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Hard rock is a subgenre of rock music that characterized by its roots in the counterculture movements of garage rock, blues rock, and psychedelic rock. It features loud power chords, catchy vocals and distorted main riffs. It typically uses pentatonic scales and loud drums. Hard rock bands include Jimi Hendrix, Bon Jovi, Eric Claptons Cream, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Guns 'n' Roses, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, and Aerosmith. Instruments used are electric guitars, bass guitars, drumkit, synthysiesers, vocals and keyboards.

Hard rock (or heavy rock) is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music which make in the mid-1960s, with the musical movements. It is typified by a heavy use of aggressive vocals, distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, and often accompanied with pianos and keyboards.

Hard rock developed into a major form of popular music in the 1970s, with bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC and Van Halen. During the 1980s, some hard rock bands moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock, while others began to return to hard rock's sound. Established bands made a comeback in the mid-1980s and it reached a commercial peak in the 1980s, with glam metal bands like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard and the rawer sounds of Guns N' Roses, which followed up with great success in the later part of that decade. Hard rock began losing popularity with the commercial success of grunge and later Britpop in the 1990s.

Despite this, many post-grunge bands adopted a hard rock sound and in the 2000s there came a renewed interest in established bands, attempts at a revival, and new hard rock bands that emerged from the garage rock and post-punk revival scenes. In the 2000s, only a few hard rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed to sustain highly successful recording careers.

Hard rock is a form of loud, aggressive rock music. The electric guitar is often emphasised, used with distortion and other effects, both as a rhythm instrument using repetitive riffs with a varying degree of complexity, and as a solo lead instrument. Drumming characteristically focuses on driving rhythms, strong bass drum and a backbeat on snare, sometimes using cymbals for emphasis. The bass guitar works in conjunction with the drums, occasionally playing riffs, but usually providing a backing for the rhythm and lead guitars. Vocals are often growling, raspy, or involve screaming or wailing, sometimes in a high range, or even falsetto voice.

Hard rock has sometimes been labelled cock rock for its emphasis on overt masculinity and sexuality and because it has historically been predominately performed and consumed by men: in the case of its audience, particularly white, working-class adolescents.

In the late 1960s the term heavy metal was used interchangeably with hard rock, but gradually began to be used to describe music played with even more volume and intensity. While hard rock maintained a bluesy rock and roll identity, including some swing in the back beat and riffs that tended to outline chord progressions in their hooks, heavy metal's riffs often functioned as stand-alone melodies and had no swing in them. Heavy metal took on "darker" characteristics after Black Sabbath's breakthrough at the beginning of the 1970s. In the 1980s it developed a number of subgenres, often termed extreme metal, some of which were influenced by hardcore punk, and which further differentiated the two styles. Despite this differentiation, hard rock and heavy metal have existed side by side, with bands frequently standing on the boundary of, or crossing between, the genres.

The roots of hard rock can be traced back to the 1950s, particularly electric blues, which laid the foundations for key elements such as a rough declamatory vocal style, heavy guitar riffs, string-bending blues-scale guitar solos, strong beat, thick riff-laden texture, and posturing performances. Electric blues guitarists began experimenting with hard rock elements such as driving rhythms, distorted guitar solos and power chords in the 1950s, evident in the work of Memphis blues guitarists such as Joe Hill Louis, Willie Johnson, and particularly Pat Hare, who captured a "grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound" on records such as James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954). Other antecedents include Link Wray's instrumental "Rumble" in 1958, and the surf rock instrumentals of Dick Dale, such as "Let's Go Trippin'" (1961) and " Misirlou" (1962).

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In the 1960s, American and British blues and rock bands began to modify rock and roll by adding harder sounds, heavier guitar riffs, bombastic drumming, and louder vocals, from electric blues. Early forms of hard rock can be heard in the work of Chicago blues musicians Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf, The Kingsmen's version of " Louie Louie" (1963) which made it a garage rock standard, and the songs of rhythm and blues influenced British Invasion acts, including " You Really Got Me" by The Kinks (1964), " My Generation" by The Who (1965), " Shapes of Things" (1966) by The Yardbirds and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965) by The Rolling Stones. From the late 1960s, it became common to divide mainstream rock music that emerged from psychedelia into soft and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies. In contrast, hard rock was most often derived from blues rock and was played louder and with more intensity.

Blues rock acts that pioneered the sound included Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and The Jeff Beck Group. Cream, in songs like " I Feel Free" (1966) combined blues rock with pop and psychedelia, particularly in the riffs and guitar solos of Eric Clapton. Jimi Hendrix produced a form of blues-influenced psychedelic rock, which combined elements of jazz, blues and rock and roll. From 1967 Jeff Beck brought lead guitar to new heights of technical virtuosity and moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, The Jeff Beck Group. Dave Davies of The Kinks, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend of The Who, Hendrix, Clapton and Beck all pioneered the use of new guitar effects like phasing, feedback and distortion. The Beatles began producing songs in the new hard rock style beginning with the White Album in 1968 and, with the track "Helter Skelter", attempted to create a greater level of noise than the Who. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic has described the "proto-metal roar" of "Helter Skelter," while Ian MacDonald argued that "their attempts at emulating the heavy style were without exception embarrassing."

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Groups that emerged from the American psychedelic scene about the same time included Iron Butterfly, MC5, Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge. San Francisco band Blue Cheer released a crude and distorted cover of Eddie Cochran's classic " Summertime Blues", from their 1968 debut album Vincebus Eruptum , that outlined much of the later hard rock and heavy metal sound. The same month, Steppenwolf released its self-titled debut album, including "Born to Be Wild", which contained the first lyrical reference to heavy metal and helped popularise the style when it was used in the film (1969). Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), with its 17-minute-long title track, using organs and with a lengthy drum solo, also prefigured later elements of the sound.

By the end of the decade a distinct genre of hard rock was emerging with bands like Led Zeppelin, who mixed the music of early rock bands with a more hard-edged form of blues rock and acid rock on their first two albums Led Zeppelin (1969) and Led Zeppelin II (1969), and Deep Purple, who began as a progressive rock group but achieved their commercial breakthrough with their fourth and distinctively heavier album, (1970). Also significant was Black Sabbath's (1970), which combined guitar riffs with dissonance and more explicit references to the occult and elements of Gothic horror. All three of these bands have been seen as pivotal in the development of heavy metal, but where metal further accentuated the intensity of the music, with bands like Judas Priest following Sabbath's lead into territory that was often "darker and more menacing", hard rock tended to continue to remain the more exuberant, good-time music.

In the early 1970s the Rolling Stones developed their hard rock sound with Exile on Main St. (1972). Initially receiving mixed reviews, according to critic Steve Erlewine it is now "generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album". They continued to pursue the riff-heavy sound on albums including It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (1974) and Black and Blue (1976). Led Zeppelin began to mix elements of world and folk music into their hard rock from Led Zeppelin III (1970) and Led Zeppelin IV (1971). The latter included the track " Stairway to Heaven", which would become the most played song in the history of album-oriented radio. Deep Purple continued to define hard rock, particularly with their album Machine Head (1972), which included the tracks " Highway Star" and "Smoke on the Water". In 1975 guitarist Ritchie Blackmore left, going on to form Rainbow and after the break-up of the band the next year, vocalist David Coverdale formed Whitesnake. 1970 saw The Who release Live at Leeds , often seen as the archetypal hard rock live album, and the following year they released their highly acclaimed album , which mixed heavy rock with extensive use of synthesizers. Subsequent albums, including Quadrophenia (1973), built on this sound before (1978), their last album before the death of pioneering rock drummer Keith Moon later that year.

Emerging British acts included Free, who released their signature song "All Right Now" (1970), which has received extensive radio airplay in both the UK and US. After the breakup of the band in 1973, vocalist Paul Rodgers joined supergroup Bad Company, whose eponymous first album (1974) was an international hit. The mixture of hard rock and progressive rock, evident in the works of Deep Purple, was pursued more directly by bands like Uriah Heep and Argent. Scottish band Nazareth released their self-titled début album in 1971, producing a blend of hard rock and pop that would culminate in their best selling, Hair of the Dog (1975), which contained the proto-power ballad " Love Hurts". Having enjoyed some national success in the early 1970s, Queen, after the release of Sheer Heart Attack (1974) and A Night at the Opera (1975), gained international recognition with a sound that used layered vocals and guitars and mixed hard rock with heavy metal, progressive rock, and even opera. The latter featured the single " Bohemian Rhapsody", which stayed at number one in the UK charts for nine weeks.

