Motown music is a pop music style associated with Motown Records. In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr founded Motown, originally named Tamla Records. The record label helped define the sound of soul music and popularized the genre in the 1960s.
How do you describe Motown?
an upbeat, often pop-influenced style of rhythm and blues associated with the city of Detroit and with numerous Black vocalists and vocal groups since the 1950s, characterized by compact, danceable arrangements.
What is Motown music known for?
Motown, in full Motown Record Corporation, also called Hitsville, recording company founded by Berry Gordy, Jr., in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., in January 1959 that became one of the most successful Black-owned businesses and one of the most influential independent record companies in American history.
Is Motown a subgenre?
Motown tracks are considered a blend of eclectic genres, such as rhythm and blues and Jazz. It’s almost a crossover of the two major genres, having been described as ‘R&B music that sounds white. ‘
Is Motown a type of jazz?
Overview. The sound, a sophisticated strain of R&B and pop, is known for its polished songwriting with “candid” vocal delivery. Musicians involved in the production of a Motown track constituted a mix of eclectic musical backgrounds, such as jazz and rhythm and blues.
Is Motown soul music?
The Motown sound, which came of age in the 1960s, must also be considered soul music.
Was Motown all black?
Arriving at the height of the civil rights movement, Motown was a black-owned, black-centered business that gave white America something they just could not get enough of — joyous, sad, romantic, mad, groovin’, movin’ music. (See an audio slideshow of five of Motown’s best tunes.)
What is the tempo of Motown?
Tempo Information
The Motown is generally danced to music in a 4/4 meter between 80 and 150 beats per minute (20 and 37.5 measures per minute).
What was unique about the Motown Sound?
For many music fans, the Motown Sound is the defining sound of the 1960s pop, R&B, and soul music. The distinctive musical style—all tambourines, driving bass lines, and gospel-influenced vocal harmonies—became synonymous with the Detroit studio where the songs were recorded and the stars who sang them.
What was Motown’s studio called?
In 1959, Gordy formed his first label, Tamla Records, and purchased the property that would become Motown’s Hitsville U.S.A. studio.
What music genre are the Supremes?
the Supremes, American pop-soul vocal group whose tremendous popularity with a broad audience made its members among the most successful performers of the 1960s and the flagship act of Motown Records.
Is Northern Soul Motown?
The music style most associated with northern soul is the heavy, syncopated beat and fast tempo of mid-1960s Motown Records, which was usually combined with soulful vocals.
What defines soul music?
Definition of soul music
: music that originated in African American gospel singing, is closely related to rhythm and blues, and is characterized by intensity of feeling and vocal embellishments.
What was Gordy’s first hit?
Beginnings of Motown
One of Tamla’s labels was called Motown, the name that came to embody the company; the Motown Record Corporation was incorporated in 1960. The song “Money (That’s What I Want)”—performed and co-written by Barrett Strong—became a hit in 1960, with Gordy serving as co-writer as well.
