Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
The history of popular music begins in the United States during the 19th century. African slaves were shipped to the United States to work. Life as a slave was not easy, but to make everyday life a little easier, they sang what are known as work songs. There, a singing technique known as "call and response" was often used, which means that someone sings a song phrase and the rest of the group responds with a song phrase. This technique has since become a large part of other music styles too, such as jazz, blues and soul.
During this time, the African slaves were not seen as human beings. They were forbidden to have their African culture and were instead forced into the Christian faith. However, they managed to take the Christian texts and perform them in their own way and it is this mixture of Christian faith and African culture that became the musical genre known as spirituals. Gospel music developed from spirituals and spread through churches and congregations.
The film "12 years a slave" depicts what it could look like on a cotton field in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. Here the cotton pickers sing a work song that contains call and response.
Mahalia Jackson is sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Gospel". Here she performs the song "Down by the riverside", which is a spiritual song that has its roots as far back as before the American Civil War.
Gospel evolved out of spirituals and often had happier lyrics. The musical style is recognizable by the fact that it is based on a strong choir, often in harmonies, that sings texts with a Christian message. The gospel spread quickly through churches and congregations.
Despite the abolition of slavery in 1865, after the end of the American Civil War, life was still hard for African-American people in the United States during the 20th century. They were no longer slaves, but their conditions had not improved for it. Racism in the country was during this time still strong, which led to segregation and discrimination. From this misery, the blues was born at the beginning of the 20th century.
At the same time as the blues grew bigger out in the countryside, a different style of music developed in the city of New Orleans and nearby areas during the 1920s. This style of music was called jazz.
During the 1940s, "rhythm and blues" or R&B became increasingly popular in the United States. The music style was originally created by and for African Americans in the United States and is a mixture of blues and jazz with elements of church gospel music. The style of music spread quickly across the country thanks to the radio and record player.
B.B. King
The blues' characteristic sound comes from the fact that melodies contain what are called "blue notes". It is these notes that give the blues its plaintive and melancholic sound.
An important musician and influence for the progress of the blues was Robert Johnson. He is sometimes referred to as the father of Rock'n'roll. One of his most famous songs is "Cross roads blues". According to legend, Robert long dreamed of becoming a skilled musician. When he didn't succeed, he decided to make a "deal". He went to a crossroads in Mississippi where he met the Devil himself. The devil took his guitar and tuned it, and taught Robert some songs. When he returned from this meeting, he was suddenly an incredibly skilled musician…
Jazz is a music genre that is characterized by, among other things, improvisation, advanced harmonics with "blue notes", swing and musical instruments that "answer" each other (so-called call and response). Common instruments within the genre are drums, bass, piano, guitar, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone and trombone.
New Orleans jazz is a type of traditional jazz that emerged in the early 1900s and has its origins in the piano-based music style called ragtime. A very famous ragtime song is "The entertainer" by Scott Joplin.
Typical of New Orleans jazz is that it can be experienced as "noisy" as many of the instruments play solos or stand-out phrases in a chaotic manner.
Swing is a type of jazz that developed during
the 1930s. The music was played by jazz orchestras that toured around the country. Many people liked the music because it was easy to dance to.
During this time, jazz is still classified as "black music" and is condemned by white society as animalistic and immoral. The music and the culture around it were strongly opposed by Nazi Germany.
For a long time it was almost only black people who listened to R&B. Racism was still strong in the US and many whites refused to listen to "black music". But in the early 1950s, something happened. Alan Freed, a radio host, discovered that even white teenagers were beginning to open their eyes to black R&B music. In 1951, he therefore started a radio program called Moondog's Rock'n'roll Party where the music was played. Alan's program became super popular and soon it was broadcast all over America. White musicians discovered the music and recorded their own versions of black musicians' songs.
... And so rock 'n' roll was born.
Ray Charles was a singer, songwriter and pianist who meant a lot to the development of music history. Combining jazz, blues and R&B, Ray Charles was one of many important musicians who pioneered new genres that became popular in the 50s and 60s.
Big Mama Thornton was an American singer and songwriter in the R&B genre. She was the first to record the song "Hound dog" which nowadays is mainly associated with Elvis Presley.
With the end of World War II, a new phenomenon started in American society: A growing youth culture. Youth rebelled against the adult world through rebellious popular culture that manifested itself in music, clothing, accessories, dance and film.
In the 1950s, Elvis Presley appears on the TV screen and shocks the United States with a breathtaking singing voice, swinging hips and an electric guitar in top form. The first time a concert was broadcast via satellite so that the broadcast reached the whole world, it was Elvis who was on stage in Hawaii. When Elvis started appearing on TV, they only dared to film him from the waist up. The parents thought that he wiggled his hips way too much. His breakthrough made a big impression on the continuation of music history and the musical styles that then came to be formed from rock 'n' roll.
Rock'n'roll was so much more than just music. It was a way of dressing and behaving. There were slick hairstyles, cool dances, motorcycles and cars. Rock'n'roll was like a revolution against the police, teachers and parents. It was the youth's own world in a society controlled by boring adults.
When The Beatles disbanded in the 70s, pop music looked all kinds of different. They took the best from other music styles and mixed it all into a wonderful musical mess. In the 1970s, pop music developed in all directions and edges and multitudes with different types of musicians entered the top charts. Disco bands like The Village People, funk musicians like Rick James and the toned-down Elton John - all were called pop music, simply because it was music that was popular. Soon a recipe for a typical pop song was created: three minutes of verses and choruses that made the listener want to sing along. When other music, such as electronic music or hip hop, appeared, the pop musicians picked up elements from there as well.
