Today, singers like Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Drake and Jay-z, Mary J.
Blige and Mariah Carey, Shaggy and Adele hit our ears with singles played on the radio everyday.
We listen to their lyrics and their sounds without asking ourselves what are we actually listening.
We know it's hot, but is it pop, hip-hop, rock? In fact it's R&B, a music genre that compiles all the genres of our modern times.
Ask someone (anyone who's not a music savvy) what is this so called R&B and you'll get only some grumbles because it's difficult to define something that it's practically everywhere, in every music style you can think of.
For your update,read this article.
The history of R&B goes back to 1920, when the African Americans started to populate urban industrial centers of towns such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, bringing along their traditions, their culture, their music and creating in ten years two very popular styles called jazz and blues.
These two genres are the precursors of R&B, which was created by full-time musicians who overlapped jazz and blues and added some electric guitar, as well as piano and saxophone beats, while the emphasis fell on the song, not on improvisation.
It was a unique mosaic of sounds that was called at first "race music" because it originated in the black community, but which received a new name, "Rhythm and Blues", for marketing reasons.
In the '40s the beat was insistent and heavy, almost rocking, based on boogie-woogie rhythms that soon turned this kind of peculiar yet popular music into something called jumping blues.
Of course, the sound of R&B continued to evolve.
In the early '50s, thanks to his uptempo, funky rhythm and blues, Little Richard defined what was later called rock 'n' roll.
A rapid succession of rhythm and blues hits followed, starting with "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally" and with legendary ambassadors such as Elvis Presley and James Brown.
In the early '60s, soul music was in vogue but with time passing by, the R&B was pushed in different directions: the music was different because the regions of America were different.
From a music based on pop, gospel and rock 'n' roll in Detroit to one based on vocal interplay and smooth productions in New York and Chicago, this kind of genre started to split.
So, three decades later, a danceable R&B became an international phenomenon with the short disco mania.
During the '80s and '90s, R&B began amassing into its changing rhythms some stylistic components of hip-hop and Contemporary R&B emerged with representatives such as Michael Jackson, R.
Kelly, Boyz II Men, Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
At that time, the genre began to suffer a deviation as a grittier East Coast hip hop-inspired sound led to hip hop soul.
However, in 2000, artists were already singing and rapping in the same time in what became the new R&B - does Backstreet Boys ring a bell? According to Billboard magazine, the most commercially successful R&B acts of the moment are Usher, Beyoncé Knowles, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Rihanna.
Besides, for more than a decade, the prevailing R&B progressed due to the assimilation of various influences from contemporary pop, pop rock, dance-pop, and electro-pop, with a sound based more on rhythm.
But the pollination of this musical genre didn't stop.
R&B is like a growing organism that spreads its roots farther, swelling pieces from other musical genres that stand in its way but also creating new ones.
Blige and Mariah Carey, Shaggy and Adele hit our ears with singles played on the radio everyday.
We listen to their lyrics and their sounds without asking ourselves what are we actually listening.
We know it's hot, but is it pop, hip-hop, rock? In fact it's R&B, a music genre that compiles all the genres of our modern times.
Ask someone (anyone who's not a music savvy) what is this so called R&B and you'll get only some grumbles because it's difficult to define something that it's practically everywhere, in every music style you can think of.
For your update,read this article.
The history of R&B goes back to 1920, when the African Americans started to populate urban industrial centers of towns such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, bringing along their traditions, their culture, their music and creating in ten years two very popular styles called jazz and blues.
These two genres are the precursors of R&B, which was created by full-time musicians who overlapped jazz and blues and added some electric guitar, as well as piano and saxophone beats, while the emphasis fell on the song, not on improvisation.
It was a unique mosaic of sounds that was called at first "race music" because it originated in the black community, but which received a new name, "Rhythm and Blues", for marketing reasons.
In the '40s the beat was insistent and heavy, almost rocking, based on boogie-woogie rhythms that soon turned this kind of peculiar yet popular music into something called jumping blues.
Of course, the sound of R&B continued to evolve.
In the early '50s, thanks to his uptempo, funky rhythm and blues, Little Richard defined what was later called rock 'n' roll.
A rapid succession of rhythm and blues hits followed, starting with "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally" and with legendary ambassadors such as Elvis Presley and James Brown.
In the early '60s, soul music was in vogue but with time passing by, the R&B was pushed in different directions: the music was different because the regions of America were different.
From a music based on pop, gospel and rock 'n' roll in Detroit to one based on vocal interplay and smooth productions in New York and Chicago, this kind of genre started to split.
So, three decades later, a danceable R&B became an international phenomenon with the short disco mania.
During the '80s and '90s, R&B began amassing into its changing rhythms some stylistic components of hip-hop and Contemporary R&B emerged with representatives such as Michael Jackson, R.
Kelly, Boyz II Men, Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
At that time, the genre began to suffer a deviation as a grittier East Coast hip hop-inspired sound led to hip hop soul.
However, in 2000, artists were already singing and rapping in the same time in what became the new R&B - does Backstreet Boys ring a bell? According to Billboard magazine, the most commercially successful R&B acts of the moment are Usher, Beyoncé Knowles, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Rihanna.
Besides, for more than a decade, the prevailing R&B progressed due to the assimilation of various influences from contemporary pop, pop rock, dance-pop, and electro-pop, with a sound based more on rhythm.
But the pollination of this musical genre didn't stop.
R&B is like a growing organism that spreads its roots farther, swelling pieces from other musical genres that stand in its way but also creating new ones.