OUGD405 Micro Genre - Initial Research

What is Neo Soul?

Campbell offers plenty of insight. He succinctly defines it as “a music sub-genre that fuses R&B, 1970s-style soul, and hip hop.

Neo soul developed during the 1980s and early 1990s, in the United States and United Kingdom, as a soul revival movement.

The genre was coined by Kedar Massenburg of Motown Records in the late 1990s as a marketing category following the commercial breakthroughs of artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Maxwell.
D’Angelo was one of the first artists to emerge from Neo Soul was with his first album, Brown Sugar, which took traditional and contemporary R&B and sprinkled in Funk, Quiet Storm and Hip-Hop. His album spent more than 65 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 Charts and was certified platinum.
Brown sugar was regarded by music writers as a pivotal album in neo soul, the album provided commercial visibility to the musical movement.

Neo-soul artists tried to look both backward and forward, acting in the belief that a continuum might exist.

Erykah Badu

Lauryn Hill

Maxwell

D'angelo

Genres encompassed by Neo Soul:

R&B - created during the movement of african americas from the south to the north called the great migration. in 1949 R&B was coined as a blanket term to define music for black audiences. 'Urban rocking jazz based music with a consistent beat.' Chuck Barry, little Richie = rock and roll. Influenced many other genres, hip hop, bubblegum pop, jazz etc. 
Too reject hip-hop based, and sampling approach of contemporary R&B. 

The Great Migration

The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. 

During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a black urban culture, including R&B.

Jazz - Born in New Orleans, but its roots can be found in the musical traditions of both Africa and Europe. Can be seen as the unity of African and European music. Got rhythm and feel from african music, as well as the expressive way of playing music. From European music it got harmony, and a lot of it's instruments eg sax, trumpet, piano etc.
This combination was made possible due to New Orleans being a port city, so people from all parts of the world passed through. Had a strong nightlife where people would play music together.

Funk 

Soul

The works of Neo Soul are mostly album oriented and are distinguished by its musicianship and production, using 'organic' elements of soul with the live instrumentation (jazz, funk, african musical elements of rnb had an input) 

Neo soul in 2018:

Large genre, all types of music, Jorja smith, Tom Misch, Lianne la Havas, Hiatus Kaiyote etc. Developed to become a really wide range genre after its fade in the mid 2000s. Seems to have become a more umbrella term for musicians who produce a soul, jazz, sound but with recording techniques more traditional of soul and jazz music. 

AllMusic (music database) calls it "roughly analogous to contemporary R&B"
Dimitri Ehrlich of Vibe said that they "emphasise a mix of elegant, jazz-tinged R&B and subdued hip hop, with a highly idiosyncratic, deeply personal approach to love and politics"
Music writers have noted that neo soul artists are predominantly female.