THE ANCESTRY AND CAUSE OF NEO SOUL

 

THE ANCESTRY AND CAUSE OF NEO SOUL 

Neo Soul is the Gen-X interpretation of Soul with its own personality and stories differing from Classic Soul (1954 -1979). Classic Soul is very much the sound of the Black human experiences of the Deep South during The Civil Rights Era. You hear in it, protest, hope, romance, heartbreak, struggle, pain, anger, joy, worry, faith and redemption. Also in it, the voices of women are rising to tell their stories and declare their autonomy and struggles with men. Aretha Franklin and Etta James enter the chat more defiant and outspoken than their more docile and graceful musical foremothers in the Blues and Jazz genre.

RnB (Rhythm & Blues) is what happened when blues artists collaborated with big band jazz and the tempo, beat, and cadence became just as an important feature as the emotional interpretations of the vocalist. More fast tempo meant for dancing and fun with a party and festive energy gave birth to Rock music (Little Richard). More slow tempo focusing on the deep emotions of the vocalist gave birth to Soul music (James Brown, Sam Cook). More mid-tempo for more of a lighter romance vibe, soon dominated by 4 and 5 part harmony groups became simply known as RnB (Doowop groups, Motown Groups- The Temptations, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder). So Blues married Jazz and had 3 babies, only differing in tempo and emotion, very slight differences in the beginning. Outside of the Black community, it was all just called "race music" and later simply sanitized as "RnB" that segregated Black artists from mainstream exposure. So, RnB means slightly different things inside and out of the Black community. In the Black community, RnB is mid-tempo love ballads and later rhythmic sexually suggestive music. Outside of the Black community, it is understood broadly as music from the Black community, excluding Hip-Hop because rap was not considered singing and gospel music was religious soul music meant for praise and worship and typically performed by mass choirs. To outsiders, RnB is secular music from The Black Community that involves singing emotionally. It does not demand vocal perfection, but emotional sincerity and experiential depth. 

Starting in 1954 and popping by 1956, Rock music got infiltrated, integrated and made mainstream with white acts like Elvis. By the time The Beatles entered the chat in 1960, white acts began to dominate the genre due to greater resources to expand their exposure. Many of their hits were covers from Black artists. By 1973, Rock was considered white people's music and mutated to more electric guitaring, caricaturing, and screaming (KISS). By the 1980s, there were almost  no leading Blacks acts left, except for Tina Turner, Prince and Michael Jackson who also produced music in the RnB and Electric Dance genre. 

As Rock began to leave the Black house of Rhythm & Blues, that left Soul (slow tempo with deep emotions primarily for soloists and sometimes with supporting background vocals) and RnB (mid-tempo, lighter energy with romantic and sexual vibes, mostly for harmony groups) and gospel (songs of divine faith in praise and worship, typically performed by mass choirs, varying tempos and often use of the organ.)

By 1980, the music houses of Motown and Stax had turned RnB and Soul music into a mainstream industry that started getting bought out by larger corporations. This was also at the start of the digital revolution when synthesizers and mixing boards began to replace live musicians. It turned the production of RnB more into music made in a factory. It was cheaper and could be mass produced. This spelled the temporary death of Soul music by removing creative controls from the artist to the demands of the record labels that wanted to sell whatever they believed was in demand at the time with deprioritized attention to the crafting of the art. Stars in the RnB space became more scripted characters they looked for actors to play. They had to be physically appealing to the masses as good looks get attention. This brought in sizism, colorism and ageism into a genre that once allowed artists to be their natural selves and they were appreciated the more genuine they were to themselves. This also demanded artists to be more sexualized where they hadn't before, because sex sells was the adage. RnB artists had to get fit and everybody needed to show some skin. Enter Whitney Houston, the upbeat and exuberant "good girl" with power vocals. Enter Janet Jackson, an edgier version of the "good girl" who was sassy and fun and specialized in the appetite for dance music. Enter New Edition, urban boys with swag who played into the digital revolution of music. If you were not a sex symbol or had aged out of youth, you could still perform if you had already built a following in another genre, but still had to adapt to the synth and mixing board sounds. This started a new chapter for Aretha Franklin from soul, Luther Vandross from disco and Chaka Kahn from her funk origins. They did the best they could to stay relevant, but it wasn't natural like it used to be. They had to perform what the execs wanted from them and had teams of writers on one song. Some have called this the fast food era of RnB when Soul is made in the kitchen, not the boardrooms with all of their polling data guessing at what the public wants. This was so capitalists could yield a profit as large as possible from the demand of Black music, and throw the artists away the moment an album did not match the success of their previous release. While artistic development is expected, this had artists sampling all kinds of gimmicks for relevancy rather than discovering, honing and staying true to their essence as an artist. Just because Michael Jackson was topping the charts with his dance hits, no other copycats of his style would be accepted. 

But Soul didn't really stop, it went underground. In 1981, jazz lounges still existed just outside the public eye. Sade began her career in London, offering a more easy listening version of jazz backed by dusky and sensual vocalizing. In 1982 Anita Baker and Diane Reeves joined this more easy listening version of soul and jazz that appealed to a more mature and cultured audience, not so much the youth. Nancy Wilson saw a space in this to move into. Enter Al Jareau, Patti Austin, James Ingram and Rachelle Farrell. Not quite Neo Soul yet, but the eventual springboard Soul music will take back to relevancy among the youth. 

