, record companies like
Paramount RecordsParamount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson....
and
OKeh RecordsOkeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918; from the late 1920s on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
launched the field of
race music, which was mostly blues targeted at African American audiences. The most famous of these acts went on to inspire much of the later popular development of the blues and blues-derived genres, including Charley Patton,
Lonnie JohnsonAlonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos.-Early career:...
and Robert Johnson.
Popular jazz (1920-1935) and swing (1935-1947)
JazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
is a kind of music characterized by
blue noteIn jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...
s,
syncopationIn music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be stressed...
,
swingIn music, a swung note or shuffle note is a performance practice, mainly in jazz-influenced music, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. It follows similar principles to notes inégales of the Baroque and...
,
call and responseIn music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first...
,
polyrhythmPolyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. Polyrhythms can be distinguished from irrational rhythms, which can occur within the context of a single part; polyrhythms require at least two rhythms to be played concurrently, one of which is typically an irrational...
s, and
improvisationImprovisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
. Though originally a kind of
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
, jazz has now been "long considered a kind of popular or vernacular music (and has also) become a sophisticated art form that has interacted in significant ways with the music of the concert hall" . Jazz's development occurred at around the same time as modern ragtime, blues, gospel and country music, all of which can be seen as part of a continuum with no clear demarcation between them; jazz specifically was most closely related to ragtime, with which it could be distinguished by the use of more intricate rhythmic improvisation, often placing notes far from the implied beat. The earliest jazz bands adopted much of the vocabulary of the blues, including bent and blue notes and instrumental "growls" and smears.
Paul WhitemanPaul Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and he was dubbed the "King of Jazz." In 1924, Whiteman commissioned and debuted George Gershwin's...
was the most popular bandleader of the 1920s, and claimed for himself the title "The King of Jazz." Despite his hiring
Bix BeiderbeckeLeon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the two most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. His turns on "Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Coming, Virginia" , in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity...
and many of the other best white jazz musicians of the era, later generations of jazz lovers have often judged Whiteman's music to have little to do with real jazz. Nonetheless, his notion of combining jazz with elaborate orchestrations has been returned to repeatedly by composers and arrangers of later decades.
Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra.
Ted LewisTheodore Leopold Friedman, better known as Ted Lewis , was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He led a band presenting a combination of jazz, hokey comedy, and schmaltzy sentimentality that was a hit with the American public. He was known by the moniker "Mr...
's band was second only to the Paul Whiteman in popularity during the 1920s, and arguably played more real jazz with less pretension than Whiteman, especially in his recordings of the late 1920s. Some of the other "jazz" bands of the decade included those of:
Harry ReserHarry F. Reser was an American banjo player and bandleader. Born in Piqua, Ohio, Reser was best known as the leader of The Clicquot Club Eskimos.- Career :...
,
Leo ReismanLeo Reisman was a violinist and bandleader in the 1920s and 1930s. Born and reared in Boston, Reisman studied violin as a young man, and formed his own band in 1919. He became famous for having over 80 hits on the popular charts during his career...
,
Abe LymanAbe Lyman was a popular bandleader from the 1920s to the 1940s. He made recordings, appeared in films and provided the music for numerous radio shows, including Your Hit Parade....
, Nat Shilkret,
George OlsenGeorge Olsen was an American band-leader.Born in Portland, Oregon he attended the University of Michigan, where he formed his band, George Olsen and his Music. He made the transition to Broadway, appearing in Kid Boots, the Ziegfeld Follies of 1924, and Good News...
,
Ben BernieBen Bernie , born Bernard Anzelevitz, was an American jazz violinist and radio personality, often introduced as The Old Maestro. He was noted for his showmanship and memorable bits of snappy dialogue.By the age of 15 he was teaching violin, but this experience apparently diminished his interest in...
,
Bob HaringBob Haring was an American popular music bandleader of the 1920s and 1930s.Haring held a contract with Cameo Records and recorded 78rpm records under a plethora of orchestra names, such as The Caroliners, The Lincoln Dance Orchestra, The Society Night Club Orchestra, King Solomon and His Miners,...
,
Ben SelvinBen Selvin , son of Russian-immigrant Jewish parents, was a musician, bandleader, record producer and innovator in recorded music. He was known as The Dean of Recorded Music....
, Earl Burtnett,
Gus ArnheimGus Arnheim was an early popular band leader. He is noted for writing several songs with his first hit being I Cried for You from 1923. He was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s...
,
Rudy ValleeRudy Vallée was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer.-Early life:Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée...
,
Jean GoldketteJohn Jean Goldkette was a jazz pianist and bandleader born in Patras, Greece. Goldkette spent his childhood in Greece and Russia, and emigrated to the United States in 1911....
,
Isham JonesIsham Jones was a United States bandleader, saxophonist, bassist and songwriter.-Career:Jones was born in Coalton, Ohio, to a musical and mining family, and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, where he started his first band...
,
Roger Wolfe KahnRoger Wolfe Kahn was an American jazz and popular musician, composer, and bandleader ....
,
Sam LaninSam Lanin was an American jazz bandleader.Lanin's brothers, Howard and Lester, were also bandleaders, and all of them had sustained, successful careers in music. Lanin was one of ten children born to Russian-Jewish immigrants who emigrated to Philadelphia in the decade of the 1900s...
,
Vincent LopezVincent Lopez was a United States bandleader and pianist.Vincent Lopez was born of Portuguese immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York and was leading his own dance band in New York City by 1917. In 1921 his band began broadcasting on the new medium of entertainment radio, which boosted the...
,
Ben PollackBen Pollack was a drummer and bandleader from the mid 1920s through the swing era. His eye for talent led him to either discover or employ, at one time or another, musicians such as Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Jimmy McPartland and Harry James...
and
Fred WaringFredrick Malcolm Waring was a popular musician, bandleader and radio-television personality, sometimes referred to as "America's Singing Master" and "The Man Who Taught America How to Sing." He was also a promoter, financial backer and namesake of the Waring Blendor, the first modern electric...
.
In the 1920s, the music performed by these artists was extremely popular with the public and was typically labeled as jazz. Today, however, this music is disparaged and labeled as "sweet music" by jazz purists. The music that people consider today as "jazz" tended to be played by minorities. In the 1920s and early 1930s, however, the majority of people listened to what we would call today "sweet music" and hardcore jazz was categorized as "hot music" or "race music."
In 1935, swing music became popular with the public and quickly replaced jazz as the most popular type of music (although there was some resistance to it at first). Swing music is characterized by a strong rhythm section, usually consisting of a
double bassThe double bass, also called the upright bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. The name, "double bass," derives from the early use of the instrument to double—an octave lower where possible—the bass part written...
and drums, playing in a medium to fast
tempoIn musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. It is a crucial element of composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
, and rhythmic devices like the
swung noteIn music, a swung note or shuffle note is a performance practice, mainly in jazz-influenced music, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. It follows similar principles to notes inégales of the Baroque and...