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In the United States, macabre-rock pioneer Alice Cooper achieved mainstream success with the top ten album School's Out (1972). In the following year blues rockers ZZ Top released their classic album Tres Hombres and Aerosmith produced their eponymous début, as did Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd and proto-punk outfit New York Dolls, demonstrating the diverse directions being pursued in the genre. Montrose, including the instrumental talent of Ronnie Montrose and vocals of Sammy Hagar and arguably the first all American hard rock band to challenge the British dominance of the genre, released their first album in 1973. Kiss built on the theatrics of Alice Cooper and the look of the New York Dolls to produce a unique band persona, achieving their commercial breakthrough with the double live album in 1975 and helping to take hard rock into the stadium rock era. In the mid-1970s Aerosmith achieved their commercial and artistic breakthrough with Toys in the Attic (1975), which reached number 11 in the American album chart, and (1976), which peaked at number three. Blue Öyster Cult, formed in the late 60s, picked up on some of the elements introduced by Black Sabbath with their breakthrough live gold album On Your Feet or on Your Knees (1975), followed by their first platinum album, Agents of Fortune (1976), containing the hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", which reached number 12 on the Billboard charts. Journey released their eponymous debut in 1975 and the next year Boston released their highly successful début album. In the same year, hard rock bands featuring women saw commercial success as Heart released Dreamboat Annie and The Runaways débuted with their self-titled album. While Heart had a more folk-oriented hard rock sound, the Runaways leaned more towards a mix of punk-influenced music and hard rock. The Amboy Dukes, having emerged from the Detroit garage rock scene and most famous for their Top 20 psychedelic hit "Journey to the Center of the Mind" (1968), were dissolved by their guitarist Ted Nugent, who embarked on a solo career that resulted in four successive multi-platinum albums between (1975) and his best selling Double Live Gonzo (1978).

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From outside the United Kingdom and the United States, the Canadian trio Rush released three distinctively hard rock albums in 1974-75 (, Fly by Night and Caress of Steel ) before moving toward a more progressive sound with the 1976 album . The Irish band Thin Lizzy, which had formed in the late 1960s, made their most substantial commercial breakthrough in 1976 with the hard rock album and their worldwide hit " The Boys Are Back in Town", which reached number 8 in the UK and number 12 in the US. Their style, consisting of two duelling guitarists often playing leads in harmony, proved itself to be a large influence on later bands. They reached their commercial, and arguably their artistic peak with Black Rose: A Rock Legend (1979). The arrival of Scorpions from Germany marked the geographical expansion of the subgenre. Australian-formed AC/DC, with a stripped back, riff heavy and abrasive style that also appealed to the punk generation, began to gain international attention from 1976, culminating in the release of their multi-platinum albums Let There Be Rock (1977) and Highway to Hell (1979). Also influenced by a punk ethos were heavy metal bands like Motörhead, while Judas Priest abandoned the remaining elements of the blues in their music, further differentiating the hard rock and heavy metal styles and helping to create the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which was pursued by bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon and Venom.

With the rise of disco in the US and punk rock in the UK, hard rock's mainstream dominance was rivalled toward the later part of the decade. Disco appealed to a more diverse group of people and punk seemed to take over the rebellious role that hard rock once held. Early punk bands like The Ramones explicitly rebelled against the drum solos and extended guitar solos that characterised stadium rock, with almost all of their songs clocking in around two minutes with no guitar solos. However, new rock acts continued to emerge and record sales remained high into the 1980s. 1977 saw the début and rise to stardom of Foreigner, who went on to release several platinum albums through to the mid-1980s. Midwestern groups like Kansas, REO Speedwagon and Styx helped further cement heavy rock in the Midwest as a form of stadium rock. In 1978, Van Halen emerged from the Los Angeles music scene with a sound based around the skills of lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen. He popularised a guitar-playing technique of two-handed hammer-ons and pull-offs called tapping, showcased on the song "Eruption" from the album , which was highly influential in re-establishing hard rock as a popular genre after the punk and disco explosion, while also redefining and elevating the role of electric guitar.

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The opening years of the 1980s saw a number of changes in personnel and direction of established hard rock acts, including the deaths of Bon Scott, the lead singer of AC/DC, and John Bonham, drummer with Led Zeppelin. Whereas Zeppelin broke up almost immediately afterwards, AC/DC pressed on, recording the album Back in Black (1980) with their new lead singer, Brian Johnson. It became the fifth-highest-selling album of all time in the US and the second-highest-selling album in the world. Black Sabbath had split with original singer Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 and replaced him with Ronnie James Dio, formerly of Rainbow, giving the band a new sound and a period of creativity and popularity beginning with Heaven and Hell (1980). Osbourne embarked on a solo career with Blizzard of Ozz (1980), featuring American guitarist Randy Rhoads. Some bands, such as Queen, moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock, while others, including Rush with Moving Pictures (1981), began to return to a hard rock sound. The creation of thrash metal, which mixed heavy metal with elements of hardcore punk from about 1982, particularly by Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer, helped to create extreme metal and further remove the style from hard rock, although a number of these bands or their members would continue to record some songs closer to a hard rock sound. Kiss moved away from their hard rock roots toward pop metal: firstly removing their makeup in 1983 for their album, and then adopting the visual and sound of glam metal for their 1984 release, , both of which marked a return to commercial success. Pat Benatar was one of the first women to achieve commercial success in hard rock, with three successive Top 5 albums between 1980 and 1982.

Often categorised with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, in 1981 Def Leppard released their second album , mixing glam-rock with heavy metal, and helping to define the sound of hard rock for the decade. The follow-up (1983), reached number two on the American charts and the singles " Photograph", "Rock of Ages" and "Foolin'", helped by the emergence of MTV, all reached the Top 40. It was widely emulated, particularly by the emerging Californian glam metal scene. This was followed by US acts like Mötley Crüe, with their albums Too Fast for Love (1981) and Shout at the Devil (1983) and, as the style grew, the arrival of bands such as Ratt, White Lion, Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot. Quiet Riot's album Metal Health (1983) was the first glam metal album, and arguably the first heavy metal album of any kind, to reach number one in the Billboard music charts and helped open the doors for mainstream success by subsequent bands.

Established bands made something of a comeback in the mid-1980s. After an 8-year separation, Deep Purple returned with the classic Machine Head line-up to produce Perfect Strangers (1984), which reached number five in the UK, hit the top five in five other countries, and was a platinum-seller in the US. After somewhat slower sales of its fourth album, Fair Warning , Van Halen rebounded with the Top 3 album in 1982, then reached their commercial pinnacle with . It reached number two on the Billboard album chart and provided the track "Jump", which reached number one on the singles chart and remained there for several weeks. The new medium of video channels was used with considerable success by bands formed in previous decades. Among the first were ZZ Top, who mixed hard blues rock with new wave music to produce a series of highly successful singles, beginning with "Gimme All Your Lovin'" (1983), which helped their albums Eliminator (1983) and Afterburner (1985) achieve diamond and multi-platinum status respectively. Others found renewed success in the singles charts with power ballads, including REO Speedwagon with "Keep on Loving You" (1980) and "Can't Fight This Feeling" (1984), Journey with "Don't Stop Believin'" (1981) and "Open Arms" (1982), Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is", Scorpions' "Still Loving You" (both from 1984), Heart's "What About Love" (1985) and "These Dreams" (1986), and Boston's "Amanda" (1986).

Bon Jovi's third album, Slippery When Wet (1986), mixed hard rock with a pop sensitivity and spent a total of 8 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 12 million copies in the US while becoming the first hard rock album to spawn three top 10 singles - two of which reached number one. The album has been credited with widening the audiences for the genre, particularly by appealing to women as well as the traditional male dominated audience, and opening the door to MTV and commercial success for other bands at the end of the decade. The anthemic The Final Countdown (1986) by Swedish group Europe was an international hit, reaching number eight on the US charts while hitting the top 10 in nine other countries. This era also saw more glam-infused American hard rock bands come to the forefront, with both Poison and Cinderella releasing their multi-platinum début albums in 1986. Van Halen released (1986), their first album with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals, which was number one in the US for three weeks and sold over 6 million copies. By the second half of the decade, hard rock had become the most reliable form of commercial popular music in the United States.

