The moan within the tone: African retentions in rhythm and blues saxophone style in Afro-American popular music

Popular Music ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Miller
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Tenor Saxophone ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
The People ◽  
American Popular Music

The tenor is a rhythm instrument and the best statements negroes have made of what their soul is have been on tenor saxophone. Now you think about it and you'll see I'm right. The tenor's got that thing, that honk, you can get to people with it. Sometimes you can be playing that tenor and I'm telling you the people want to jump across the rail. (Ornette Coleman)

Soul in Seoul

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal S. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Korean Music ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
Musical Production ◽  
Music Aesthetics ◽  
American Popular Music

Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop examines how K-pop cites musical and performative elements of Black popular music culture as well as the ways that fans outside of Korea understand these citations. K-pop represents a hybridized mode of Korean popular music that emerged in the 1990s with global aspirations. Its hybridity combines musical elements from Korean and foreign cultures, particularly rhythm and blues-based genres (R&B) of African American popular music. Korean pop, R&B and hip-hop solo artists and groups engage in citational practices by simultaneously emulating R&B’s instrumentation and vocals and enhancing R&B by employing Korean musical strategies to such an extent that K-pop becomes part of a global R&B tradition. Korean pop groups use dynamic images and quality musical production to engage in cultural work that culminates the kind of global form of crossover pioneered by Black American music producers. Korean R&B artists, with a focus on vocals, take the R&B tradition beyond the Black-white binary, and Korean hip-hop practitioners use sampling and live instrumentation to promote R&B’s innovative music aesthetics. K-pop artists also cite elements of African American performance in Korean music videos that disrupt limiting representations. K-pop’s citational practices reveal diverse musical aesthetics driven by the interplay of African American popular music and Korean music strategies. As a transcultural fandom, global fans function as part of K-pop’s music press and deem these citational practices authentic. Citational practices also challenge homogenizing modes of globalization by revealing the multiple cultural forces that inform K-pop.

scholarly journals Post-World War II Rhythm and Blues: Jump Blues, Club Blues, and Roy Brown

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-39
Author(s):  
Rob Bowman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
World War ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
American Popular Music

The classification of different styles of North American popular music has often been problematic. This paper investigates some of the music referred to as rhythm and blues (r & b) in the late 1940s and early 1950s by specifically looking at the works of one of the music's leading practitioners of the time, Roy Brown. Brown recorded both jump and club blues between 1947 and 1955, placing fifteen records in the Top 20 of the Billboard rhythm and blues charts. For the purposes of this paper fifty-four of the seventy-four songs that Brown recorded in this period were analyzed with respect to structure, performing force, performance style, tempo, arrangement, bass lines, approach to the beat, rate of singing, vocal ornamentation, and lyric content and structure. Three main subdivisions were found within Brown's repertoire, all connected to social behaviour, namely, dance. In the process, a basic biography of Brown is provided and his influence on many subsequent rhythm and blues and rock and roll performers is contextualized.

Rock ’n’ Roll

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wierzbicki
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Marketing Concept ◽  
Black Race ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Rock N Roll ◽  
Hillbilly Music

This chapter discusses the romantic genealogy of rock 'n' roll and how its style resulted from the happy integration of white hillbilly music with black “race music” or, as it came to be known in the 1950s, “rhythm and blues.” Supported by recent scholarship that has delved into the files of record companies, analyses affirm that rock 'n' roll represents a blatant appropriation of black music by white entrepreneurs. A postmodern view might regard rock 'n' roll not even as music, but as simply “a marketing concept that evolved into a lifestyle.” The chapter also analyzes how Bill Haley's recording of “Rock Around the Clock” turned the tide of American popular music in late 1955.

Popular Music and Jazz, 1950–Present

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-512
Author(s):  
THEO CATEFORIS
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
International Association ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
American Music ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Music Study ◽  
Tremendous Impact

The coverage of post-1950 popular music and jazz in the second edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music (hereafter referred to as the AmeriGrove II) is truly impressive in its range and scope. AmeriGrove II gives substantial space to a variety of styles ranging from rhythm and blues and rock to country and hip hop, a nod not only to the tremendous impact they have had on the making and consumption of U.S. music in recent decades, but also to the explosion in popular music scholarship witnessed in organizations like the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and the popular music study groups of the American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, and Society for Ethnomusicology. Throughout its many entries, AmeriGrove II showcases just how much the study of recent American popular music has grown since AmeriGrove I appeared nearly thirty years ago.

The origins of syncopation in American popular music

Popular Music ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
David Temperley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Fourth Position

AbstractThe origins of syncopation in 20th-century American popular music have been a source of controversy. I offer a new account of this historical process. I distinguish between second-position syncopation, an accent on the second quarter of a half-note or quarter-note unit, and fourth-position syncopation, an accent on the fourth quarter of such a unit. Unlike second-position syncopation, fourth-position syncopation tends to have an anticipatory character. In an earlier study I presented evidence suggesting British roots for second-position syncopation. in contrast, fourth-position syncopation – the focus of the current study – seems to have had no presence in published 19th-century vocal music, British or American. It first appears in notation in ragtime songs and piano music at the very end of the 19th century; it was also used in recordings by African-American singers before it was widely notated.

Step It Up and Go

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Menconi
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The State ◽  
College Town ◽  
American Idol ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
The Many ◽  
Nina Simone

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document