. Swing is primarily a kind of 1930s jazz fused with elements of the blues and the pop sensibility of Tin Pan Alley . Swing used
bigger bandA big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. Big bands evolved with the times and continue to today. A big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and...
s than other kinds of jazz had and was headed by bandleaders that tightly arranged the material, discouraging the improvisation that had been an integral part of jazz. David Clarke called swing the first "jazz-oriented style (to be) at the center of popular music... as opposed to merely giving it backbone" . By the end of the 1930s, vocalists became more and more prominent, eventually taking center stage following the
American Federation of MusiciansThe American Federation of Musicians is a labor union of professional musicians in the United States and Canada.The American Federation of Musicians was founded in 1896, at which time it took over from an older and looser organization of local musicians unions, the National League of...
strike, which made recording with a large band prohibitively expensive . Swing came to be accompanied by a popular dance called the swing dance, which was very popular across the United States, among both white and black audiences, especially youth.
Blues diversification and popularization
In addition to the popular jazz and swing music listened to by mainstream America, there were a number of other genres that were popular among certain groups of people, e.g. minorities or rural audiences. Beginning in the 1920s and accelerating greatly in the 1940s, the blues began rapidly diversifying into a broad spectrum of new styles. These included an uptempo, energetic style called
rhythm and bluesRhythm and blues is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music created by African Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
(R&B), a merger of blues and Anglo-Celtic song called
country musicCountry music is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains...
and the fusion of
hymnA hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek , "a song of praise"...
s and
spiritualSpirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...
s with blues structures called
gospel musicGospel music is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
. Later than these other styles, in the 1940s, a blues, R&B and country fusion eventually called
rock and rollRock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States after World War II in the late 1940s, from a combination of the rhythms of the blues, from the African American culture, and from America's country music and gospel music scenes...
developed, eventually coming to dominate American popular by the beginning of the 1960s.
Country music is primarily a fusion of African American blues and spirituals with Appalachian folk music, adapted for pop audiences and popularized beginning in the 1920s. Of particular importance was Irish and Scottish tunes, dance music, balladry and vocal styles, as well as
Native AmericanAmerican Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans. In addition to the tribally specific music of those groups there now exist pan-tribal and intertribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of popular music including: rock, blues, hip hop,...
,
SpanishThe Music of Spain has a vibrant and long history which has had an important impact on music in Western culture. Although the music of Spain is often associated with traditions like flamenco and the spanish guitar, Spanish music is in fact incredibly diverse from region to region...
,
GermanForms of German-language music include Neue Deutsche Welle , Krautrock, Hamburger Schule, Volksmusik, German hip hop, trance, Schlager and multiple varieties of folk music...
,
FrenchFrance has long been considered a center for European art and music. The country has a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia...
and
MexicanThe music of Mexico is diverse and features a wide range of different musical styles influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably Amerindian and European...
music. The instrumentation of early country revolved around the European-derived
fiddleThe violin is a bowed string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
and the African-derived
banjoThe banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslaved Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments.The name banjo is commonly thought to be derived from the Kimbundu term mbanza...
, with the guitar added later. Country music instrumentation used African elements like a call-and-response format, improvised music and
syncopatedIn music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be stressed...
rhythms. Later still, string instruments like the
ukuleleThe ukulele , sometimes abbreviated as the uke, is a chordophone classified as a plucked lute; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings.The ukulele originated in the 19th century as a Hawaiian interpretation of a small...
and
steel guitarSteel guitar is a type of guitar and/or the method of playing the instrument. The name steel guitar comes not from the material of which the guitar is made, but from the name of the steel, a slide held in the left hand....
became commonplace due to the popularity of
Hawaiian musicThe music of Hawaii includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Hawaii's musical contributions to the music of the United States are out of proportion to the state's small size. Styles like slack-key guitar are well-known...
in the early 20th century and the influence of musicians such as
Sol HoopiiSol Hoopii was a Native Hawaiian guitarist, claimed by many as the all-time best lap steel guitarvirtuoso, and he is one the most famous original Hawaiian steel guitarists,along with Joe Kekuku, Frank Ferera, Sam Ku West and King Ben Nawahi....
and
Lani McIntyreLani McIntyre was a Hawaiian guitar and steel guitar player who helped to popularize the instrument, which eventually became a mainstay in American country and western music....
. . The roots of modern country music are generally traced to 1927, when music talent scout
Ralph PeerRalph Peer was born Ralph Sylvester Peer in Independence, Missouri. He died in Hollywood, California. Peer was a talent scout, recording engineer and record producer in the field of music in the 1920s and 1930s...
recorded
Jimmie RodgersJames Charles Rodgers , known as "Jimmie," was a country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...
and The Carter Family. Their recordings are considered the foundation for modern country music. There had been popular music prior to 1927 that could be considered country, but, as Ace Collins points out, these recordings had "only marginal and very inconsistent" effects on the national music markets, and were only superficially similar to what was then known as
hillbilly music . In addition to Rodgers and the Carters, a musician named
Bob WillsJames Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by many music authorities one of the fathers of Western swing and called the King of Western Swing by his fans.-New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma:He was born near Kosse,...
was an influential early performer known for a style called
Western swingWestern swing is a style of popular music that evolved in the 1920s in the American Southwest among the region's popular Western string bands. Fundamentally an outgrowth of jazz, much Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka,...
, which was very popular in the 1920s and 30s, and was responsible for bringing a prominent jazz influence to country music.
Rhythm and blues (R&B) is a style that arose in the 1930s and '40s, a rhythmic and uptempo form of blues with more complex instrumentation. Author Amiri Baraka described early R&B as "huge rhythm units smashing away behind screaming blues singers (who) had to shout to be heard above the clanging and strumming of the various electrified instruments and the churning rhythm sections . R&B was recorded during this period, but not extensively and was not widely promoted by record companies, who felt it was not suited for most audiences, especially middle-class whites, because of the suggestive lyrics and driving rhythms . Bandleaders like
Louis JordanLouis Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the later years...
innovated the sound of early R&B. Jordan's band featured a small horn section and prominent rhythm instrumentation and used songs with bluesy lyrical themes. By the end of the 1940s, he had produced nineteen major hits, and helped pave the way for contemporaries like
Wynonie HarrisWynonie Harris , born in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American blues shouter and rhythm and blues singer of upbeat songs featuring humorous, with often ribald lyrics. With fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952, Harris is generally considered one of rock and roll's forerunners, influencing Elvis...
,
John Lee HookerJohn Lee Hooker was an African American singer-songwriter and blues guitarist, born in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues...
and
Roy MiltonRoy Milton was an American R&B singer, drummer and bandleader.-Career:Milton's grandmother was a Chickasaw. He was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma and grew up on a Indian reservation before moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma...
.