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Established acts benefited from the new commercial climate, with Whitesnake's self-titled album (1987) selling over 17 million copies, outperforming anything in Coverdale's or Deep Purple's catalogue before or since. It featured the rock anthem "Here I Go Again '87" as one of 4 UK top 20 singles. The follow-up Slip of the Tongue (1989) went platinum, but according to critics Steve Erlwine and Greg Prato, "it was a considerable disappointment after the across-the-board success of Whitesnake". Aerosmith's comeback album Permanent Vacation (1987) would begin a decade long revival of their popularity. Crazy Nights (1987) by Kiss was the band's highest charting release in the US since 1979 and the highest of their career in the UK. Mötley Crüe with Girls, Girls, Girls (1987) continued their commercial success and Def Leppard with (1987) hit their commercial peak, the latter producing seven hit singles (a record for a hard rock act). Guns N' Roses released the best-selling début of all time, Appetite for Destruction (1987). With a "grittier" and "rawer" sound than most glam metal, it produced three top 10 hits, including the number one "Sweet Child O' Mine". Some of the glam rock bands that formed in the mid-1980s, such as White Lion and Cinderella experienced their biggest success during this period with their respective albums (1987) and Long Cold Winter (1988) both going multi-platinum and launching a series of hit singles. In the last years of the decade, the most notable successes were (1988) by Bon Jovi, (1988) by Van Halen, Open Up and Say... Ahh! (1988) by Poison (1989) by Aerosmith, and Mötley Crüe's most commercially successful album Dr. Feelgood (1989). New Jersey spawned five Top 10 singles, a record for a hard rock act. In 1988 from 25 June to 5 November, the number one spot on the Billboard 200 album chart was held by a hard rock album for 18 out of 20 consecutive weeks; the albums were OU812, Hysteria, Appetite for Destruction, and New Jersey. A final wave of glam rock bands arrived in the late 1980s, and experienced success with multi-platinum albums and hit singles from 1989 until the early 1990s, among them Extreme, Warrant Slaughter and FireHouse. Skid Row also released their eponymous début (1989), reaching number six on the Billboard 200, but they were to be one of the last major bands that emerged in the glam rock era.

Hard rock entered the 1990s as one of the dominant forms of commercial music. The multi-platinum releases of AC/DC's The Razors Edge (1990), Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II (both in 1991), Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tears (1991), and Van Halen's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991) showcased this popularity. Additionally, The Black Crowes released their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker (1990), which contained a bluesy classic rock sound and sold five million copies. In 1992, Def Leppard followed up 1987's Hysteria with Adrenalize , which went multi-platinum, spawned four Top 40 singles and held the number one spot on the US album chart for five weeks.

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While these few hard rock bands managed to maintain success and popularity in the early part of the decade, alternative forms of hard rock achieved mainstream success in the form of grunge in the US and Britpop in the UK. This was particularly evident after the success of Nirvana's (1991), which combined elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a "dirty" sound that made use of heavy guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback, along with darker lyrical themes than their "hair band" predecessors. Although most grunge bands had a sound that sharply contrasted mainstream hard rock, several, including Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden, were more strongly influenced by 1970s and 1980s rock and metal, while Stone Temple Pilots managed to turn alternative rock into a form of stadium rock. However, all grunge bands shunned the macho, anthemic and fashion-focused aesthetics particularly associated with glam metal. In the UK, Oasis were unusual among the Britpop bands of the mid-1990s in incorporating a hard rock sound.

In the new commercial climate glam metal bands like Europe, Ratt, White Lion and Cinderella broke up, Whitesnake went on hiatus in 1991, and while many of these bands would re-unite again in the late 1990s or early 2000s, they never reached the commercial success they saw in the 1980s or early 1990s. Other bands such as Mötley Crüe and Poison saw personnel changes which impacted those bands' commercial viability during the decade. In 1995 Van Halen released , a multi-platinum seller that would be the band's last with Sammy Hagar on vocals. In 1996 David Lee Roth returned briefly and his replacement, former Extreme singer Gary Cherone, was fired soon after the release of the commercially unsuccessful 1998 album Van Halen III and Van Halen would not tour or record again until 2004. Guns N' Roses' original lineup was whittled away throughout the decade. Drummer Steven Adler was fired in 1990, guitarist Izzy Stradlin left in late 1991 after recording Use Your Illusion I and II with the band. Tensions between the other band members and lead singer Axl Rose continued after the release of the 1993 covers album The Spaghetti Incident? Guitarist Slash left in 1996, followed by bassist Duff McKagan in 1997. Axl Rose, the only original member, worked with a constantly changing lineup in recording an album that would take over fifteen years to complete.

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Some established acts continued to enjoy commercial success, such as Aerosmith, with their number one multi-platinum albums: (1993), which produced four Top 40 singles and became the band's best-selling album worldwide (going on to sell over 10 million copies), and (1997). In 1998, Aerosmith released the number one hit "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", which remains the only single by a hard rock band to debut at number one. AC/DC produced the double platinum Ballbreaker (1995). Bon Jovi appealed to their hard rock audience with songs such as "Keep the Faith" (1992), but also achieved success in the adult contemporary genre, with the Top 10 ballads "Bed of Roses" (1993) and "Always" (1994). Bon Jovi's 1995 album was a bigger hit in Europe than it was in the United States, spawning four Top 10 singles on the UK Singles Chart. Metallica's (1996) and (1997) each sold in excess of 4 million copies in the US and saw the band develop a more melodic and blues rock sound. As the initial impetus of grunge bands faltered in the middle years of the decade, post-grunge bands emerged. They emulated the attitudes and music of grunge, particularly thick, distorted guitars, but with a more radio-friendly commercially oriented sound that drew more directly on traditional hard rock. Among the most successful acts were the Foo Fighters, Candlebox, Live, Collective Soul, Australia's Silverchair and England's Bush, who all cemented post-grunge as one of the most commercially viable subgenres by the late 1990s. Similarly, some post-Britpop bands that followed in the wake of Oasis, including Feeder and Stereophonics, adopted a hard rock or "pop-metal" sound.

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A few hard rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed to sustain highly successful recording careers. Bon Jovi were still able to achieve a commercial hit with "It's My Life" from their double platinum-certified album (2000). and AC/DC released the platinum-certified Stiff Upper Lip (2000) Aerosmith released a number two platinum album, Just Push Play (2001), which saw the band foray further into pop with the Top 10 hit "Jaded", and a blues cover album, Honkin' on Bobo , which reached number five in 2004. There were reunions and subsequent tours from Van Halen (with Hagar in 2004 and then Roth in 2007), The Who (delayed in 2002 by the death of bassist John Entwistle until 2006) and Black Sabbath (with Osbourne 1997-2006 and Dio 2006-2010) and even a one off performance by Led Zeppelin (2007), renewing the interest in previous eras. Additionally, hard rock supergroups, such as Audioslave (with former members of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden) and Velvet Revolver (with former members of Guns N' Roses, punk band Wasted Youth and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland), emerged and experienced some success. However, these bands were short-lived, ending in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The long awaited Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy was finally released in 2008, but only went platinum and failed to come close to the success of the band's late 1980s and early 1990s material. More successfully, AC/DC released the double platinum-certified (2008). Bon Jovi continued to enjoy success, branching into country music with "Who Says You Can't Go Home", which reached number one on the Hot Country Singles chart in 2006, and the rock/country album Lost Highway , which reached number one in 2007. In 2009, Bon Jovi released another number one album, , which marked a return to their hard rock sound.

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The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Texas based The Sword, California's High on Fire, Sweden's Witchcraft and Australia's Wolfmother. Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album combined elements of the sounds of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Fellow Australians Airbourne's début album Runnin' Wild (2007) followed in the hard riffing tradition of AC/DC. England's The Darkness' Permission to Land (2003), described as an "eerily realistic simulation of '80s metal and '70s glam", topped the UK charts, going quintuple platinum. The follow-up, One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back (2005), reached number 11, before the band broke up in 2006. Los Angeles band Steel Panther managed to gain a following by sending up 80s glam metal. A more serious attempt to revive glam metal was made by bands of the sleaze metal movement in Sweden, including Vains of Jenna, Hardcore Superstar and Crashdïet.

