About Soul music

Soul music is a combination of R&B and gospel and initiates in the late 1950s in the United States. Soul differs from R&B due to Soul music's use of gospel-music devices, its greater importance on vocalists and its merging of religious and secular themes.

Soul music can locate its roots in 4 different sources: racial, geographical, historical and economical. The 1950s soundtracks of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown are commonly considered the beginnings of soul music. There are many different types of Soul music, but not restricted to: Southern Soul, Neo-Soul and Psychedelic Soul (which paved the way for Funk music in the 1960s. Soul music was born in Memphis and more extensively in the southern US where most of the performing artists were from.

More than any other type of popular American music, Soul is the consequence of the combination and merging of previous styles and sub styles in the 1950s and 60s. Generally speaking, soul comes from a gospel (the sacred) and blues (the profane). Blues was mostly a musical style that praised the fleshly desire while gospel was more oriented toward spiritual inspiration.

Once it expanded popularity, Soul progressively came into white musical groups and was then called "Blue-Eyed Soul." Soul music ruled the black musical plans throughout the 1960s and motivated many other music styles such as present pop music and funk. In fact it never went away, it simply evolved..