Christian spirituals and rural blues music were the origin of what is now known as gospel music. Beginning in about the 1920s, African American churches featured early gospel in the form of worshipers proclaiming their religious devotion (
testifying) in an improvised, often musical manner. Modern gospel began with the work of composers, most importantly
Thomas A. DorseyThomas Andrew Dorsey . He is known as "the father of gospel music". Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom....
, who "(composed) songs based on familiar spirituals and hymns, fused to blues and jazz rhythms" . From these early 20th-century churches, gospel music spread across the country. It remained associated almost entirely with African American churches, and usually featured a choir along with one or more virtuoso soloists.
Rock and roll is a kind of popular music, developed primarily out of country, blues and R&B. Easily the single most popular style of music worldwide,
rock's exact origins and early developmentRock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in America in the 1950s, though elements of rock and roll can be seen in rhythm and blues records as far back as the 1920s...
have been hotly debated. Music historian Robert Palmer has noted that the style's influences are quite diverse, and include the Afro-Caribbean "
Bo DiddleyBo Diddley , born Ellas Otha Bates, was an American rock & roll singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He was known as "The Originator" because of his key role in the transition from blues music to rock & roll, influencing a host of legendary acts including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton...
beat", elements of "big band swing" and Latin music like the
CubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is...
n
sonThe Son cubano is a style of music that originated in Cuba and gained worldwide popularity in the 1930s. Son combines the structure and elements of Spanish canción and the Spanish guitar with African rhythms and percussion instruments of Bantu and Arará origin. In New York City, it mixed with other...
and "
Mexican rhythmThe music of Mexico is diverse and features a wide range of different musical styles influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably Amerindian and European...
s" . Another author, George Lipsitz claims that rock arose in America's urban areas, where there formed a "polyglot, working-class culture (where the) social meanings previously conveyed in isolation by blues, country,
polkaThe polka is a lively Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in the Czech lands and is still a common genre in Lithuanian, Czech, Croatian, Slovenian, Polish, German, Hungarian, Austrian,...
,
zydecoZydeco is a form of American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of Louisiana Creole music...
and Latin musics found new expression as they blended in an urban environment" .
1950s and 60s
The middle of the 20th century saw a number of very important changes in American popular music. The field of
pop musicPop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs...
developed tremendously during this period, as the increasingly low price of recorded music stimulated demand and greater profits for the record industry. As a result, music
marketingMarketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities are informed or persuaded that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others....
became more and more prominent, resulting in a number of mainstream pop stars whose popularity was previously unheard of. Many of the first such stars were Italian-American crooners like
Dean MartinDean Martin was an American singer, film actor and comedian. He was one of the best known musical artists of the 1950s and 1960s. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "Mambo Italiano", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That A Kick In The...
,
Rudy ValleeRudy Vallée was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer.-Early life:Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée...
,
Tony BennettTony Bennett is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz....
,
Perry ComoPierino "Perry" Como was an Italian-American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with it in 1943. "Mr...
,
Frankie LaineFrankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...
and, most famously, the "first pop vocalist to engender hysteria among his fans"
Frank SinatraFrancis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the...
. The era of the modern teen pop star, however, began in the 1960s.
Bubblegum popBubblegum pop is a genre of pop music whose classic period ran from 1967 to 1972...
groups like
The MonkeesThe Monkees were a pop rock quartet assembled by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider in Los Angeles in 1966 for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968...
were chosen entirely for their appearance and ability to sell records, with no regard to musical ability. The same period, however, also saw the rise of new forms of pop music that achieved a more permanent presence in the field of American popular music, including rock, soul and pop-folk. By the end of the 1960s, two developments had completely changed popular music: the birth of a
countercultureCounterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition...
, which explicitly opposed mainstream music, often in tandem with political and social activism, and the shift from professional composers to performers who were both
singers and songwritersA singer–songwriter is a musician who writes, composes and sings their own material including lyrics and melodies. They often provide the sole accompaniment to an entire composition or song, typically using a guitar or piano...
.
Rock and roll first entered mainstream popular music through a style called
rockabillyRockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, and emerged in the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
, which fused the nascent rock sound with elements of country music. Black-performed rock and roll had previously had limited mainstream success, and some observers at the time believed that a white performer who could credibly sing in an R&B and country style would be a success.
Sam PhillipsSamuel Cornelius Phillips , better known as Sam Phillips, was an American record producer who played an important role in the emergence of rock and roll as the major form of popular music in the 1950s...
, of
Memphis, TennesseeMemphis is a city in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. Memphis rises above the Mississippi River on the 4
th Chickasaw Bluff just south of the mouth of the Wolf River....
's
Sun RecordsSun Records is a record label founded in Memphis, Tennessee, starting operations on March 27 1952.
Founded by Sam Phillips, Sun Records was known for giving notable musicians such as Elvis Presley , Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Buddy McNeil,...
, was the one who found such a performer, in
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as Elvis and is also sometimes referred to as The King of Rock 'n' Roll or The King....
, who became one of the best-selling musicians in history, and brought rock and roll to audiences across the world . Presley's success was preceded by
Bill HaleyBill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock"...
, a white performer whose "
Rock Around the Clock"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952...
" is sometimes pointed to as the start of the rock era. However, Haley's music was "more arranged" and "more calculated" than the "looser rhythms" of rockabilly, which also, unlike Haley, did not use saxophones or chorus singing .
R&B remained extremely popular during the 1950s among black audiences, but the style was not considered appropriate for whites, or respectable middle-class blacks because of its suggestive nature. Many popular R&B songs were instead performed by white musicians like
Pat BooneCharles Eugene Boone , known professionally as Pat Boone, is an American singer, actor and writer who was a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He sold over 45 million albums, had 38 Top 40 hits and starred in more than 12 Hollywood movies...
, in a more palatable, mainstream style, and turned into pop hits . By the end of the 1950s, however, there was a wave of popular black blues-rock and country-influenced R&B performers gaining unprecedented fame among white listeners; these included
Bo DiddleyBo Diddley , born Ellas Otha Bates, was an American rock & roll singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He was known as "The Originator" because of his key role in the transition from blues music to rock & roll, influencing a host of legendary acts including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton...
and
Chuck BerryCharles Edward "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter.Chuck Berry is one of the pioneers of rock and roll music...
. Over time, producers in the R&B field turned to gradually more rock-based acts like
Little RichardRichard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist and recording artist, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s...
and
Fats DominoAntoine Dominique "Fats" Domino is an American R&B and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter.-Imperial Records era :...
.