Although Foo Fighters continued to be one of the most successful rock acts, with albums like In Your Honor (2005) reaching number two in the US and UK, many of the first wave of post-grunge bands began to fade in popularity. Acts like Creed, Staind, Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback took the genre into the 21st century with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs. They were followed in this vein by new acts including Shinedown and Seether. Acts with more conventional hard rock sounds included Andrew W.K., Beautiful Creatures and Buckcherry, whose breakthrough album (2006) went platinum and spawned the single "Sorry" (2007), which made the Top 10 of the Billboard 100. These were joined by bands with hard rock leanings that emerged in the mid-2000s from the garage rock or post punk revival, including Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Kings of Leon, and Queens of the Stone Age from the US, Three Days Grace from Canada, Jet from Australia and The Datsuns from New Zealand. In 2009 Them Crooked Vultures, a supergroup that brought together Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones attracted attention as a live act and released a self-titled debut album that reached the top 20 in the US and UK and the top ten in several other countries.

Nicolas Bénard, La culture Hard Rock, Paris, Dilecta, 2008.

Nicolas Bénard, Métalorama, ethnologie d'une culture contemporaine, 1983-2010, Rosières-en-Haye, Camion Blanc, 2011.

Fast, Susan (2001). In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511756-5

Fast, Susan (2005). "Led Zeppelin and the Construction of Masculinity," in Music Cultures in the United States, ed. Ellen Koskoff. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-96588-8

Guibert, Gérôme, and Fabien Hein (ed.) (2007), "Les Scènes Metal. Sciences sociales et pratiques culturelles radicales", Volume! La revue des musiques populaires, n°5-2, Bordeaux: Éditions Mélanie Seteun. ISBN 978-2-913169-24-1

Kahn-Harris, Keith, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, Oxford: Berg, 2007, ISBN 1-84520-399-2

Kahn-Harris, Keith and Fabien Hein (2007), "Metal studies: a bibliography", Volume! La revue des musiques populaires, n°5-2, Bordeaux: Éditions Mélanie Seteun. ISBN 978-2-913169-24-1 Downloadable here

Weinstein, Deena (1991). Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. Lexington. ISBN 0-669-21837-5. Revised edition: (2000). Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-80970-2.

Template:Timeline of heavy metal and hard rock music

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Hard rock is a subgenre of rock music that characterized by its roots in the counterculture movements of garage rock, blues rock, and psychedelic rock. It features loud power chords, catchy vocals and distorted main riffs.

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This page looks at the vocabulary of Soul Music through its history, people and songs. For other genres see Popular Music Genres.

Soul music is a genre of African American popular music that led to many later genres, from funk and dance music to hip hop and contemporary R&B. It developed in the USA in the late 1950s from African American church music called "gospel music". After slavery ended in 1865, African Americans weren't welcome in the churches of white Americans, so they built their own churches and sang Christian songs with African-American vocal styles and rhythms. They sang joyful, up-tempo gospel songs while clapping and moving to the beat, and they sang slower gospel songs that expressed deep feelings like yearning for God's love. These different styles led to the two main styles of soul music.

Early Soul Music

The first soul songs were created when gospel songs were changed into secular songs by rewriting the lyrics. Joyful, up-tempo gospel songs became up-tempo soul songs, while slower gospel songs became romantic love songs. An example of the up-tempo style is R&B artist Ray Charles' 1954 song I've Got a Woman (Way Across Town), a secular version of the old gospel song I've Got a Savior (Way Across Jordan). Another example is Ray's first crossover hit What'd I Say in which he uses a gospel-music call and response to exchange sexy "oohs" and "aahs" with the Raelettes, his female backing singers. An example of the slower style is former gospel singer James Brown's 1956 song Please, Please, Please in which he changed a gospel song about yearning for God's love into a song about yearning for a girl's love.

Another gospel singer who changed gospel songs into secular songs was Sam Cooke. Sam had joined the gospel group Soul Stirrers as a teenager, but he was forced to leave the group in 1956 after recording the song Lovable, a secular version of the group's gospel song Wonderful. His beautiful yet powerful voice can be heard on his first 1957 crossover hit You Send Me. The song was so popular that it replaced Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock at the top of the pop-music charts. It was the first of nearly thirty crossover hits he recorded before writing his last and greatest song A Change is Gonna Come in 1964. The song expressed his yearning for an end to racism, but before it was released Sam was murdered in Los Angeles. Even though his life was cut short, his success opened the way for many other African American soul singers.

Northern Soul: Detroit and Chicago

The most popular style of soul music in the early-60s was Motown's pop soul. In 1959, businessman Berry Gordy started Motown Records in the northern city of Detroit, Michigan. His songwriters and artists created the "Motown sound" and produced dozens of pop-soul hits that young Americans loved. Motown had nearly eighty top-ten crossover hits from 1960 to 1969, and Motown's house band the Funk Brothers played on nearly all of them. They were skilled jazz musicians who could also make great pop music. They made the rhythms on Motown songs easy for white listeners to hear and dance to by playing tambourine and rhythm guitar on the second and fourth beats of each bar. They also had female singers like Diana Ross and The Supremes use girlie pop-music voices instead of their natural bluesy voices, as blues great Etta James had done on her classic soul song I'd Rather Go Blind.

Some of Motown's best singles include You've Really Got a Hold on Me and The Tracks of My Tears by The Miracles, Uptight (Everything's Alright) by Stevie Wonder and I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye, whose 1971 album What's Goin' On is now regarded as one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music. Motown's biggest hit was I'll Be There by The Jackson 5, featuring eleven-year-old Michael Jackson on lead vocals. With his amazing talent, young Michael could sing in any style including classic soul, as in the song Who's Loving You.

A very different style of soul developed in Chicago, Illinois. Curtis Mayfield and his group The Impressions had been recording for Vee-Jay Records since 1956, but in the early-60s Curtis became involved in the civil rights movement. He began writing powerful songs about the problems African Americans were facing, such as poverty, racism and injustice. These songs included Keep on Pushing, We're a Winner and his biggest hit People Get Ready, now regarded as one of greatest songs ever written. In 1970 Curtis began his own record label, Curtom Records, and released a series of classic soul albums including his soundtrack album for the film Superfly.

Southern Soul: Memphis

The two main styles of soul music that developed in the South were a powerful, dynamic style called "deep soul" and a smooth, beautifully-produced style called "Memphis soul". Both styles developed in Memphis, Tennessee, with Stax Records producing deep soul and Hi Records producing Memphis soul. Stax produced records with driving R&B rhythms played by their mixed-race house band Booker T. & the M.G.'s and funky brass riffs played by their horn section The Mar-Keys. As well as recording their own hits like the classic R&B instrumental Green Onions, the house band played on dozens of deep-soul hits like Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour and Sam and Dave's Soul Man and Hold On, I'm Comin'.

Booker T. & the M.G.'s also played on the records of Otis Redding, Stax's biggest star. Otis had a strong voice that was perfect for up-tempo soul, but he could also use a softer voice in romantic soul ballads. His dynamic performances on the Stax European tour and at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 made him a huge star worldwide with hits like I've Been Loving You Too Long and Respect. His greatest song was his last recording (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay. Like Sam Cooke three years earlier, Otis never saw the release of his greatest song. He died in a plane crash in December 1967, just three weeks before its release. His death shocked the world, but Stax survived and artists like Isaac Hayes and The Staple Sisters continued to release classic soul records.

The Memphis soul produced at Hi Records was some of the most beautiful soul music ever made. House band the Hi Rhythm Section provided a solid beat and a funky feel to which house producer Willie Mitchell added strings, horns and backing singers to create a rich soul sound. Hi Record's biggest star Al Green had many crossover hits in the early 70s including Let's Stay Together and Call Me. He also recorded the gospel-soul classics Take Me To The River and Love and Happiness.

Other soul artists from the South include Aretha Franklin, who brought female gospel styles to soul music in the mid-60s, and Percy Sledge, whose 1966 single When a Man Loves a Woman became one of soul's biggest-selling records. Both these artists, as well as many others, recorded some of their best music with a group of soulful white session musicians called the Swampers at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Soul Music's Influence

Soul music of the 60s and 70s led to many other genres, including funk and hip hop. Funk music began when singers like James Brown began using soul's rhythmic grooves to make dance music, and hip hop began when DJs started rapping over these rhythmic grooves. But soul music itself didn't die out. British singers like George Michael and Sade had some of the biggest soul hits of all time in the 80s, as did Michael Jackson and Prince with their exciting new styles of pop soul and funk. But by this time both soul and funk were being marketed under the new term "R&B".