The birth year of Neo-Soul would be 1993 with the release of “Anniversary” by Tony! Toni! Tone!, a group by Raphael Saadiq, and reaching peak relevancy by 1997. What happened? Gen-X (b. 1965 - 1980) had come of age and were entering maturity. In a lot of urban centers, the easy listening jazz lounges became a new hub of local Black creativity. It gave the stage not only to easy listening jazz, but also spoken word that really can trace its roots back to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, followed by the Beat Generation poets of the 1950s, and the Black Arts Movement during the Afrocentric Awakening starting in 1965. But this was the generation that had grown up with hip-hop culture but did not experience Jim Crow. They did experience urban blight, which were the effects of redlining, the infiltration of the drug trade during the 1970s and then the war on drugs and overpolicing of the 1980s. As always, Black people turned to art as a means of escape and healing. Hip-Hop by the early 1990s was drenched in violent narratives of gang violence, clashes with the police, and misogyny. The jazz lounges offered an alternative creative outlet where local artists could find an audience for their spoken word poetry, learn instruments, participate in this late age jazz culture, and turn their poetic skills into songwriting and singing. Des'Ree released "Gotta Be" in 1994 as an uplifting message of hope, resilience and love. As art imitates life, "Love Jones" a film released in 1997 features what that jazz night club lounge experience was like for Gen-Xers coming of age and finding in it romance, community and an alternative creative outlet from the depressing features of hood culture. For D'Angelo, this was real life for him, entering the music scene in 1994 and releasing his first album in 1995. The feature song from the soundtrack of "Love Jones" "Hopeless" by Dionne Farris cemented the relevancy of Neo Soul in pop culture by 1997. That same year, enters Erykah Badu. 1998, Lauryn Hill releases grammy award winning "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" after her break from the hip-hop group “The Fugees”. 1999 enters Jill Scott, a spoken word artist from Philadelphia. 2001, enters India Arie from Atlanta and Alicia Keys from New York. 

By 2001, Neo Soul is perceived as a separate subgenre of mainstream RnB, that repossessed artistic control for the artist, bringing back genuine songwriting by the artist, artist's control over their unique imagery, genuine emotion over vocal perfection and technological enhancements, and the return to a live pairing with the performance of instrumentalists and a minimizing of synthesizers and mixing boards. That was a renaissance for Soul music and it communicated the experiences and ideas of Black Gen-Xers. Romance and sexuality were not the only topics to explore. They could philosophize and convey deep life lessons marketeers of RnB did not believe profitable. Artists like India Arie, a vocalist and acoustic guitarist, enjoyed full liberty of this. It wasn't just about the struggle of being Black, as it was in Blues and Classic Soul. Neo-Soul gave space to the heart and minds of Black folks in ways that were redemptive and forward looking. 

Mainstream RnB remained focused on romance and relationship struggles in the ballads and increasingly more sexualized material “the baby makers” (R-Kelly) that was factory made productions as autotuning became more fashionable. When streaming peaked by 2008 and record deals exploited RnB groups to the max, the 3 and 4 and 5 part harmony groups began to fail due to being no longer sustainable. Destiny's Child disbanded in 2005. Some have called this the beginning of the dark ages of RnB. But Neo Soul has continued to thrive and find its way through these shake ups of how recorded is made, marketed and distributed as an industry. Beyonce as a solo artist has also managed to carry the torch of mainstream RnB through this moment with few rivals as she diversifies and evolves her style. She is one of the few remaining mainstream RnB artists to have full artistic control over her career. The rest have to answer to the execs. In addition to the trap and trance variations of RnB, afrobeats have entered the discussion.   

30 years later Neo Soul is also in a period of diversification and evolution: 

Neo soul has evolved and expanded beyond its original mainstream peak, with artists continuing to blend its characteristics with other genres. So we must look at Neo Soul as a movement back to Black artistic control rather than a separate entity of RnB. Most categorized Neo Soul artists don't prefer the label as it is limiting and boxes them in as did the label of "RnB". They view themselves as independent and individual artists producing Black music. Meanwhile, mainstream RnB is the fast food and what's served at restaurants. Soul and Neo Soul is what you make at home by and it allows you to be your truest self. For that matter, I believe Neo Soul will journey on as mainstream RnB is in a period of struggle and finding its way. 

I hope you enjoyed this journey with me through the mid-20th century to early 21st century history of Black American music which has globally shaped the recording music industry. With the focus on Neo Soul, the grandchild of Rhythm and Blues, explore these artists:

D’angelo, Maxwell, Raphael Saadiq, Lauryn Hill, Eric Benet, Bilal, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Leela James, Lalah Hathaway, Musiq Soulchild, Alicia Keys, Vivian Green, Angie Stone, India.Arie, Rahsaan Patterson, Ledisi, Dwele, Raheem Devaughn, Lizz Wright, Des'Ree, Dionne Farris, Anthony Hamilton, John Legend, Jaguar Wright, Emeli Sande, Gabrielle, Chrisette Michele, Laura Izibor, Meklit, Amel Larrieux, Avery Sunshine, MAJOR., Floetry, Meshell Ndegeocello, Durand Bernarr, Eric Roberson, PJ Morton, Tweet, Corrine Bailey Rae, Solange, KIRBY, Emily King, Macy Gray, October London, Heather Headley, Judith Hall, Algebra, Jaime Woods, Leslie Odom Jr., Jalen NGonda, Leon Bridges, Ben L’Oncle, Kevin Ross, Jon Batiste, David Ryan Harris, Robert Glasper, George Tandy Jr., Gary Clark Jr., Daniel Caesar, and Anderson .Paak, Keeyen Martin. Did I miss a nod to your favorite?