Soul is a genre of music that has originated from the combination of Gospel and R&B music. It originated in the US around 1950’s and has been popular from long time. This kind of music appears to be funky and freestyle. It has good rhythms and a synchronized sharp body movements that fade out in to the music. This genre of music can be improvised a lot.
The term Soul Music itself describes that it is related to Gospel. This kind of music is a gospel with secular and funky lyrics. Many people describe the soul music as having originated due to the dark experiences that were faced in the US and around the world in the 1940’s and 1950’s.
The inventor of soul music is believed to be Ray Charles who started with his continuous hits in 1954. Later Solomon Burke’s early recordings are said to influence soul music. Many people consider that soul music was born in Chicago in US. Later different regions adapted it and created their own soul styles based on their Gospel roots.
After 1970’s, The Staple singers and Al Green continued to make soul music. In the early 1970’s soul music has been influenced by psychedelic rock. Many artists led soul music towards different styles. Even though Funk and Disco dominated charts in the 70’s and 80’s, soul always remained a favorite for a particular group of people and remained a quite storm. Soul music was highly improvised by the end of 1980’s by electro and rock to become less raw. This resulted in a modified R&B style and was called contemporary rhythm and blues. This sounded far different from the actual R&B.
Berry Gordy’s Tamla or Motown group of labels was famous for being soul music. The various artists under this label were The Supremes, The Miracles, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Four Tops and Martha. Stax Records and Atlantic records produced soul and dance records with singers like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Picket and others.
As already said, Soul is highly versatile. There are many sub genres present under the main soul music. Some of the notable ones are Detroit(Motown) soul by Berry Gordy, Deep soul and southern soul which is a motivating and energetic soul style, Memphis soul that is a sultry and shimmering style of soul music, New Orleans soul that which came directly out of R&B era, Chicago soul which is having a less gospel influence on it, Philadelphia soul that has lush orchestral sound, Psychedelic soul which is a blend of psychedelic rock and soul music, Blue eyed soul, British soul, Neo soul that has a slight hip hop rhythm in it, Northern soul or Modern soul which was played by DJ’s at night clubs in 1960’s, Nu-Jazz and soulful electronica which is a blend of electronic and soulful music.
Soulful music in the modern world is a highly evolved one. It is still a very popular variant of music. Soul music has many sub roots which highly different from one another. That is the reason behind the success of soulful music.