In the late 80s singers like Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige were producing a style of smooth, commercial soul called contemporary R&B. But many younger artists preferred the raw sounds of 60s and 70s soul and funk. They also loved the urban beats of hip hop, and by mixing these elements they created a new style in the 90s called neo soul. Best-selling neo-soul albums include Me'Shell NdegéOcello's Plantation Lullabies, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, D'Angelo's Brown Sugar, and Lauryn Hill's 1998 masterpiece The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

New Styles of the 21st Century

Neo soul and the smoother sounds of contemporary R&B continued into the 21st century, but they were soon joined by two new styles; "retro soul" and "alternative R&B". Retro soul became popular after British jazz singer Amy Winehouse recreated the sounds of 60s soul on her Grammy-winning 2006 album Back to Black. Her success led to the rise of other retro-soul singers like Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Leon Bridges and Michael Kiwanuka.

Alternative R&B, on the other hand, began around 2010 when young artists like Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. The Weeknd) and Frank Ocean started using both electronic and acoustic instruments to create moody beats over which they sang haunting songs about depression, addiction, heartbreak and other difficult topics. Since then the label has been applied to many non-mainstream styles from the futuristic R&B of Kelela and Janelle Monáe to Sampha and Blood Orange's lyricism and Childish Gambino's retro-funk. At the same time more mainstream contemporary R&B artists such as Maxwell, SZA, Solange, Beyoncé and Miguel have also been keeping soul music's legacy alive and well.

Styles, artists and recommended albums

Gospel to Soul: Sam Cooke - Night Beat, Portrait of a Legend, Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul, Amazing Grace

UK Pop Soul: David Bowie - Young Americans, George Michael - Faith, Sade - Diamond Life, Love Deluxe

US Pop R&B: Michael Jackson - Off The Wall, Thriller, Prince - 1999, Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation

Alternative R&B: The Weeknd - Trilogy, Frank Ocean - Channel Orange, Kelela - Take Me Apart, Blood Orange - Negro Swan

Contemporary R&B: Maxwell - Embrya, The-Dream - Love/Hate, Miguel - War & Leisure, Beyoncé - Lemonade, SZA - Ctrl

backing singer (also "backup singer" [Nth Am. English] and "backing vocalist") (noun): a singer who gives vocal support to a lead singer - Tessa was one of Joe Cocker's backing singers.

bar (noun): one of many small sections in a piece of music that contains a fixed number of beats - Each bar in the song has four beats.

call and response (noun): two musical phrases, one of which answers the other - The call and response is before the last chorus.

civil rights movement (noun): a demand for social justice by oppressed people - Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement in the 60s.

classic (adjective): very good and highly-regarded for a long time - Neil loves those classic American cars of the 50s.

contemporary R&B (noun): recent R&B that mixes soul, pop and hip hop sounds - Contemporary R&B is really popular these days.

crossover hit (noun): an R&B, soul or country song that's on the pop-music charts - We'll all be rich if we have a crossover hit.

dynamic (adjective): lively and having a lot of energy - Apple Corp is one of the world's most dynamic IT companies.

groove (noun): repetitive, rhythmic pattern played by a rhythm section - Hip-hop artists still use James Brown's grooves in their beats.

horn section (noun): a group of musicians playing brass instruments and saxophones - How many songs does the horn section play on?

house band (noun): a group of session musicians who work for a music company - House bands don't become famous, but singers do.

house producer (noun): one of a record company's full-time music producers - How many house producers does Sony Music have?

neo soul (noun): a style that mixes contemporary R&B and 60s or 70s soul - Angelina played some great neo soul tracks at our party.

pop soul (noun): a style of soul music with a pop-music sound - Mum's listening to pop soul again.

racism (noun): the dislike or hatred of a whole race of people - Racism has always existed in our country.

secular (adjective): not religious, or with no connection to religion - We sent our kids to a secular school, not a religious one.

session musician (noun): a musician who can be hired to play on a recording - Session musicians don't get much work these days.

soundtrack album (noun): an album containing music made for a film - Has the soundtrack album been released yet?

tambourine (noun): an instrument with metal discs that rattles when hit or shaken - Mick Jagger often plays tambourine when he sings.

the South (noun): the southeastern part of the USA - Racism has always been a bit worse in the South.

yearn (verb): to want something very much - His yearning for a better world is expressed in his songs.

Soul Music Quiz

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A look at the vocabulary of soul music through its history and people. With words, meanings and example sentences. Vocab for ESL learners and teachers.

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American folk music has no precise nameable origin because it organically grew out of a communal tradition more than for entertainment or profit. There are folk songs that date so far back they can be considered oral histories. Certainly, in America, songs by traditional American folk singers like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie tell stories that often don't even appear in history books.

From its origins, folk music has been the music of the working class. It is community-focused and has rarely enjoyed commercial success. By definition, it is something anyone can understand and in which everyone is welcome to participate. Folk songs range in subject matter from war, work, civil rights and economic hardship to nonsense, satire and, of course, love songs.

From the onset of American history, folk music has shown up at times when the people needed it most. The earliest folk songs rose from slave fields as spirituals such as "Down by the Riverside" and "We Shall Overcome." These are songs about struggle and hardship but are also full of hope. They sprang from the need of the worker to go to a place in her brain where she knew there was more to the world than the hardships she was facing at the time.

Finding Common Ground Through Music

The 20th Century brought folk music back into the American psyche as workers struggled and struck for child labor laws and the eight-hour workday. Workers and folk singers gathered in churches, living rooms and union halls, and learned songs that helped them cope with their rough work environment. Joe Hill was an early folk songwriter and union agitator. His songs adapted the tunes of Baptist hymns by replacing the words with verses about the ongoing labor struggles. These tunes have been sung during worker strikes and in union halls ever since.

In the 1930s, folk music enjoyed a resurgence as the stock market crashed and workers everywhere were displaced, scrambling for jobs. A series of droughts and dust storms encouraged farmers out of the Dust Bowl region and toward promises in California and New York State. These communities were found in boxcars and jungle camps, as workers tried to make their way from job to job.

Woody Guthrie was one of those workers who headed to California in search of gainful employment. Woody wrote hundreds of songs between the 1930s and his death in 1967 of Huntington's Chorea.

In the 1940s, bluegrass began to evolve as a distinct genre with greats like Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, which spawned banjo legend Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt, as well as Del McCoury and others.

A New Generation of Folk Songs

In the '60s, again, the American worker found himself in a struggle. This time, the main concern was not wages or benefits, but civil rights and the War in Vietnam. American folk singers gathered in coffee shops and at hootenannies in San Francisco and New York. They picked up the legacies of Woody Guthrie and others, singing songs about the concerns of the day. Out of this community rose Folk Rock's superstars including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez. Their work dealt with everything from love and war to work and play. The 1960s folk revival offered political commentary while articulating a powerful promise for change.

By the 1970s, folk music had begun to fade into the background, as the US pulled out of Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement saw its biggest triumphs. Throughout the decade, folk singers continued to persevere. James Taylor, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens and others wrote songs about relationships, religion, and the continuously-evolving political climate.

In the 1980s, folk singers focused on the Reagan-led economy and trickle-down economics. In New York, the Fast Folk Café opened and spawned the likes of Suzanne Vega, Michelle Shocked, and John Gorka.

The Best is Yet to Come

Today, American folk music has begun to swell again as the working class finds themselves in a position of economic recession and social change is welling up for everyone from the working and middle class to LGBT people, immigrants and others struggling for equality. As concerns have surfaced for civil rights for LGBT workers and unrest across the Middle East, folk singers in New York, Boston, Austin, Seattle, and lower Appalachia have emerged with a new, innovative approach to traditional music.

The alt-country movement that came to a head in the 1990s has given way to an Americana upsurge. A new generation of bluegrass bands has changed run with the idea of new grass and progressive bluegrass, adding elements of jazz and classical music to the mix, via artists like the Punch Brothers, Sarah Jarosz, Joy Kills Sorrow and several others who have poured out of the New England and New York acoustic music scene. The indie-rock scene of the early 2000s has reshaped acoustic music into something people are referring to now as "indie folk" or "indie roots," which is basically a blend of indie-rock and traditional song elements and acoustic instruments. Bands energized by the popularity of Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers are popping up all over the mainstream music scene.

Folk festival s are also thriving with younger audiences joining their parents' generation in celebrating folk singer/songwriters as variant as Kris Kristofferson, Dar Williams, Shovels + Rope and Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Folk labels like Red House and Lost Highway are popping up across the country, and up-and-comers are traversing the American Interstates to sing their songs in bars, clubs, coffeehouses, Unitarian Universalist Churches, at peace demonstrations and house concerts.

