soul music

noun

1. a fervent type of popular music developed in the late 1950s by Black Americans as a secularized form of gospel music, with rhythm-and-blues influences, and distinctive for its earthy expressiveness, variously plaintive or raucous vocals, and often passionate romanticism or sensuality.

Word History and Origins

Origin of soul music¹

An Americanism dating back to 1960–65

Example Sentences

In September, the AI singer Xania Monet, whose genre is R&B and soul music, became the first virtual artist to enter the bestselling charts in the United States.

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Especially because I was in jazz choir in high school and it kind of taught me more about soul music and the origins and how there’s so many synchronicities within other genres like gospel, and how R&B and all of them just tie into each other.

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During a concert on the first evening of the festival, Aaron Cohen, a local scribe and author of books on Chicago-based jazz and soul music, told me to pay special attention to the drummer Makaya McCraven.

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“Against the grain of bland modern R&B, D’Angelo preserved the Gospel essence of early soul music, mixing it with every other genre of Black music without ever leaving the church,” Leeds said in an Oct.

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D’Angelo, who died Tuesday at 51, made soul music for three decades in that tender and attentive spirit.

Read more on Los Angeles Times