Skip to main content

Meshell Ndegeocello - Aquarium

Vocal harmony groups performed in the 1930s and ’40s with jazz bands and as independent groups... featured smooth harmonies based on barbershop, jazz, and sacred music. These groups, as well as the Ravens, Old Man River, 1947, established the model for the 1950s teenage a cappella groups that popularized the vocal harmony style on inner city street corners and the stoops of crowded apartment buildings as well as in parks and school gyms. Many of these bird groups... sang in a romantic style emulating the Orioles... who began recording in the late 1940s. Although they primarily sang a cappella, producers added sparse instrumentation, including guitar and drums played with brushes, to their commercial recordings... The addition of orchestral arrangements, sing along choruses, and Latin rhythms to rhythm and blues made this sound more compatible with the musical tastes of mainstream American adults. The producers for Motown added these pop production elements over a rhythm and blues foundation and incorporated the lyrics of young professional songwriters to produce the crossover Motown’s Sound of Young America.

In the mid 1950s, record labels began producing rhythm and blues music for consumption beyond African American communities, referred to as Uptown R&B. Targeting mainstream audiences, producers applied crossover formulas to the productions of vocal harmony groups. They, for example, replaced rhythm and blues elements with familiar pop production formulas, sing along refrains replaced call and response structures, pop vocal harmonies substituted for those associated with the blues and gospel traditions, orchestral arrangements, strings, marimba, tympani, and percussion, replaced rhythm and blues combos, and Latin flavored rhythms, especially the chacha beat, substituted for swing rhythms and heavy backbeats on 2 and 4... Artists also recorded pop standards known as Tin Pan Alley songs written by professional songwriters hired by music publishers beginning in the early 20th century. They wrote ballads, novelty songs, vaudeville and dance songs, among other styles. Some of the most frequently recorded pop standards include Over the Rainbow, Stormy Weather, Summertime, Georgia On My Mind, and At Last.


Meshell Ndegeocello - Aquarium feat. Ron Blake Sabina
  • Released on: The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel album
  • Written by: Meshell Ndegeocello
  • Genre: R&B, Soul

"Meshell Ndegeocello is a German born American singer/songwriter, rapper, and bassist. Her music has been featured in a number of film soundtracksand with the debut release of her 13th studio album, Ndegeocello joined the Blue Note label."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moondog - Behold

The history of jazz has been one of fusion. Its musicians and composers have continually drawn upon a huge range of different musics to create the rich and diverse tapestry that is world jazz today. Jazz is an evolving tradition of music making. And how often, in the life stories of individual jazz musicians, do we see these same patterns operating at microcosm? The richness of Turkish music and culture sometimes seems at odds with its turbulent and cruel history. In 1979... the country suffered its third military take over in thirty years... Every kind of music was in Turkey at that point. But it was not appreciated. To understand the culture of the country, with those three military takeovers, Turkey could not go anywhere. Musically, it was very difficult. But things were beginning to happen. Traditional Turkish music is essentially monophonic, rich in melody and rhythm but with little by way of harmony. The contrast with western music, with its beautiful harmonies but rhythmic weakn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday Genre: RnB Released in: 1984 Duration: 5:14 "The Gap Band was most successful when working with producer Lonnie Simmons, with four consecutive gold records. Their party train soon slowed to a stop. They reformed in the 90s and occasionally toured and attempted a comeback album." See Previous Song of the Day 
Post a Comment
Read more