With the constantly evolving of socioeconomics in American and globally, folk music is certain to continue providing an outlet for communities to unite on social commentary.

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The Fascinating History of American Folk Music

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The history of American folk music is rich with the influence of different music genres and political commentary.

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New Orleans, Louisiana, USA - Jazz music

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New Orleans, Louisiana, USA - Jazz music

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Jazz is a music genre with district roots and an intriguing history, mixing a range of international styles to create a sound unlike what was ever experienced before. If you're asking questions like, "Who created jazz?" "What are the origins of jazz in America?" and "When did jazz music start?" here's what you need to know about the history of jazz.

The Origins of Jazz

When Was Jazz Invented?

"When was jazz music created?" is a question many jazz fans and people new to the genre ask. The beginnings of jazz actually date back to the 19th century. New Orleans was home to Congo Square, a space where slaves would gather and play music. That tradition started a bit before 1820, and it brought together people from a wide array of countries, each introducing a bit of their nation's unique sound to the mix.

Over time, the blending of African music and Caribbean music was joined by marching band instruments. Marching bands were highly prevalent during the Civil War. They introduced many people to various brass instruments, and the united sound eventually formed the genre known as ragtime.

Spiritual music was also popular during the era and made its way into what ultimately became the jazz sound. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people from throughout the American south brought blues to Louisiana. In time, all of these sounds melded together, leading to the genre that became jazz.

Ultimately, exactly when the genre known as jazz began is a bit debated. Most feel it started in the late 1800s or early 1900s. However, it ultimately rose to fame in the 1920s.

Where Did Jazz Originate and Why?

Jazz is often thought of as being founded on the musical traditions of West Africa (rhythm, "feel", blues) and Europe (harmonic chords, variety of instruments). Early jazz also incorporated church hymns, slave songs, field chants, and Cuban-style rhythm.

Jazz originated in New Orleans, primarily as it served as a melting pot for the music that ultimately led to the jazz genre. One of the main reasons it formed there was that slaves from a wide variety of nations could come together and play music, something that wasn't always permitted in other cities or states.

The Louisiana Territory had "Le Code Noir," a set of rules outlining the treatment of slaves. While many of the requirements were harsh and strict, providing slaves with few rights or freedoms, a few clauses gave slaves some rights. Some of the tenants barred slave owners from making the slaves work on Sundays or Catholic holidays. As a result, slaves had a day of rest during the week, and many near New Orleans used that time to gather at Congo Square.

Essentially, that answers the question, "Why is New Orleans the birthplace of jazz?" it was the required Sundays off that created conditions that weren't present in many other parts of the American south. Through the weekly gatherings, music was a way to find joy and served as the foundation for what eventually became jazz.

Who First Invented Jazz Music?

When it comes to who invented jazz music, most historians consider Buddy Bolden - a cornet player -the first jazz musician. He was an African-American bandleader, and he was even once dubbed the "first man of jazz," cementing his place in jazz history.

At a minimum, Buddy Bolden was a musician that spearheaded the genre, often playing in Storyville at night. While there aren't any known recordings of his playing, his sound was said to feature the improvisation traditionally associated with the genre.

However, Buddy Bolden wasn't the only musician associated with the birth of jazz. Some other early jazz African-American musicians of the time included Mutt Carey, Bunk Johnson, and Joe Oliver. Creole jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, and Sidney Bechet also shaped the genre.

As one would expect, many of those musicians blended various musical traditions, featuring beats from West Africa and the Caribbean, European classical music instruments, and many other sounds and influences.

How Was Jazz Sound Created?

As mentioned above, jazz music is an amalgamation of several different genres, featuring sounds from a wide array of international music styles. However, its foundations are largely based on three specific types of music. Here's a closer look at the jazz music origins and the genre's key characteristics.

What Are the Three Musical Roots of Jazz?

The roots of jazz are primarily ragtime, marching bands, and blues. Ragtime developed naturally in the American south, featuring African-American rhythms and styling combined with more traditional European music. It became a part of minstrel shows, allowing it to spread through many regions within the American south.

Marching bands were a form of support during the Civil War. Primarily, they aimed to keep morale high, but they also accompanied some drills. These sounds became widespread during that era and were viewed as uplifting, even if they were mainly associated with a challenging period in history.

The blues also developed as a genre during the Civil War. Word songs, minstrel shows, and spiritual music influenced that genre. Folk and other popular sounds of the era also made their way into the blues genre, further diversifying the sound stable blues itself.

Generally, jazz is viewed as a blending of those styles, incorporating their musical elements and many of the sounds and emotions present in them. But jazz also brought something new to the table, particularly when it came to improvisation.

What Are the Music Characteristics of Jazz?

Jazz has many characteristics, some that it shares with other genres and others that are generally unique to the genre, at least during the origins of jazz. Improvisation is one of the most classically defining traits. However, syncopation, polyrhythms, and irregular rhythms are potential hallmarks, too.

Solos are also a traditional part of the jazz genre. Most early jazz also featured calls and responses, where one musician in a band would offer a phrase, and another would essentially reply to it.

Generally, jazz is a genre that seems to embody musical freedom. While some subgenres do have a distinct sense of melody, harmony, and rhythm, many others include unexpected elements as a form of expression. Often, it's those unanticipated moments that make the genre highly unique, setting it apart from many other types of music.

How Did Jazz Evolve?

While the origins of jazz date back to the pre-Civil War era, like most types of music, it also changed over time. New sounds were incorporated as musicians began embracing jazz concepts. Additionally, various jazz musicians began honing their unique sounds, some of which led to the creation of new subgenres.

As mentioned above, jazz as a separate, official genre may date back to the late 1800s or early 1900s. However, jazz didn't come into its own until the 1920s.

Many consider the 1920s the start of the jazz age since that's when it first became broadly popular in the US and Europe. The "Roaring Twenties," with prohibition, speakeasies, flappers, and music, drove jazz into the mainstream and made overnight success stories of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.

The age of jazz culminated in the historic 1938 Benny Goodman concert at Carnegie Hall, bringing together musicians from various ethnicities to perform jazz inside this hallowed hall. At this point, the jazz of the 1920s and 30s was already starting to give way to the Big Band era, although jazz musicians such as Ellington and Armstrong would continue to develop jazz until their deaths.

Despite the dominance of jazz ending with the Great Depression, the music has continued to evolve with new styles and sub-genres forming as its influence on pop culture continues to echo through time, along with many new up-and-coming jazz musicians. Did you know April 30th is International Jazz Day? It was created in 2011 by UNESCO to help highlight how jazz is able to bring unity across the world.

What Are the Origins of the Different Types of Jazz?

Over time, jazz evolved to include a wide array of subgenres, each with its own unique sounds and characteristics. While they all have jazz foundations, their differences cause them to stand apart from one another. Some feature cultural influences from nations that weren't necessarily part of the foundation of jazz. Others embrace or shirk key traits like improvisation to varying degrees.

Here's a quick overview of the origins of the different types of jazz.

Modern Jazz

Modern jazz essentially began in the 1940s, and it aimed for more freedom for improvisation. It stepped away from chord progressions, giving solo musicians more space to create unique melodies, using nearly any scale or note they wanted. As a result, it more often features unexpected elements and can be offbeat or challenging to follow.

Free Jazz

Free jazz is an incredibly avant-garde subgenre, providing the highest degree of freedom one typically finds in jazz. It largely originated in the late 1950s, when Ornette Coleman began moving away from traditional notions and limitations associated with jazz, functionally rejecting all conventions. As a result, this type of jazz is one of the most challenging to define, as the lack of constraints is what is typically the basis for the genre.

Bebop Style

Bebop primarily began in the early 1940s and is incredibly fast-paced and experimental. Many of its roots come from the integration of swing music, and scat singers were commonly part of the songs. Those scat musicians led to the genre's name; a "bebop" was functionally a nod to the nonsensical syllables that come with scat.

Latin Jazz

Latin jazz is a fusion style that brought Latin sounds into the jazz genre. Usually, it features Cuban and Spanish Caribbean rhythms coupled with traditional jazz instruments and music compositions. Its origins also date back to the 1940s, formed initially by Afro-Cuban musicians in Spanish Harlem that collaborated with African-American jazz musicians.

Cool Jazz

Cool jazz arose during the 1940s as a counterpoint to faster and more chaotic or upbeat forms of jazz like bebop and hard bop. This genre brought in more classical elements, essentially moving away from blues and swing elements present in many other subgenres. Comparatively, it's more restrained, though that can also make it more accessible to those who find certain types of jazz overwhelming.

