A soul laid bare on wax, a motif and a requiem. The track Run Run Run, “Playing the same old game, I can’t get through to you” Ann Peebles words weep, over a Willie Mitchell production. It’s 1974; soul music has gone funky. The ghetto stinks, with the elegy of civil rights, and turns to the new king, Heron. Soul’s popularity is eroded, like many musical genres its beauty had attracted crowds, money and lime light till it lost some of its earthy charms. Replaced by glitz and glamour, it was now at the height of disco and black was the new black. Yet it somehow still has one foot firmly set in its roots. From Memphis to Motown, LA to New York, soul music bares the fruits of counter culture.
Soul had come far and taken on the script of black America during a turbulent time. It’s origins dated back over two decades. The NAACP had politicised the emancipated black man and post-World War Two angst over the spread of Communism had caused McCarthyism. America was a powder keg of anti-establishment sentiment. Popular music of the day was Big Band and Blues and Jazz were suffering from the aged old problem of most mainstream music, they had lost their edge. It was during this time that in cities across America soul music was forming from a medley of gospel, R&B, Doo-Wop and Jazz. A child of the age, soul borrowed much of it sentiment and sound from this era.
It grew alongside its stylistic origins often merging and evolving these genres. It remains to this day a genre that is so flexible few artists can attest to being a purely soul musician. That is not to say that its sound is without definition that came later and was usually geographical. In Chicago the “Sweet Soul” sound was developed, which had heavy influence on seventies soul music. In Detroit Motown records was formed and produced arguably the most influential soul music enterprise ever. Meanwhile in Memphis they brewed, “Memphis Soul Stew”, mixing uptown beats with amazing vocalist such as Otis Reading and Wilson Picket. In New Orleans they produced their own fast paced soul, with the likes of Irma Thomson.
These cities amongst others helped pioneer soul music as a sound. It was the sound of an end to segregation. By the mid-50s segregation had ended, the Black Power Movement had gained traction amongst a disenfranchised “born free generation”. No were else was black power as readily available as in soul music, the first openly black originated and orientated music to achieve mainstream success. Yet it was more than the black youth that were flocking to buy soul, dissatisfaction with the government control during this period led many to soul, the bastion of counter culture. The birth of the 60s saw much of America united under a genre, that spoke to the disaffected youths across the worlds need to rebel.
Flower power, and Beat poets pushed the bounds and boundaries of a culture with new hedonistic ideas about sex and drugs. The 1960s saw the most drastic change to America’s culture since emancipation. More eloquently then in the High court’s and streets, this was reflected in top 100 billboard charts. In 1961 there wasn’t a single soul act on the top twenty of the billboard charts; by 1969 they made up so 65% of the chart. But like all good things soul’s popularity was coming to an end. The British invasion of the mid-60s had broke the flood gates for rock and pop. The Civil Rights Movement that had provided its backdrop was gearing down. As the world sobered after the heady ideals of the 60s, a new breed of grass roots activism combining the pragmatism of social programmes with the principles of self actualisation took the reins of civil rights from their predecessors. Groups like the Black Panthers and Brown Barrie’s armed themselves, following the firebrand ideals of civil rights leaders like Malcolm X, who advocated the use of gun to end police violence. The movement had gone underground and with it, soul’s popularity.
Enter the 70s; soul had evolved with the ghettos, getting gritty, down and funky. In 1971 Marvin Gaye sung “makes me wanna holla, the way they do my life”, in inner city blues, a testament to the hardships of ghetto life. It bemoans the disillusionment that followed the civil rights of the 60s. King was dead, so was Malcolm and with the loss of iconic leadership it seemed that the lack direction in the Civil Rights Movement led people to returned to their lives unsatisfied, confronted with grim realities of drugs crimes and a lack of civil liberties. We reach 1974. Ann’s words wail to us at how far a community had fallen, “you ought to know where you been”. But it seems too late, if soul and the Civil Rights Movement her motif, then this song is it’s requiem.
Mark Levettee
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