Doo wop is a kind of vocal harmony music performed by groups who became popular in the 1950s. Though sometimes considered a kind of rock, doo wop is more precisely a fusion of vocal R&B, gospel and jazz with the blues and pop structures , though until the 1960s, the lines separating rock from doo wop, R&B and other related styles was very blurry. Doo wop became the first style of R&B-derived music "to take shape, to define itself as something people recognized as new, different, strange,
theirs" (emphasis in original) . As doo wop grew more popular, more innovations were added, including the use of a bass lead vocalist, a practice which began with Jimmy Ricks of
The RavensThe Ravens were an American R&B vocal group, formed in 1945 by Jimmy Ricks and Warren Suttles. They were structurally similar to The Ink Spots, especially in their combination of high tenor and deep bass , but their material was more varied, including elements of pop, jazz, R&B, and gospel...
. Doo wop performers were originally almost all black, but a few white and integrated groups soon became popular. These included a number of Italian-American groups like Dion & the Belmonts and Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, while others added female vocalists and even formed all-female groups in the nearly universally male field; these included The Queens and
The ChantelsThe Chantels were the second black girl group to have nationwide success in the United States. The group was established in the early 1950s at St. Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx. The group consisted of Arlene Smith , Sonia Goring, Rene Minus, Jackie Landry Jackson and Lois Harris. They got...
.
The 1950s saw a number of brief fads that went on to have a great impact on future styles of music. Performers like
Pete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and a key figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early '50s as a member of The Weavers, most notably the 1950 recording of Leadbelly's...
and
The WeaversThe Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, selling millions of records at the height of their...
popularized a form of
old-time revivalOld-time music is a form of North American folk music, with roots in the folk musics of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. This musical form developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre...
of
Anglo-American musicThe Thirteen Colonies of the original United States were all former English possessions, and Anglo culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music.- Overview :...
. This field eventually became associated with the political left-wing and
CommunismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
, leading to a decline in acceptability as artists were increasingly
blacklistA blacklist is a list or register of persons who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
ed and criticized. Nevertheless, this form of pop-folk exerted a profound influence in the form of 1950s folk-rock and related styles. Alongside the rather sporadic success of popularized Anglo folk music came a series of
Latin danceLatin American music is the music of all countries in Latin America and comes in many varieties. Latin America is home to musical styles such as the simple, rural conjunto music of northern Mexico, the sophisticated habanera of Cuba, the rhythmic sounds of the Puerto Rican plena, the symphonies of...
fads, including mambo,
rumbaIn Cuban music, Rumba is a generic term covering a variety of musical rhythms and associated dances. The rumba has its influences in the music brought to Cuba by Spanish colonizers as well as Africans brought to Cuba as slaves. Rumba developed in the Cuban provinces of Havana and Matanzas in the...
,
chachachá- Creation of the Cha-cha-chá :The cha-cha-chá is unusual as dance music genres go in that its creation can be attributed to a single composer named Enrique Jorrín ....
and
boogalooBoogaloo or bugalú is a genre of Latin music and dance that was popular in the United States in the 1960s. Boogaloo originated in New York City among teenage Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other groups. The style was a fusion of popular African American R&B and soul with mambo and son montuno...
. Though their success was again sporadic and brief, Latin music continued to exert a continuous influence on rock, soul and other styles, as well as eventually evolving into
salsa musicSalsa music is a diverse and predominantly Cuban Caribbean genre that is popular across Latin America and among Latinos abroad that was brought to international fame by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term has been used to describe most any...
in the 1970s.
Country: Nashville Sound
Beginning in the late 1920s, a distinctive style first called "old-timey" or "hillbilly" music began to be broadcast and recorded in the rural South and Midwest; early artists included the Carter Family, Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers, and Jimmie Rodgers. The performance and dissemination of this music was regional at first, but the population shifts caused by World War II spread it more widely. After the war, there was increased interest in specialty styles, including what had been known as
race and
hillbilly music; these styles were renamed to
rhythm and blues and
country and western, respectively . Major labels had had some success promoting two kinds of country acts: Southern novelty performers like
Tex WilliamsSollie Paul Williams , known professionally as Tex Williams, was an American Western swing musician from Ramsey, Illinois....
and singers like
Frankie LaineFrankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...
, who mixed pop and country in a conventionally sentimental style . This period also saw the rise of Hank Williams, a white country singer who had learned the blues from a black street musician named Tee-Tot, in northwest Alabama . Before his death in 1953, Hank Williams recorded eleven singles that sold at least a million copies each and pioneered the
Nashville soundThe Nashville sound arose during the late 1950s as a sub-genre of American country music, replacing the chart dominance of honky tonk music which was most popular in the 1940s and 1950s...
.
The Nashville sound was a popular kind of country music that arose in the 1950s, a fusion of popular
big bandA big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. Big bands evolved with the times and continue to today. A big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and...
jazz and swing with the lyricism of honky-tonk country . The popular success of Hank Williams' recordings had convinced record labels that country music could find mainstream audiences. Record companies then tried to strip the rough, honky-tonk elements from country music, removing the unapologetically rural sound that had made Williams famous. Nashville's industry was reacting to the rise of
rockabillyRockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, and emerged in the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
performer Elvis Presley by marketing performers that crossed the divide between country and pop .
Chet AtkinsChester Burton Atkins , better known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who created, along with Owen Bradley, the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.His picking style, inspired by...
, head of
RCARCA Corporation, founded as Radio Corporation of America, was an electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. Currently, the RCA trademark is owned by the French conglomerate Thomson SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Thomson...
's country music division, did the most to innovate the Nashville sound by abandoning the rougher elements of country, while
Owen BradleyOwen Bradley was an American record producer, who, along with Chet Atkins and Bob Ferguson, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s Nashville sound in country music and rockabilly.-Before the fame:...
used sophisticated production techniques and smooth instrumentation that eventually became standard in the Nashville Sound, which also grew to incorporate strings and vocal choirs . By the early part of the 1960s, the Nashville sound was perceived as watered-down by many more traditionalist performers and fans, resulting in a number of local scenes like the
Lubbock soundLubbock sound is a genre of American music that began with the popularity of Lubbock, Texas native Buddy Holly. A sound that was rock and roll with country roots was heard all over the United States...
and, most influentially, the
Bakersfield soundThe Bakersfield Sound was a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly-produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s...
.
Throughout the 1950s, the most popular kind of country music was the Nashville Sound, which was a slick and pop-oriented style. Many musicians preferred a rougher sound, leading to the development the
Lubbock SoundLubbock sound is a genre of American music that began with the popularity of Lubbock, Texas native Buddy Holly. A sound that was rock and roll with country roots was heard all over the United States...
and
Bakersfield SoundThe Bakersfield Sound was a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly-produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s...
. The Bakersfield Sound was innovated in
Bakersfield, CaliforniaBakersfield is a city at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California, United States. It is located roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively...
in the mid to late 1950s, by performers like
Wynn StewartWinford Lindsey Stewart , better known as Wynn Stewart, was an American country music performer. He was one of the progenitors of the Bakersfield sound...
