Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, combining elements of African American 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 funky, secular testifying." Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds.
Read more about Soul Music: Origins, 1970s and Later
Famous quotes containing the words soul and/or music:
“Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that is, on any man’s experience but our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)