Rhythm & Blues... Are You A Fan?
Rhythm & Blues music is born of the Blues.
And the Blues in America was born out of the cotton fields and plantations throughout the Southern states of the United States... and the miserable plight of the black slaves who worked those cotton fields and were enslaved on those plantations.
Then the Blues blossomed out of the widespread discrimination that greeted those freed slaves after they were emancipated in 1863.
And ever since the black slaves introduced the world to the woeful, soulful sounds of the Blues... the Blues has been syncopated, orchestrated, revamped, recorded, broadcasted, performed, masqueraded and even copied and stolen by millions... all around the world.
And when the 1950s and 1960s ushered in the Rhythm & Blues era... it introduced the Blues to a whole new audience... a whole new age-group... and made it more attractive and more marketable. R&B was less mournful than the Blues and more soulful... with a rhythm and an easy beat to dance to.
Today, in America, we call it
Old School... that ageless, easy rhythm that has modern-day rappers copying its R&B choruses... as hooks for their rap recordings.
And thanks to this new era of R&B disciples, R&B has entered a new millenium... with new fans. Are you one of them?