The History of Soul Music

By Christina Pomoni
Soul music is the creation of altering social conditions and diverse musical influences. Tracing its roots into the traditional folk songs of the African slaves that were brought at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, soul music was originally the 'African Spirituals' of the period between 1825 and 1850. These spirituals had significant harmonious and metrical relationships with West African songs and were often used by black slaves as a means of secret communication. By the end of the 19th century, they were replaced by gospel songs.

Black gospel music had developed out of a blend of earlier hymns, elements from the spirituals and black performance styles. The singing often reflected ecstatic dance and was accompanied by a piano or an organ, anchored with tambourines, electric guitar and hand-clapping.

During World War I, many black people migrated from the agricultural South to the industrial North. This population shift altered the setting and created a new demographic group which developed a new music genre known as R&B. In the late 1940s, R&B had become a massive phenomenon in the north with black R&B artists being promoted by black owned radio stations. Besides, white radio station owners, in the fear that the newly invented TV would make radio old-fashioned promoted and distributed R&B in an unprecedented way. At the same time, the South experienced the evolvement of jazz, which also traced its roots in the musical traditions of African slaves. Performed by piano soloists and small marching bands, jazz music featured spirituals, blues and hymns.

Soul music did not evolve until the mid-50s with the resurgence of gospel and doo-wop and the commercial blast of music for African-Americans. Tracing its roots in rhythm & blues and gospel, soul music was associated with the black civil rights movement through the metamorphosis of black music into a form of funky confirmation.

Besides, the dominant trend of the 1960s towards cultural integration enabled the development of soul as a means to integrate black and white America. By featuring catchy grooves, hand-clapping, spontaneous body moves, improvisational add-ons, and constant interplay between the soloist and the chorus, the soul genre made white America more open to the idea that African-American culture was not demeaning or corrupting, simply different. In a way, the sociopolitical inroads made by jazz popularized black music within the white audiences. The soul genre was also, rather indirectly, assisted by rock music, mostly because rock made white pop music sound old-fashioned. Without offering an alternative to the obsolete sounds of white pop music, rock music, in effect, legitimized black pop music.
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