Hard rock was a natural further development of the experiments of the 60s. Rock'n'roll's original role as rebellious and loud was carried over into hard rock. But now even higher volume and more extreme effects were required.
It was only in the early 70s that hard rock really started to take off and it was then that the band that would lay the foundation for hard rock was formed, namely Black Sabbath. With their heavy distorted guitar riffs, dark themes and long guitar solos, they revolutionized hard rock. From Black Sabbath's shadow, several bands stepped into the limelight, such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Kiss.
During the 70s, hard rock was the hardest and most rebellious music, but has since become one of rock's broadest genres, drawing mass audiences to large arenas.
Typical stylistic features of hard rock
-High volume and aggressive sound
-Riff based
-Distorted guitars
-Long guitar solos
- Loud singing
Disco began as a narrow style of music, played mainly by DJs in clubs and rarely heard on the radio.
A typical feature of disco is that the bass drum plays on all beats, so-called "four on the floor". This also occurs in modern dance music.
One of the most successful pop/disco groups of the 70s was the Swedish ABBA. They broke through internationally in 1974 when they won the Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo".
Hip hop emerged in the early 70s in the poor district of the Bronx in New York. A DJ who called himself DJ Kool Herc realized that he could get the crowd going by cutting the instrumental parts out of famous songs that people loved. He could then create loops of these by connecting two different record players. Soon the technique spread to other DJs and they started experimenting with mixing different beats and bringing in rappers to make the music more exciting.
Instead of fighting each other, the gangs in the Bronx now started competing in hip-hop. Who could dance the best break dance? Who could paint the finest graffiti? And perhaps above all: who was the best at rapping? That competitive energy has since accompanied hip-hop until today, when it is still very much about who is the biggest and best.
Many hip-hoppers talk about "the four elements of hip-hop": rapping, DJing (or "scratching"), graffiti and breakdancing. The reason they have been merged is that they arose around the same time in the same area. Many young people who liked rap and DJing in the 70s liked to paint graffiti and to break dance. Eventually these elements began to associate with each other and since then they have joined together and become central parts of hip hop culture.
Throughout the 70s, the visual element in pop and rock had become increasingly important and people realized the advantages of using music videos when releasing new songs, but it wasn't until the 80s that the music video really took off.
The main reason was the founding of MTV in the US in 1981, a television channel entirely dedicated to playing music videos. Through MTV, the music video suddenly became at least as important as the radio in spreading the music.
Synths of various kinds became important for the sound of 80s music. But, above all, this was the "happy" 80s - the music was usually a little more "upbeat" than before and breathed positivism. Of course, it was society at large that shaped the sound that becomes popular, as it usually is.
By the time the 80s arrived, hard rock had become one of the world's biggest music styles. During this time, commercial varieties of hard rock developed. These variations were significantly more melodious, soft and "kind" than earlier hard rock, which meant that this type of hard rock also competed for the top positions on the charts all over the world.
During the 80s, the synth became one of the most important instruments for popular music. Famous artists who used this sound and became popular during this time were for example: Whitney Houston, Madonna and Eurythmics.
Guns n' Roses is one of the best selling bands of all time. A year after Guns N' Rose's debut album Appetite for Destruction (1987) was released, it went to number one on the Billboard 200.
A rock band that took advantage of the 80's love for the synth is the Swedish band Europe. Europe combined hard rock with synth pop and managed to write a hit that is still recognized and loved by many today, namely "the final countdown".
In the 80s, a new pop star shot through big: Michael Jackson. With his mix of R&B, funk and pop loops, he won a huge audience. Soon he received the title "King of Pop". Michael paved the way for a new kind of pop music, mixing dance and song to create monster hits.
In addition to writing incredible hits, Michael's music videos were also revolutionary. He combined music with film in a way that had not been seen before and the concept had a huge impact.
Michael Jackson was the first African-American to have his music (in rotation) on MTV. This was a starting point for the visibility of African-Americans on the channel and Michael Jackson can be said to have broken the racial barrier that had previously existed on MTV.
During the 1960s, a new era of music developed. Rock 'n' roll had opened the musical doors wide and artists were selling records in droves and every young person had a favorite band. At this time, rock 'n' roll begins to split and form two branches. A softer kind of pop-rock that suited the majority, and a tougher rock that was more dangerous.
In the past, it was American bands that led the development of popular music, but in the 1960s the Americans faced stiff competition from Great Britain. Bands like The Kinks and The Who gained a lot of fans. They tried to create a slightly softer sound compared to rock, a music that young people would like.
With The Beatles at the center of the pop genre, several bands and artists such as The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix came to take their place in the rawer rock music.
The Beatles had an enormous talent for creating pop music and with their help music interest grew worldwide. Even today, they are considered by many to be the most important band in history and when the group split in 1969, they had sold enormous amounts of records, over 1.3 billion! The Beatles started out as a fairly ordinary pop band, with melodies that were easy to sing along to and "appropriately" dangerous hairstyles. But soon they began to experiment with other styles, including traditional Indian music, and let their hair grow. The adults were in a state of chock and the fans fell in love.
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison
The Rolling Stones is a British rock band formed on May 25, 1962 in London. They are one of the world's most successful rock bands and have inspired many other artists and groups. During the 1960s, the Rolling Stones, together with The Beatles, were among the absolute most popular British music groups. Where the Beatles, despite some controversy, were seen as more "innocent", the Rolling Stones in the 1960s were seen as downright dangerous and obscene.