History of Popular Music from 1950

The history of Music and Technology are closely linked. Due to technology growing over the last couple centuries artists and song writers can reach new and bigger audiences. Starting with singles then album collection and now even videos being streamed straight to phones. 

Rhythm & Blues, Rock'n'Roll

Modern music begins with rock'n'roll which started in the 1950s. Within the late 1940s musicians whittles down the big band formation to a very small amount such as just vocals, string bass, drums, piano, brass and syncopated version of the blues which they names 'rhythm and blues'. R&B, similarly to Jazz, is associated with sexuality and immorally and was disapproved of by the establishment. 

'Lyrics were laden and innuendo, and the dancing got very dirty' 

It was considered okay for the black youths in the poorer parts of the country, however was 
disapproved of from the polite white society. 

Elvis Presley recorded a record for his mother as a mothers day present. He sang religious gospel, western and even Dead n Martin material. Sam Phillips scouted Elvis as he thought he had exactly what he had been looking for - a white singer who sounded black. Many listeners assumed that Elvis was black. By combining the down'n'dirty rhythm with the blues, Sam Phillips created a new pop culture pair. He was classed as a country star simply for chart purposes, however in reality he was a new hybrid. Country infused rhythm and blues, which would eventually evolve into rockabilly and then rock'n'roll. 

Pop Music and Television

When the innovation of television cam out it had a major impact on people consuming popular music. Elvis Presley's performance of Hound Dog on the Milton Berle show brought a swarm and massive focus onto TV screens.

Elvis Hound Dog performance shoved Elvis into the international lime light.  

There was a concern that Elvis may be prone to social change and interation as he was white and yet sung black music, furthermore he had never made any attempt to hide the fact that his musical heros were black. 

Once Elvis appeared on TV is was clear that segregations were fighting a lost cause against the music. Everything was becoming combined, Rock'n'role was out and proud about the blend of black and white rhythm and soul. By 1957 mixed group tours were undergo.

'The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival were all introduced to the blues by Elvis.' - Bano from the Rolling stones, 2004

A blog of Jamal Edwards from The Guardian

Jamal Edwards - Found the online music channel SBTV. The channel is an online broadcaster of music promos, videos, interviews and imprompt live performances from the UK rap scene.

"I'm a rebel when it comes to filming." - Jamal Edwards films everywhere without permits - 'guerrilla style' 

Jamal scouts local rappers and asks them to perform on SBTV's next star performer. His channel got started in 2007 when he was 16 years old. The reason he started filming was due to the camera that he received for christmas. When he first received the camera he started filming his family estate, shooting footage of foxes in his garden. When he uploaded the video onto the internet he got 1,000 views. 

Jamal started filming grime music, which at the time was not mainstream and never featured on mainstream tv channels, at the time the only way to listen to it was via youtube, video or DVD. Jamal further started filming rappers who free-styled on streets, backstage at gigs or the back of cars. He didn't edit the videos once he filmed them, simply put them up the way the were. 

Jamal and his crew have been filming popular mainstream artists such as Ellie Goulding, Nicki Minaj and Bruno Mars - even Justin Bieber has been filmed on SBTV. Jamals channel now has 50,000 subscribers aswell as a total of 39 million video views. Jamal is now signed with SONY RCA and creates his owen imprints within the label.

"SBTV is excellent!" - Simon Cowell 

Jamal is his own boss in which he finds it difficult as he is younger than everyone else who works for him. "It's a bit daunting telling people what to do." Jamal tells the younger generation to:

"Chase your dream, not the competition, because looking at the competition will cloud your vision and mess you up in the long run."

Jamal plans to go to New York and do the same thing and work his way from the bottom to the top.

 "I'm a rebel. Im not scared to do anything: that's what makes me different."

This article has given me further ideas for my music video, such as not editing them too much, as it could give it an extra edge, depending on what kind of genre i do. 