, who used elements of
Western swingWestern swing is a style of popular music that evolved in the 1920s in the American Southwest among the region's popular Western string bands. Fundamentally an outgrowth of jazz, much Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka,...
and rock, such as the
breakbeatBreakbeat is a term used to describe a collection of sub-genres of electronic music, usually characterized by the use of a non-straightened 4/4 drum pattern...
, along with a honky tonk vocal style . He was followed by a wave of performers like
Buck OwensAlvis Edgar Owens, Jr. , better known as Buck Owens, was an American singer and guitarist who had 21 number one hits on the Billboard country music charts with his band, the Buckaroos...
and
Merle HaggardMerle Ronald Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band "The Strangers" helped create the Bakersfield Sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster guitars, vocal harmonies, and a...
, who popularized the style.
Soul
Soul music is a combination of R&B and gospel which began in the late 1950s in the United States. Soul music is characterized by its use of gospel techniques with a greater emphasis on vocalists, and the use of secular themes. The 1950s recordings of
Sam CookeSamuel "Sam" Cook was an American gospel, R&B, soul, and pop singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is considered to be one of the pioneers and founders of soul music....
,
Ray CharlesRay Charles Robinson , known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He brought a soulful sound to country music and pop standards through his Modern Sounds recordings, as well as a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes called the "definitive version of...
and James Brown are commonly considered the beginnings of soul music.
Solomon BurkeSolomon Burke is an American Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter. During the half-century that he has performed, he has drawn from his roots: gospel, soul, and blues, as well as developing his own style in a time when R&B, and rock were still in their infancy...
's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the style, and as Peter Guralnick writes, "it was only with the coming together of Burke and Atlantic Records that you could see anything resembling a movement" .
The Motown Record Corporation in
Detroit, MichiganDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
became successful with a string of heavily pop-influenced soul records, which were palatable enough to white listeners so as to allow R&B and soul to crossover to mainstream audiences. An important center of soul music recording was
Florence, AlabamaFlorence is a city in and the county seat of Lauderdale County, Alabama, United States, in the northwestern corner of the state.According to the 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the city's population was 36,721....
, where the
Fame StudiosFAME Studios are located at 603 East Avalon in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. They have been an integral part of American popular music from the late 1950s to the present...
operated.
Jimmy HughesJames "Jimmy" Hughes was an English footballer.-Career:Hughes was a regular in the Army and served in the Second Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers...
,
Percy SledgePercy Sledge is an American R&B and soul performer.-Early career:Percy Sledge worked in a series of blue-collar jobs in the fields in Leighton, Alabama before taking a job as an orderly at Colbert County Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama...
and
Arthur AlexanderArthur Alexander , born in Sheffield, Alabama, was perhaps one of the biggest stars to arise out of the American country soul scene...
recorded at Fame; later in the 1960s,
Aretha FranklinAretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter and pianist commonly referred to as "The Queen of Soul". Although renowned for her soul recordings, Franklin is also adept at jazz, rock, soul, blues, pop, R&B and Gospel music...
would also record in the area. Fame Studios, often referred to as
Muscle Shoals* Muscle Shoals, Alabama* Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section* Muscle Shoals Sound Studio...
, after a town neighboring Florence, enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis also contributed to recordings done in Alabama.
In Memphis,
Stax RecordsStax Records is an American record label founded in 1957, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles, also releasing gospel, funk, jazz, and blues recordings...
produced recordings by soul pioneers
Otis ReddingOtis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer. Often called the "King of Soul", he is renowned for an ability to convey strong emotion through his voice...
,
Wilson PickettWilson Pickett was an American R&B/rock and roll and soul singer and songwriter known for his raw, raspy, passionate vocal delivery....
and
Don CovayDon Covay is an influential American R&B/rock and roll/soul music singer and songwriter most active in the 1950s and 1960s, who received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994...
. Other Stax artists such as
Eddie FloydEddie Floyd is a soul/R&B singer and songwriter, best known for his work on the Stax record label in the 1960s and 1970s and the song "Knock on Wood".-Biography:...
and
Johnnie TaylorJohnnie Harrison Taylor was an American vocalist in a wide variety of genres, from Gospel, blues and soul to pop, doo-wop and disco.-Early years:Johnnie Taylor was born in Crawfordsville, Arkansas...
also made significant contributions to soul music. By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and
Sly & the Family StoneSly & the Family Stone is an American funk, soul and rock band from San Francisco, California. Originally active from 1966 to 1983, with varied lineups, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music...
began to expand upon and abstract both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. Guralnick wrote that more "than anything else... what seems to me to have brought the era of soul to a grinding, unsettling halt was the death of Martin Luther King in April of 1968" .
1960s rock
The first of the major new rock genres of the 1960s was
surfSurf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965, has subsequently been revived and was highly influential on subsequent rock music...
, pioneered by Californian
Dick DaleDick Dale is a surf-rock guitarist, known as "The King Of The Surf Guitar"...
. Surf was largely instrumental and guitar-based rock with a distorted and twanging sound, and was associated with the
Southern CaliforniaSouthern California, or SoCal, is defined as the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population centers around three major metropolitan areas, each of which have over 3 million people; the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area with over 12 million inhabitants, the San Bernardino-Riverside...
surfingSurfing is most commonly known, the term is used for a surface water sport in which the person surfing moves along the face of a breaking ocean wave . However, surfing is not restricted to saltwater, but can sometimes take place on rivers, using a standing wave...
-based youth culture. Dale had worked with
Leo FenderClarence Leonidas Fender , also known as Leo Fender, was a Greek-American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, now known as Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and later founded MusicMan and G&L Musical Products...
, developing the "Showman amplifier and... the reverberation unit that would give surf music its distinctively fuzzy sound" .
Inspired by the lyrical focus of surf, if not the musical basis,
The Beach BoysThe Beach Boys are an American rock band. Formed in 1961, the group gained popularity for its close vocal harmonies and lyrics reflecting a Southern California youth culture of cars, surfing, and romance...
began their career in 1961 with a string of hits like "
Surfin' USASurfin' USA is the second album released by The Beach Boys and was released in early 1963. This was the group's second album to be credited with production from Capitol's Nick Venet, Capitol Records' representative for Artists and Repertoire....
". Their sound was not instrumental, nor guitar-based, but was full of "rich, dense and unquestionably special" "floating vocals (with) Four Freshman-ish harmonies riding over a droned, propulsive burden" . The Beach Boys' songwriter
Brian WilsonBrian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the rock group The Beach Boys...
grew gradually more eccentric, experimenting with new studio techniques as he became associated with the burgeoning
countercultureCounterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition...
.
The counterculture was a youth movement that included political activism, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War, and the promotion of various
hippieThe hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the early 1960s and spread around the world. The word hippie derives from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district...
ideals. The hippies were associated primarily with two kinds of music: the folk-rock and
country rockCountry-rock is a musical genre formed from the fusion of rock with country music, with its country origins being initially referenced to the rockabilly music of the 1950s....
of people like
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
and
Gram ParsonsGram Parsons was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist. Parsons was a member of the International Submarine Band, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers...
