ETHNOGRAPHY

SOUL (GENRE)

SONIC (SOUND):

soul music is the fusion of African American gospel, Jazz, blues, and funk. soul is well known for its variation of vocalist such as, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and more. The main purpose of Soul in the beginning was to express how it feels to be black in America, but over time it has emerged into 4 different categories such as: economical, geographical, racial and historical. There were also different types of sounds within soul that also had split into sub genres depending on the area, race and instrumentation used. The most common sub genre was the Detroit Motown soul which began gaining popularity in the early 60s. This type of soul was heavily influenced by gospel vocals, instrumentation, fashion and choreographies.

The main instrumentation that was used in the early stages of the soul  were: Vocals (backing vocals), Guitar, Percussion, Drum kit, Horn section, Bass etc.  

VISUALS:
The fashion in the soul genre varied to Motown classy dresses and colorful suits, to hippie Afrocentric styles. During the time when soul was gaining a large amount of attention, the civil rights movements was occurring and also creating a profound affect through areas. One of the ways that musician where able to promote the civil rights movement was through fashion. famous singers such as Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and many more started to wear African attires, clothes and head wraps to promote black beauty and black power. Women also began wearing their natural hair to appreciate their natural textures, while also trying to state a point that beauty is more then the European standard of beauty . Since the 60s men and women still look back to Africa to admire both hair and clothing fashion.


PERFORMANCE AND ARRANGEMENTS
 The performance of these artist would be quite dramatic to add on affect and, also to be able to express the deeper meaning of the song. Instrumentation was heavily repeated throughout the songs. The riffs were created by base lines and occasionally chordal parts were created with either the guitar or the Piano. The main tempo of soul was 120 BPM and faster, but there was also slow Ballads such as When A Man Loves A Women (Percy Sledge), Change Is Gonna Come (Sam Cook) and Try A Little Tenderness (Otis Redding). Popular souls songs had a large amount of strong use vocals, instrumental hooks, and the use of  the call and response technique, that was influenced from early gospel Church music. The structure of most soul songs were verse chorus form and occasionally having a bridge or a instrumental section . Soul music melodies mainly used the pentatonic scales with added blues notes, this was mainly influenced by jazz ,blues and gospel chords from previous genres.

TECHNOLOGICAL:

During the Early 50s-60s  technological was still in its beginning stages, so the ways they would record songs was to do a live recording of whole bands in a single room. To make certain instruments or vocals sound much clearer they would put acoustic screens. The other technology they used were vocal over dubbing, plate reverb such as EMT 140, Compressors like teletonrix LA2A, stereo mixes, use of DI guitars and bases  electric instruments and many more.

MEDIATIC:

Soul was mainly an African American genre which was rarely promoted  because of racial segregation at the time. Soul music was rarely  shown on TV shows because of the complexion of some the artist, so the only way artist would earn money as well as becoming known through tours and vinyl recordings.

CORPOREAL:
Soul as a genre has  an emotional affect on both the audience as well as the performers. As a predominantly black genre It had many barriers to face, as at its prime there was a lot of unjust and inequality towards people of colour. One of the main main social impact within the 60s was the civil rights movement, which Soul genre both helped promote and also was inspired by.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The civil rights movement was a large protest which occurred throughout the 60s and 70s, to outlaw racial segregation and oppression, so people of colour can have basic privileges, opportunities and rights in America. Soul arist were able to promote this protest by empowering people through their music . These are a handful of the songs that were specifically created for the movement :  Change is gonna come Sam Cook, I'm black and I'm proud James Brown,  Strange Fruit Billie holiday and many more.

DISCURSIVE:
I believe that over the years Soul it has made a great impact in history. Soul is also well known for creating sub genre for example Blue Eyed Soul, Neo Soul, Funk and many more. Soul has also evolved over the years and has also inspired artist and new up and coming genres.