Jazz Manouche

Jazz Manouche originated in Paris in the 1930s. Usually, it features smaller bands and favors an acoustic sound. Drums aren't usually a part of the genre, leaning instead on rhythm guitarists to maintain the beat. Its origins are attributed to Jean "Django" Reinhardt, a Romani guitarist, and Stephane Grappelli, a French violinist. Due to Reinhardt's background, the genre was once referred to as "gypsy jazz," though that has since fallen out of favor due to the negative connotations of the term "gypsy."'

Jazz Fusion

Jazz fusion began developing in the 1960s. During that era, jazz musicians started integrating sounds more widely associated with rock music and R&B. Most who began developing this genre had collaborated with Miles Davis at one point. While Davis mainly rose to fame in the bebop genre, he was highly experimental in his later career, playing a critical role in a variety of subgenres, including jazz fusion.

Smooth Jazz

Smooth jazz began in the 1970s, emerging as a form of crossover jazz designed to have broad commercial appeal. Comparatively speaking, it's an easy-listening version of jazz, incorporating more predictability and gentleness than you find in many other types of jazz. Essentially, the goal was to reach a wider audience, so the genre added pop-inspired elements and features commonly associated with R&B ballads.

Modal Jazz

Modal jazz emerged in the mid-1950s. It's named for the fact that it relies on musical modes. Organizationally, it's more scalar than chordal. As a result, it provides more space for unique improvisations that would otherwise be challenging with more chordal versions of jazz. Both Miles Davis and John Coltrane are credited with popularizing modal jazz, allowing them to step away from the more rigid structures associated with some other approaches to jazz composition.

Swing

Swing started in the late 1920s, becoming broadly popular by the mid-1930s and remaining so until the mid-1940s. Most consider the years between 1930 and 1945 as the Swing Era, a time when big bands led by legends like Duke Ellington and Count Basie were making waves. The genre has a distinct rhythm, accentuating specific beats to create its unique feel.

Hard Bop

Hard bop emerged in the mid-1950s, incorporating more features that you usually find in gospel music, R&B, and blues. It favored medium tempos over quicker ones, as it worked to bring soul sounds back into the genre, something some felt was lacking in cool jazz and some other emerging subgenres. It also maintained enough space for free expression but balanced that with a sense of groove, making it more danceable than subgenres like bebop.

Jazz legend Louis Armstrong once said: "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."

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Jazz is a music genre with district roots and an intriguing history, mixing a range of international styles to create a sound unlike what was ever experienced before. Here's what you need to know about the history of jazz.

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Origins and the old school

Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop refers to a complex culture comprising four elements: deejaying, or "turntabling"; rapping, also known as "MCing" or "rhyming"; graffiti painting, also known as "graf" or "writing"; and "B-boying," which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as "postural semantics." (A fifth element, "knowledge of self/consciousness," is sometimes added to the list of hip-hop elements, particularly by socially conscious hip-hop artists and scholars.) Hip-hop originated in the predominantly African American economically depressed South Bronx section of New York City in the late 1970s. As the hip-hop movement began at society's margins, its origins are shrouded in myth, enigma, and obfuscation.

Graffiti and break dancing, the aspects of the culture that first caught public attention, had the least lasting effect. Reputedly, the graffiti movement was started about 1972 by a Greek American teenager who signed, or "tagged," Taki 183 (his name and street, 183rd Street) on walls throughout the New York City subway system. By 1975 youths in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn were stealing into train yards under cover of darkness to spray-paint colourful mural-size renderings of their names, imagery from underground comics and television, and even Andy Warhol-like Campbell's soup cans onto the sides of subway cars. Soon, influential art dealers in the United States, Europe, and Japan were displaying graffiti in major galleries. New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority responded with dogs, barbed-wire fences, paint-removing acid baths, and undercover police squads.

The beginnings of the dancing, rapping, and deejaying components of hip-hop were bound together by the shared environment in which these art forms evolved. The first major hip-hop deejay was DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), an 18-year-old immigrant who introduced the huge sound systems of his native Jamaica to inner-city parties. Using two turntables, he melded percussive fragments from older records with popular dance songs to create a continuous flow of music. Kool Herc and other pioneering hip-hop deejays such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash isolated and extended the break beat (the part of a dance record where all sounds but the drums drop out), stimulating improvisational dancing. Contests developed in which the best dancers created break dancing, a style with a repertoire of acrobatic and occasionally airborne moves, including gravity-defying headspins and backspins.

In the meantime, deejays developed new techniques for turntable manipulation. Needle dropping, created by Grandmaster Flash, prolonged short drum breaks by playing two copies of a record simultaneously and moving the needle on one turntable back to the start of the break while the other played. Sliding the record back and forth underneath the needle created the rhythmic effect called "scratching."

Kool Herc was widely credited as the father of modern rapping for his spoken interjections over records, but among the wide variety of oratorical precedents cited for MCing are the epic histories of West African griots, talking blues songs, jailhouse toasts (long rhyming poems recounting outlandish deeds and misdeeds), and the dozens (the ritualized word game based on exchanging insults, usually about members of the opponent's family). Other influences cited include the hipster-jive announcing styles of 1950s rhythm-and-blues deejays such as Jocko Henderson; the Black power poetry of Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Last Poets; rapping sections in recordings by Isaac Hayes and George Clinton; and the Jamaican style of rhythmized speech known as toasting.

Rap first came to national prominence in the United States with the release of the Sugarhill Gang's song " Rapper's Delight" (1979) on the independent African American-owned label Sugar Hill. Within weeks of its release, it had become a chart-topping phenomenon and given its name to a new genre of pop music. The major pioneers of rapping were Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and the Cold Crush Brothers, whose Grandmaster Caz is controversially considered by some to be the true author of some of the strongest lyrics in "Rapper's Delight." These early MCs and deejays constituted rap's old school.

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Hip-hop | Definition, History, Culture, & Facts

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Hip-hop, cultural movement that attained popularity in the 1980s and '90s and the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement's most lasting and influential art form. Learn more about hip-hop's history and culture in this article.

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All About Blues Music | Life is too short for boring music

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The story of the Blues began in northwestern Mississippi in the late 1800's. It was initially a folk music popular among former slaves living in the Mississippi Delta, the flat plain between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. With the Great Migration of black workers that began around that time the Blues spread around the south and the rest of the United States.

The Blues was performed in a variety of settings and styles: musicians often played in 'tent shows' while accompanying travelling doctors, musical companies, comedians, magicians, and even circuses. Ballads would be played, as well as ragtime, Gospel songs, and folk tunes. From the Atlantic coast all the way down to the Gulf-and across time-the melancholy flatted notes of the Blues reached many. The typical Blues scale, using flattened notes, was taken up enthusiastically by New Orleans' Jazz musicians, and it became a cornerstone of this 'citified cousin' of country Blues in the early years of the century. When a show reached a town or city, they would perform in the theatres, but always to segregated audiences. The organisers would put on special performances for their white patrons, because strict 'Jim Crow' laws prevented integrated crowds but, on the up-side, this arrangement gave Black performers full ownership of the form on their own terms. The black churches were also independent, and the Gospel music that celebrated their resistance, solidarity and joy, also had the flattened notes of the Blues scale and the 'call and response' vocals typical of the Blues.

Wandering Songsters

These traveling musicians would do anything to get around and make their shows, whether it was hitching train rides or playing on sidewalks when the clubs and juke-joints were too full. They also played at brothels and drinking halls and sport lounges; when workers got paid they would be there to congratulate and entertain them. Pianists playing in these establishments adapted the Blues to the wild atmosphere of these places, further popularizing the genre. As long as he had his harmonica and guitar there was nowhere the traveling Blues musician couldn't go or play.

The Blues they played wasn't always melancholy: much of it was lively and up-tempo, matching the atmosphere of the clubs and dance halls musicians played in. It was a great outlet for the plantation and factory workers around the United States, who endured many hardships daily. Throughout history the Blues has been a great outlet for expressing life's hardships, but it is also great for expressing joy and celebration, which has made it so timeless and relatable to all who have heard it.

The 'Father of the Blues'.

W. C. Handy

While is there isn't a definite origin as to who exactly created the Blues, we do have a good idea as to how it came to us today: W.C. Handy.

William Christopher Handy was born in Alabama in 1873 and who worked a number of odd jobs before establishing himself as both a musician and a music teacher. He was raised in a strict household that forbade musical instruments, but he secretly bought a guitar and spent hours practicing the trumpet in his first band.

