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R & B Essay

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R&B, also known as “rhythm and blues,” is a genre of music created by African Americans in the 1940s (MasterClass). R&B has very rich and complex origins, and it was mainly created for African American audiences. The term “race music” was the first word used to describe R&B music, but it was later changed to a less offensive term (Cavallari). In the early 1940s, R&B music became very popular in big cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York (MasterClass). Initially, R&B music consisted of soulful vocals, driving rhythms, and blues-inspired melodies; however, over time, this genre of music has become more heavily influenced by jazz and hip-hop. Despite the changes in this genre of music, it has grown and produced some of …show more content…

R&B was created and began in the 1930s, but it emerged into the United States in the 1940s. “Rhythm and Blues music was associated with Black youth in honky-tonks and after-hours clubs, and it was often dismissed as a lowbrow style of art compared to Jazz's more highbrow form of Black expression” (Nero). This new genre of music was heavily influenced by African Americans. According to (Henry, 2018), “Around that time, artists whose music consisted mostly of jazz began to use saxophones and brass instruments and more explicit lyrics, which gained the term “jump blues” because of its up-tempo style.” During the years 1950 and 1960, the sound of R&B was changing significantly, with certain artists shaping the “jump blues” style into “rock and roll” (Henry). Rock and roll mixed with R&B was a new type of music, so it intrigued many people and they liked this new style of music. These changes in the R&B industry were only just beginning, and getting better as the years continued. The article “The Evolution of R&B”, explains that with the “increase in disco, in the 1960s and 70s, the music style of R&B began to shape into its own form of music” (Henry). Artists like Michael Jackson and Prince expressed their music with the 1960/1970 R&B type music (Henry). As years progressed more artists were interested in the R&B genre because it included a more upbeat and hip hop style. With the introduction of more hip hop influenced music into R&B into the 1990s and early 2000s, the phrase “hip hop soul” was created, joining R&B with hip hop and urban culture

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This can be attributed to the network programmers who played only mainstream pop singers such as Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, and later Frank Sinatra. In 1957, Frank Sinatra is quoted as saying that, “Rock and roll is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression – lewd, sly, in plain fact, dirty – a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac and the marital music of every side-burned delinquent on the fact of the earth (www.ushistory.org/us/53d.asp). Obviously, rock and roll was not created overnight -- it all started with the first Rhythm and Blues artists that received mainstream attention even though they were black.

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