, and the
psychedelic rockPsychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among garage and folk rock bands in Britain and the United States...
of bands like
Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
and
The DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California by vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. They are considered a controversial and influential band, due mostly to Morrison's cryptic lyrics and unpredictable...
. This movement was very closely connected to the
British InvasionThe British Invasion is used to describe rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States from 1964 to 1966. The Second British Invasion refers to MTV and New Wave acts of the 1980s...
, a wave of bands from the United Kingdom who became popular throughout much of the 1960s. The first wave of the British Invasion included bands like
The ZombiesThe Zombies are an English rock band. Formed in 1959 in St Albans and led by Rod Argent on piano and Colin Blunstone on vocals, the band scored US hits in the mid- and late-1960s with "She's Not There", "Tell Her No", and "Time of the Season"...
and the Moody Blues, followed by rock bands like the Rolling Stones,
The WhoThe Who are an English rock band formed in 1964. The primary lineup consisted of guitarist Pete Townshend, vocalist Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They became known for energetic live performances including the pioneering spectacle of instrument destruction...
and, most famously,
The BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...
. The sound of these bands was hard-edged rock, with The Beatles' originally known for songs that were virtually identical to classic black rock songs by
Little RichardRichard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist and recording artist, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s...
,
Chuck BerryCharles Edward "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter.Chuck Berry is one of the pioneers of rock and roll music...
,
Smokey RobinsonWilliam "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown Records, second only to the company's founder, Berry Gordy...
,
The ShirellesThe Shirelles were an American girl group in the early 1960s, and the first to have a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100. The members of the quartet were Shirley Owens , Doris Coley The Shirelles were an American girl group in the early 1960s, and the first to have a number one single on...
and the Isley Brothers . Later, as the counterculture developed, The Beatles began using more advanced techniques and unusual instruments, such as the
sitarThe sitar is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages...
, as well as more original lyrics.
Folk-rock drew on the sporadic mainstream success of groups like the Kingston Trio and the
Almanac SingersThe Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with union organizing. Members Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie began playing together informally in 1940 or 1941...
, while Woodie Guthrie and
Pete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and a key figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early '50s as a member of The Weavers, most notably the 1950 recording of Leadbelly's...
helped to politically radicalize rural white folk music . The popular musician
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
rose to prominence in the middle of the 1960s, fusing folk with rock and making the nascent scene closely connected to the
Civil Rights MovementThe Civil Rights Movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. It was accompanied by much civil unrest and popular rebellion. The process was long and tenuous in many countries, and most of these movements did not achieve or...
. He was followed by a number of country-rock bands like
The ByrdsThe Byrds were an American rock and roll band. Formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964, The Byrds underwent several personnel changes, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973....
and the Flying Burrito Brothers and folk-oriented singer-songwriters like
Joan BaezJoan Chandos Baez is a folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style...
and the Canadian
Joni MitchellJoni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter.Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Western Canada and then busking on the streets of Toronto...
. However, by the end of the decade, there was little political or social awareness evident in the lyrics of pop-
singer-songwriterA singer–songwriter is a musician who writes, composes and sings their own material including lyrics and melodies. They often provide the sole accompaniment to an entire composition or song, typically using a guitar or piano...
s like
James TaylorJames Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
and
Carole KingCarole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. While she has been a successful songwriter for decades, her singing career and fame peaked during the first half of the 1970s....
, whose self-penned songs were deeply personal and emotional.
Psychedelic rock was a hard, driving kind of guitar-based rock, closely associated with the city of
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
. Though Jefferson Airplane was the only psychedelic San Francisco band to have a major national hit, with 1967's "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", the
Grateful DeadThe Grateful Dead were an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, and space rock—and for live performances of long musical...
, a folk, country and bluegrass-flavored
jam bandJam bands are musical groups whose albums and live performances relate to a fan culture that originated with the 1960s group Grateful Dead and continued in the 1990s with Phish and similar bands...
, "embodied all the elements of the San Francisco scene and came... to represent the counterculture to the rest of the country"; the Grateful Dead also became known for introducing the counterculture, and the rest of the country, to the ideas of people like
Timothy LearyDr. Timothy Francis Leary was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, advocate of psychedelic drug research, and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional...
, especially the use of hallucinogenic drugs like
LSDLysergic acid diethylamide, LSD-25, LSD, formerly lysergide, commonly known as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family...
for spiritual and philosophical purposes .
1970s and 80s
Following the turbulent political, social and musical changes of the 1960s and early 1970s, rock music diversified. What was formerly known as
rock and roll, a reasonably discrete style of music, had evolved into a catchall category called simply
rock music, an umbrella term which would eventually include diverse styles like
heavy metal musicHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States...
,
punk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and, sometimes even
hip hop musicHip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commonly based on concepts of loop, rapping, freestyle, DJing, scratching, sampling and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues...
. During the '70s, however, most of these styles were not part of mainstream music, and were evolving in the underground music scene.
The early 1970s saw a wave of
singer-songwriterA singer–songwriter is a musician who writes, composes and sings their own material including lyrics and melodies. They often provide the sole accompaniment to an entire composition or song, typically using a guitar or piano...
s who drew on the introspective, deeply emotional and personal lyrics of 1960s folk-rock. They included
James TaylorJames Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
,
Carole KingCarole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. While she has been a successful songwriter for decades, her singing career and fame peaked during the first half of the 1970s....
and others, all known just as much for the lyric ability as for their performances. The same period saw the rise of bluesy
Southern rockSouthern rock is a subgenre of rock music, and genre of country music. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country music, and blues, and is focused generally on electric guitar and vocals.-1950s and 1960s – origins:...
and
country rockCountry-rock is a musical genre formed from the fusion of rock with country music, with its country origins being initially referenced to the rockabilly music of the 1950s....
groups like the Allman Brothers Band and
Lynyrd SkynyrdLynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band, formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964. The band became prominent in the Southern United States in 1973, and rose to worldwide recognition before three members and one road crew member died in an airplane crash in 1977, including lead vocalist and primary...
. In the 1970s,
soft rockSoft rock is a style of music which uses the techniques of rock and roll to compose a softer, more toned-down sound for listening. Soft rock songs generally tend to focus on themes like love, everyday life and relationships...
developed, a kind of simple, unobtrusive and mellow form of pop-rock, exemplified by a number of bands like
AmericaAmerica is an English-American folk rock musical band, composed originally of members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek. The three members were barely past their teenage years when they became a musical sensation during 1972, with their main popularity during the early to mid 1970s and...
and
BreadBread was a late rock/pop band from Los Angeles, California. They placed 13 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1970 and 1977 and were a primary example of what later was labeled "soft rock", releasing a string of well-crafted, melodic soft rock singles.The band consisted of David Gates ,...