In 1903 he was appointed as bandleader of the Knights of Pythius Orchestra in Clarksdale, Mississippi after leaving a teaching post in Alabama. While waiting for a delayed train on tour he heard a man singing and playing guitar nearby. The man was pressing the blade of his knife on the strings, producing sliding chromatic notes along a three chord progression; the singing proved just as interesting, as he turned a boring wait into a captivating musical journey.

It made an impression on Handy, who described the performance as 'haunting'. With his talent and musical education he wasted no time in copying down his fellow traveler's 12-bar song structure that moved along those three chords, using flattened 'blue notes' too. The vocal part consisted of four bars that were repeated, answered by a third line. The result of this discovery would grow into the Blues as we know it today.

Handy was later commissioned to write a campaign song for the elections in his new home, Memphis, Tennessee by future mayor EH 'Boss' Crump. The twelve-bar opus was titled 'Memphis Blues' and is the first example of the music to be written and published as sheet music. Following that he established a music publishing house in New York City, as well as continuing his work as a bandleader. Through his work and contributions to the genre he earned the title 'Father of the Blues'.

W C Handy's Orchestra with 'St. Louis Blues';

The First Blues Singer (And the Blues Mother)

Ma Rainey

No birth is complete without a mother, and Ma Rainey was, for all intents and purposes, the mother of the Blues. Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in 1886 in Columbus, Georgia. She first made her name as a singer at a talent show at the age of 12, and by16 she joined parents' travelling musical act, where she continued earning her stripes.

Things changed after a show in Clarksdale when Gertrude heard a young woman singing a moving song about-you guessed it-lost love. Like W.C. Handy before her Gertrude had the brain for music and quickly memorized it, using it as the closing number in her act with much success. After marrying fellow musician William 'Pa' Rainey she adopted the moniker Ma Rainey and the two began performing as 'Ma and Pa Rainey- the Assassinators of the Blues'. The Blues Diva went on to enjoy a lengthy and fruitful, performing with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, who was also her protegeé.

Her career is proof that hard work pays off: after 20 years of playing in backwater theaters she ended her career with millions of records sold and jam-packed concerts at some of the biggest theaters around.

Ma Rainey's 'Jelly Bean Blues' from 1924 has the young Louis Armstrong on cornet;

The men from Clarksdale.

Located in the heart of the Delta, Clarksdale has been dubbed the birthplace the Blues, with the exact spot attributed to the Dockery Plantation. Many sharecropping families and field workers occupied this space, including one Henry Sloan. Not much is known about Sloan, besides that he was born around 1870 and that he was a popular singer and guitarist by the 1900s. He was also a mentor to many future legends, including Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, Willie Brown and the great Robert Johnson.

It was said that he boarded a train for Chicago in 1917 and simply vanished after that. It could be that it was Henry Sloan that W.C. Handy heard on that fateful day, adding even more mystery to his character, and solidifying his influence on the Blues. Regardless of the rumours his influence is far-reaching: from the electrifying Chicago Blues, to the Blues Revival of the 60s, and even into the birth of rock and roll, he inspired a generation of musicians into creating a cultural phenomenon that forever shaped a nation and music itself.

The Birth of Jazz

he story doesn't end here! Down in New Orleans something different was brewing, and it wasn't gumbo. The Blues scale's trademark flattened notes piqued the interest of enthusiastically by local musicians, who adopted it and formed a new style of music based off of it called 'Jazz'.

Often referred to as country Blues' 'urban cousin', it was widely popular and constantly performed in theatres, but always to segregated audiences due to the 'Jim Crow' laws of the day. There was a silver lining to this: black musicians still had full ownership of the music and played it as they saw fit.

It wasn't just the flatted notes that influenced Jazz: call and response singing had been perfectly transferred onto instruments, and the emotional roller coaster found new tracks to take listeners on.

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The story of the Blues began in northwestern Mississippi in the late 1800's. It was initially a folk music popular among former slaves living in the Mississippi Delta, the flat plain between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. With the Great Migration of black workers that began around that time the Blues spread around the south and the rest of the United States.

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Rock and roll | History, Songs, Artists, & Facts

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Rock and roll, style of popular music that originated in the United States in the mid-1950s and that evolved by the mid-1960s into the more encompassing international style known as rock music, though the latter also continued to be known as rock and roll. Learn more about the history of rock and roll in this article.

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reggae, style of popular music that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s and quickly emerged as the country's dominant music. By the 1970s it had become an international style that was particularly popular in Britain, the United States, and Africa. It was widely perceived as a voice of the oppressed.

According to an early definition in The Dictionary of Jamaican English (1980), reggae is based on ska, an earlier form of Jamaican popular music, and employs a heavy four-beat rhythm driven by drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, and the "scraper," a corrugated stick that is rubbed by a plain stick. (The drum and bass became the foundation of a new instrumental music, dub.) The dictionary further states that the chunking sound of the rhythm guitar that comes at the end of measures acts as an "accompaniment to emotional songs often expressing rejection of established 'white-man' culture." Another term for this distinctive guitar-playing effect, skengay, is identified with the sound of gunshots ricocheting in the streets of Kingston's ghettos; tellingly, skeng is defined as "gun" or "ratchet knife." Thus reggae expressed the sounds and pressures of ghetto life. It was the music of the emergent "rude boy" (would-be gangster) culture.

In the mid-1960s, under the direction of producers such as Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd, Jamaican musicians dramatically slowed the tempo of ska, whose energetic rhythms reflected the optimism that had heralded Jamaica's independence from Britain in 1962. The musical style that resulted, rock steady, was short-lived but brought fame to such performers as the Heptones and Alton Ellis.

Reggae evolved from these roots and bore the weight of increasingly politicized lyrics that addressed social and economic injustice. Among those who pioneered the new reggae sound, with its faster beat driven by the bass, were Toots and the Maytals, who had their first major hit with "54-46 (That's My Number)" (1968), and the Wailers-Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, and reggae's biggest star, Bob Marley-who recorded hits at Dodd's Studio One and later worked with producer Lee ("Scratch") Perry. Another reggae superstar, Jimmy Cliff, gained international fame as the star of the movie The Harder They Come (1972). A major cultural force in the worldwide spread of reggae, this Jamaican-made film documented how the music became a voice for the poor and dispossessed. Its soundtrack was a celebration of the defiant human spirit that refuses to be suppressed.

During this period of reggae's development, a connection grew between the music and the Rastafarian movement, which encourages the relocation of the African diaspora to Africa, deifies the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I (whose precoronation name was Ras [Prince] Tafari), and endorses the sacramental use of ganja (marijuana). Rastafari (Rastafarianism) advocates equal rights and justice and draws on the mystical consciousness of kumina, an earlier Jamaican religious tradition that ritualized communication with ancestors. Besides Marley and the Wailers, groups who popularized the fusion of Rastafari and reggae were Big Youth, Black Uhuru, Burning Spear (principally Winston Rodney), and Culture. "Lover's rock," a style of reggae that celebrated erotic love, became popular through the works of artists such as Dennis Brown, Gregory Issacs, and Britain's Maxi Priest.

In the 1970s reggae, like ska before it, spread to the United Kingdom, where a mixture of Jamaican immigrants and native-born Britons forged a reggae movement that produced artists such as Aswad, Steel Pulse, UB40, and performance poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. Reggae was embraced in the United States largely through the work of Marley-both directly and indirectly (the latter as a result of Eric Clapton's popular cover version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" in 1974). Marley's career illustrates the way reggae was repackaged to suit a rock market whose patrons had used marijuana and were curious about the music that sanctified it. Fusion with other genres was an inevitable consequence of the music's globalization and incorporation into the multinational entertainment industry.

The dancehall deejays of the 1980s and '90s who refined the practice of "toasting" (rapping over instrumental tracks) were heirs to reggae's politicization of music. These deejays influenced the emergence of hip-hop music in the United States and extended the market for reggae into the African American community. At the beginning of the 21st century, reggae remained one of the weapons of choice for the urban poor, whose "lyrical gun," in the words of performer Shabba Ranks, earned them a measure of respectability. It also contributed to the rise of another form of popular music at the turn of the new century, reggaeton.

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Reggae | Definition, History, Artists, & Facts

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Reggae, style of popular music that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s and quickly emerged as the country's dominant music. By the 1970s it had become an international style that was particularly popular in Britain, the United States, and Africa. It was widely perceived as a voice of the oppressed.