The new blue music: Changes in rhythm & blues

ContemporaryR&B

Introduction

            Music has been one of many sources of entertainment globally. Contemporary R&B is one of the many music genres found globally. This type of music brings together elements of the old rhythm and blues, hip hop, pop, soul and funk. Contemporary R&B has a cultured record creation style, drum machine as well as smooth and a luxurious style of vocal understanding. Contemporary R&B commonly referred by many as Rhythm and Blues is my preferred type of music,             especially the one created by African-American artists. This music genre has a unique quality of its own. The emergence of the music was due to the need to identify the music differently from the other types of R&B that were originally there before the coming of contemporary R&B. Coming of Contemporary R&B resulted in combination or pulling together all other forms of music such as hip-hop, blues, pop, soul and funk and coming up with the new form of R&B. There is an increasing in the influence of this type of music. Our future generations should continue to listen and appreciate contemporary R&B music (Ripani, 2006).

            Since the introduction of this type of music (contemporary R&B) in 1980’s in disco scenes, the music has continued to flow as well as the older music that had merged to make the genre. Various artists have contributed to the development of this type of music. For example, Michael Jackson brought this music into the conventional music culture. The coming up of contemporary R&B gave its larger audience that before. The merge between hip hop and R&B brought music into a higher level in terms of appreciation by people. Since the turn of 21st century, hip hop also gained popularity as part of contemporary R&B, as the earliest form of R&B had gained in 1990’s. Through the incorporation with other types of music, the music was becoming more appealing and cool to the rhythm and blues followers as well as hip hop audiences. The use effects such as Autotune together with computerized synths have given R&B a more futuristic feel whilst still trying to include many of the genre’s general themes such as relationship and love. The advancements of the genre’s production and instrumentation have stimulated the success of artists such as Frank Ocean, Miguel and Janelle Monae among many others (Ripani, 2006).

References

Ripani, R. J. (2006). The new blue music: Changes in rhythm & blues, 1950-1999. Jackson:

University Press of Mississippi.Hoffmann, F., Carlin, R., & Zak, A. J. (2005). Rhythm & Blues, Rap, and Hip-Hop. New York:

Infobase Pub.