, most of whom are little remembered today; many were
one-hit wonderA one-hit wonder is a person or act known mainly for only a single success. The term is most often used to describe music performers with only one hit single.-Characteristics:...
s . In addition, harder
arena rockArena rock is a loosely defined term describing a generation of rock music. It was established by heavy metal, hard rock and progressive rock bands in the 1970s...
bands like
ChicagoChicago is an American pop rock/jazz fusion band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. The band began as a politically charged, sometimes experimental, rock band and later moved to a predominantly softer sound, becoming famous for producing a number of hit ballads. They had a steady stream of hits...
and
StyxStyx is an American rock band. Their hit songs have included "Come Sail Away", "Lady", "Mr. Roboto", "Renegade", "Babe", "Blue Collar Man" and "The Best of Times"...
also saw some major success. From the psychedelic style and diverse sounds exibited by the Beatles, Byrds, and other groundbreaking groups, a "progressive rock" style emerged, exhibiting elements of fusion and classical instrumentation and influence, and a larger-scale, artistically-oriented approach to its works. Concept albums and "album rock" went along with these trends, and key bands included The Moody Blues, Yes, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson.
The early 1970s saw the rise of a new style of country music that was as rough and hard-edged, and which quickly became the most popular form of country. This was
outlaw countryOutlaw country was a significant trend in country music during the late 1960s and the 1970s , commonly referred to as The Outlaw Movement or simply Outlaw music...
, a style that included such mainstream stars as
Willie NelsonWillie Hugh Nelson is an American country singer-songwriter, author, poet, actor and activist. He reached his greatest fame during the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, but remains iconic, especially in American popular culture.He has continued to tour, record and perform in recent years, and...
and
Waylon JenningsWaylon Arnold Jennings was an American country music singer and musician. A self-taught guitar player, he rose to prominence as a bass player for Buddy Holly following the break-up of The Crickets. He escaped death in the February 3, 1959 plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie...
. Outlaw country was very rock-oriented, and had lyrics that focused on the criminal, especially drug and alcohol-related, antics of its performers, who grew their hair long, wore denim and leather and looked like hippies in contrast to the clean-cut country singers that were pushing the Nashville sound .
By the mid-70's,
discoDisco is a genre of dance music that that had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, psychedelic and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
, a form of dance music, was becoming popular, evolving from underground dance clubs to mainstream America. Disco reached its zenith following the release of
Saturday Night FeverSaturday Night Fever is a 1977 film starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young man, coming of age, whose weekend activities are visits to a local Brooklyn discothèque and Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual girlfriend...
and the phenomenon surrounding the movie and the soundtrack by The Bee Gees. Disco's time was short, however, and by 1980 was soon replaced with a number of genres that evolved out of the
punk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
scene, like
New WaveNew Wave is a genre of rock and pop music that emerged in in the middle to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, and...
.
Bruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss", is an American singer-songwriter. He records and tours with the E Street Band...
became a major star, first in the mid to late 70s and then throughout the '80s, with dense, inscrutable lyrics and anthemic songs that resonated with the middle and lower classes .
70s funk and soul
In the early 1970s, soul music was influenced by psychedelic rock and other styles. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like
Marvin GayeMarvin Pentz Gay, Jr., better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and instrumentalist with a three-octave vocal range. Starting as a member of the doo-wop group The Moonglows in the late fifties, he ventured into a solo career after the group disbanded in 1960...
and
Curtis MayfieldCurtis Lee Mayfield was an American soul, R&B, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producer best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions and composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly. From these works and others, he is highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and of...
to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James Brown led soul towards more dance-oriented music, which eventually evolved into
funkFunk is an American music genre that originated in the late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
. Funk was typified by 1970s bands like
Parliament-FunkadelicParliament-Funkadelic is a funk, soul and rock music collective headed by George Clinton. They are the main performers of the soul and funk subgenre known as P-Funk and performed under the names Parliament and Funkadelic , and also in a score of offshoot groups and solo ventures...
,
The MetersThe Meters were an American funk band based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Meters performed and recorded their own music from the late 1960s until 1977 and also played an influential role as backing musicians for other artists such as Lee Dorsey and Dr John...
, and James Brown himself, while more versatile groups like
WarWar, originally called Eric Burdon & War and often typeset as WAR, is an American funk band from California, known for the hit songs "Low Rider", "Spill the Wine", "The Cisco Kid" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?". Formed in 1969, War was a musical crossover band which fused elements of rock, funk,...
, The Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire also became popular. During the '70s, some highly slick and commercial
blue-eyed soulBlue-eyed soul is rhythm and blues or soul music performed by white artists. The term was first used in the mid-1960s to describe white artists who performed soul and R&B that was similar to the music of the Motown and Stax record labels.The term continued to be used in the 1970s and 1980s,...
acts like Philadelphia's
Hall & OatesHall & Oates is a pop music duo made up of Daryl Hall and John Oates. The act achieved its greatest fame in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s. They specialized in a fusion of rock and roll and rhythm and blues styles, which they dubbed "rock and soul." Critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine & J...
achieved mainstream success, as well as a new generation of street-corner harmony or city-soul groups like
The DelfonicsThe Delfonics are a pioneering Philadelphia soul singing group, most popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their most notable hits include "La-La ", "Didn't I ," "Break Your Promise," "I'm Sorry," and "Ready or Not Here I Come "...
and Howard University's Unifics.
By the end of the '70s, Philly soul, funk, rock and most other genres were dominated by disco-inflected tracks. During this period, funk bands like
The O'JaysThe O'Jays are a Canton, Ohio-based soul/R&B group, originally consisting of Walter Williams , Bill Isles, Bobby Massey, William Powell and Eddie Levert . The O'Jays were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005...
and The Spinners continued to turn out hits. After the death of disco in 1980, soul music survived for a short time before going through yet another metamorphosis. With the introduction of influences from electro music and funk, soul music became less raw and more slickly produced, resulting in a genre of music that was again called
R&B, usually distinguished from the earlier rhythm and blues by identifying it as
contemporary R&B.
80s pop
By the 1960s, the term
rhythm and blues had no longer been in wide use; instead, terms like
soul music were used to describe popular African American music. In the 1980s, however,
rhythm and blues came back into use, most often in the form of
R&B, a usage that has continued to the present. Contemporary R&B arose when sultry funk singers like Prince became very popular, alongside dance-oriented pop stars like
Michael JacksonMichael Joseph Jackson , known as the "King of Pop", was an American musician and one of the most commercially successful and influential entertainers of all time...
and female vocalists like
Tina TurnerTina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have earned her the title "The Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...
and
Whitney HoustonWhitney Elizabeth Houston is an American recording artist, actress, and former fashion model. A relative to several prominent soul singers, including her mother Cissy Houston, cousins Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick, and godmother Aretha Franklin, Houston began singing at her New Jersey church as a...
.