A background to the music industry and some background theory

Pop music genre

Genre:'  'Classification of a text according to its style and content and possibly its form and manner of production.' 

Pop culture is the most dependent on genre and also includes the most wildly different genre of texts. Most genres are being invented or revisited. 

Most music will fall into one of these categories: 

• Pop
• Dance
• R&B
• Hip-Hop/Rap
• Rock
• Punk
• Country & Western
• Folk 
• Jazz
• Blues
• Latin
• Gospel 
• Reggae 
• New Age 
• Alternative

These catogories have 'Sub Genres', this includes hybrids and mash ups. Despite this, they hall have unique musical characteristics. This could be due to rhythm, the lyrics, vocal style or the instruments and how they are used. Visual factors such as clothing, hair style and the lifestyle they live could also be separating factors. 

.Each genre has institutional support such as nightclubs, radio stations, record shops, magazines and  festivals. There will always be a place in which plays a particular genre, especially when it comes to festivals. 

Genre and Artist Image

An artists image is key for the music genre which they are in. If you look at an artist you should be able to tell what genre they belong to before they start performing. For example, a rock band would probably wear leather and chains so that they truely fit and represent the catabory they belong to. They may further do this by taking publicity photos and through music videos etc. 

Hip Hop videos are usually hard to distinguish as they mainly feature boys wearing baggy clothes sitting on steps or outside houses in a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and smiling at the booty passing by' Likewise, all the boy or girl groups tend to go for the background of their video to include being shot in a ware house in im some kind of urban setting. 

Adele - Music draws in attention of classic pop styles of the 1960's and 1970's. Adele commonly wears classic retro clothing, which associates her with her music aswell as her role models such as Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield.

Genre and Sales

Everyone has their own music taste and tend to restrict ourself to a particular style of music, there fore not venturing out or buying anything outside that genre. Everything nowadays is separated into genres. FOr instance, if you go into HMV all the albums are sorted into genres - even online music streamer (e.g spotify) rely on your past genre choices in order to keep playing you new music you may be interested in buying. 

Personally, i prefer the genres R&B and alternative, however recently i have branched out and have started listening to others such as hip-hop and reggae. 

'Why piracy is purportrating plastic pop' by Halienne Lindvall

'Unwillingness to pay for music means more assembly line artists' and is also thought to have made it harder to create a rock 'n' roll revolution.

Lars Ulrich (lead singer of Metallica) spoke out about the problem with piracy and sued the site Napstar. This lead to a massive ordeal and public backlash from fans. They accused him of being greedy as he already had a lot of money so therefore should not be upset by piracy. He retaliated to these complaints saying that his actions were not due to money, but control.

Lily Allen (singer) was another victim of the publics reaction, saying that although her generation would be fine as they have already made their money out of the industry, however she voiced her concerns about the younger generation of artists saying that they wouldn't get they same experiance that she did. This comment made her prone to many violent messages on her blog aswell as death threats, so much so that she ended up taking her blog down.

Artists who came to fame before the digital act such as Massive Attacks 3D also voiced their concerns about the future generation of artists. 'This is how i make my living, it could be 25,000 downloads per site. Multiply that by all the illegal download sites in the world and thats my whole profit gone'

Noel Gallager spoke more into his own personal concerns 'It's takes me a quarter of a million to make an album, you're not getting it for nothing. I want my quarter of a million back, thankyou. That's why we're rockstars'

Billy Corgan from the smashing pumpkins explained how he makes his own 'world' and 'artwork'. He then complained how if he has gone through the whole effort of doing that then he simply can't understand why his fans wouldn't hand out maximum 10 pounds for one of his albums.  He further went on to say that what he thinks they need is a new band, one which breaks the mould of these cookie cut pop stars as he thinks that that could finally end piracy as the fans may actually respect the  artist they are buying from.

I shall keep this article in mind when creating my own music video, aswell as when i will now make sure that i buy music so that the artists recieve the money they deserve.