By the end of the 1980s, pop-rock largely consisted of the radio-friendly
glam metalGlam metal is a term used to describe the visual style or fashion of certain heavy metal music bands that arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, particularly on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene...
bands, who used images derived from the British
glamGlam may refer to:* Glam Media, a life-style related Web company with its destination Glam.com* Free glam, a type of noise music* Glam , an album by electronica group Mouse on Mars* Glam metal, a sub-genre of heavy metal music...
movement with macho lyrics and attitudes, accompanied by
hard rockHard rock or heavy rock is a sub-genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage and psychedelic rock and is considerably harder than conventional rock music...
music and heavy metal virtuosic soloing. Bands from this era included many British groups like
Def LeppardDef Leppard are an English rock band from Sheffield, who formed in 1977 as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Largely on the strength of their albums Pyromania and Hysteria, Def Leppard became one of the top-selling rock bands throughout the 1980s, selling over 65 million albums...
, as well as heavy metal-influenced American bands
Mötley CrüeMötley Crüe is a American hard rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The band was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
,
Guns N' RosesGuns N' Roses is an American rock band that was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band, led by frontman and co-founder Axl Rose, has gone through numerous line-up changes and controversies since its formation...
,
Bon JoviBon Jovi is an American rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Fronted by lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi , Bon Jovi formed in 1983 with guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, bassist Alec John Such and drummer Tico Torres. Other than the departure of Alec John Such in 1994 and...
and
Van HalenVan Halen is a hard rock band formed in , USA in 1974. They enjoyed success from the release of their self titled debut album in 1978. As of 2007, Van Halen has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide and have had the most number one hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart...
.
The mid-1980s also saw
Gospel musicGospel music is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
see its popularity peak. A new form of gospel had evolved, called
Contemporary Christian musicContemporary Christian music is a genre of popular music which is lyrically focused on matters concerned with the Christian faith...
(CCM). CCM had been around since the late 1960s, and consisted of a pop/rock sound with slight religious lyrics. CCM had become the most popular form of gospel by the mid-1980s, especially with artists like
Amy GrantAmy Lee Grant is an American singer-songwriter, author, media personality and occasional actress, best known for her contemporary Christian music. Grant was born in Augusta, Georgia....
,
Michael W. SmithMichael W. Smith is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter, musician, recording artist, composer, and actor. He is one of the best-selling and most influential artists in Contemporary Christian Music, and he has achieved considerable success in the mainstream music industry as well...
, and
Kathy TroccoliKathleen Colleen Troccoli is a contemporary Christian singer, author, and speaker.-Personal:Born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 24, 1958, Troccoli moved at age three and was raised in the Islip Terrace community in Long Island, and graduated from East Islip High School, where, as a senior, fellow...
. Amy Grant was the most popular CCM, and gospel, singer of the 1980s, and after experiencing unprecedented success in CCM, crossed over into mainstream pop in the 1980s and 1990s. Michael W. Smith also had considerable success in CCM before crossing over to a successful career in pop music as well. Grant would later produce CCM's first #1 pop hit ("Baby Baby"), and CCM's best-selling album (
Heart In MotionHeart in Motion is the twelfth album by Christian pop singer Amy Grant, released in 1991 .In contrast with its predecessor, the natural-sounding Lead Me On, Heart In Motion consisted of songs that were heavy in the style of mainstream music of the time...
).
In the 1980s, the country music charts were dominated by pop singers with only tangential influences from country music, a trend that has continued since. The 1980s saw a revival of honky-tonk-style country with the rise of people like
Dwight YoakamDwight David Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter and actor, most famous for his country music. Active since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty albums and compilations, and has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.-Early life:Yoakam was born...
and the new traditionalists
Emmylou HarrisEmmylou Harris is an American country singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists.-...
and
Ricky SkaggsFor the punk rock musician, see Ricky Scaggs.Richard Lee "Ricky" Skaggs is a country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, and banjo.-Early career:Ricky Skaggs started playing music after he was given a mandolin...
, as well as the development of
alternative countryAlternative country is a term used to describe a number of country music subgenres that tend to differ from mainstream or pop country music. The term is sometimes known as alt-country and has included country music bands and artists that have incorporated influences ranging from American roots...
performers like
Uncle TupeloUncle Tupelo was an alternative country music group from Belleville, Illinois, active between 1987 and 1994. Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn formed the band after the lead singer of their previous band, The Primitives, left to attend college. The trio recorded three albums for Rockville...
. Later alternative country performers, like
WhiskeytownWhiskeytown was an alternative country band formed in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1994. Fronted by Ryan Adams, other members included Caitlin Cary, Phil Wandscher, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, and Mike Daly...
's
Ryan AdamsDavid Ryan Adams is a Grammy Award-nominated American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter from Jacksonville, North Carolina....
and
WilcoWilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois.Its name comes from the voice procedure term "wilco" meaning "will comply."...
, found some mainstream success.
Birth of the underground
During the 1970s, a number of diverse styles emerged in stark contrast to mainstream American popular music. Though these genres were not largely popular in the sense of selling many records to mainstream audiences, they were examples of
popular music, as opposed to
folkThe term folk music originated in the 19th century as a term for musical folklore. It has been defined in several ways; as music transmitted by word of mouth, music of the lower classes, music with no known composer...
or classical music. In the early 1970s, blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York City developed hip hop culture, which produced a style of music also called
hip hopHip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commonly based on concepts of loop, rapping, freestyle, DJing, scratching, sampling and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues...
. At roughly the same time, Latinos, especially Cubans and Puerto Ricans, in New York also innovated
salsa musicSalsa music is a diverse and predominantly Cuban Caribbean genre that is popular across Latin America and among Latinos abroad that was brought to international fame by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term has been used to describe most any...
, which combined many forms of Latin music with R&B and rock. The genres of
punk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and
heavy metalHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States...
were most closely associated with the United Kingdom in the 70s, while various American derivatives evolved later in the decade and into the 80s. Meanwhile, Detroit slowly evolved a series of
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
genres like
houseHouse is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American and Latino American communities, first in Chicago, then in New York City, New Jersey, Detroit and Miami...
and techno that later became a major part of popular music worldwide.
Hip hop
Hip hop is a cultural movement, of which music is a part, along with
graffitiGraffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
and breakdancing. The music is composed of two parts,
rappingRapping is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes, wordplay, and poetry. Rapping is a primary ingredient in hip hop music, but the phenomenon predates hip hop culture by centuries. Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment...
, the delivery of swift, highly rhythmic and lyrical vocals, and DJing, the production of instrumentation either through
samplingIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program on a digital computer. Sampling is also...
,
instrumentationA musical instrument is an object constructed or used for the purpose of making the sounds of music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture...
,
turntablismTurntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer. The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
or
beatboxingBeatboxing is a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments...
. Hip hop arose in the early 1970s in
The Bronx