Why Did Funk, Soul, and Rhythm & Blues Disappeared From The Charts?

Ronald Regan and the federal government did that? Ah, how?

R-A-P.

Well I was watching a video the other day saying how the electric guitar is dying out. That and the horns were a big part of music back then. BTW, there is some neo-soul out there. You just have to look for it.

I think now that we have electronic recording of media, the studio model is going the way of the do-do. Plus radio has become one big Clear Channel, Citadel etc. If we wanted the same bland pablum all over the U.S. we would have asked for it. And I do not from industry rags that radio station revenue is falling too. So they air more commercials than music. Which is a never ending spiral of lost listeners. Eventually I bet terrestrial broadcast radio will go away too. They've tapped all they can out of radio. The only hope is that as stations go bankrupt you'll be able to purchase the assets for short money. Just like the Christian shit stains did in the 1980's.

Plus the fact that music almost always targets the younger generation means some of us are turned off by a lot of the pop bullshit that's out there.

I went a different route - I use Amazon Music on my PC and Phone. My whole library synchronizes and in a car I use bluetooth and that.

[quote]Then when Ronald Reagan came into office. He cut music classes for the poor, etc.

Oh please.

R2 basically has it right.

The Temptations, the Dramatics, the Emotions, Earth, Wind & Fire, Slave, the Ohio Players, Isaac Hayes, Gladys Knight & The Pips, the Supremes, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye were successful because they played to wide audience of different races, ages and backgrounds.

They were brilliantly creative but also very, very commercial. And they were justly rewarded.

Why did ragtime disappear from the charts?

you go on my nerves

Right on, r4.

Rap, Hip-Hop

I would rather hear soul, too.

The radio will only play hip-hop and autotune

music changes, evolves, and there's nothing u can do about it.

[quote]Why did ragtime disappear from the charts?

Ragtime quickly disappeared...and it disappeared completely.

The artists that OP mentions are still being listened to 30-50 years later.

We everything has been devolving lately, not evolving. Including music.

devolving is a better word 11

I meant

WELL, everything has been devolving lately, not evolving

r9 u type vocoder.

Ronald Reagan gave me the AIDS too.

Hell, you can also ask:

What happened to country and western music? What happened to AOR (album oriented rock)? What happened to (real) Jazz?

I can barely listen to what is on radio right now -- I bought SiriusXM so I could listen to decent music in the car. Popular music sucks and the biggest performers are basically talentless compared to the old greats. But the music industry is in the business of making money and mp3's pretty much destroyed the old model of a label signing an artist and spending a lot of time and money to develop them. They can't afford to do that when hardly anyone is actually paying for the finished product. Producers are the "talent" now -- performers are interchangeable since they don't need to be able to sing or dance. Look at the videos -- they're edited into a series of 3 second clips so you can't see how weak the performers are and then you have autotune, Photoshop, CGI, etc.

Real music has disappeared from the charts, not just Soul. Personally, I think rock has been impacted more than R&B. Where are the rolling stones or led zepplin's of today? And if you listen to modern country, it's pretty much "pop", some of the songs are damned near R&B. No twang to them at all.

I wish we had some good pop music again. Like Queen or David Bowie or Chic. Music has never been the same since Rap and Hip Hop ruined it all.

And yes OP I rather listen to Aretha and Motown than any of the inane stuff that's going on today.

We live in a complete trash culture.

[quote]What happened to country and western music? What happened to AOR (album oriented rock)? What happened to (real) Jazz?

[quote]Real music has disappeared from the charts, not just Soul. Personally, I think rock has been impacted more than R&B. Where are the rolling stones or led zepplin's of today? And if you listen to modern country, it's pretty much "pop", some of the songs are damned near R&B. No twang to them at all.

True. It's all just autotune and hip-hop. Two dumbed-down, horrible, depressing, ugly versions of music. If someone is making good music we will not hear it.

I gave up and just listen to classical and jazz on CD or by tuning into a specialist channel online.

Was it the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group who directed Reagan to kill Soul.

[quote]I gave up and just listen to classical and jazz on CD or by tuning into a specialist channel online.

Which specialist channel(s), r18?

My exposure to today's pop music is limited to those live appearances on the plaza at the Today Show. A couple of weeks ago, a young singer named Halsey was the featured performer. Good god she was awful, yet she has the number one album in the country.

There are talented people out there but they're hidden; hidden in the sense that they don't get much airplay so they have to depend on stuff like word of mouth and touring. Actually, I think there is more good music and creativity out there than there was when a lot of the great popular music was being made. All because of technology. But for some reason the internet hasn't fulfilled it's expectation that it would allow more independent people to be heard. You still have to go look for them. People who own the big media outlets want to control what's on the air so they can maximize profits.

I listen to a weekly online BBC radio program by Jamie Cullum, he plays a lot of really good old and new Jazz and R&B. Other than that I have no idea what's going on today in music. What I hear from kids blasting on their headphones sounds incredibly stupid.

R20

TSF Jazz Paris, WGBH Jazz shows, youtube uploaded cds of Bill Evans, Terrence Blanchard etc

Classical: WKSU classical stream, WXQR or BBC (which has a lot of music in every genre)

Autotune. People do not learn how to play instruments anymore. Lazy.

Thank you, R24.

R24, did you mean WQXR?

Yes, I did, R27! Sorry!

the older i get the more i like country music. I hated it with a passion thought it was uncool, but today's music makes me wanna close my years, the synth overload.

[quote]I always felt that funk, soul, and R&B were the best musical forms in the world.

Oh great, just what we need another white guy thinking heaping praise on something black makes him look cool.

R30, you are cunttacular.

R30 I sat on this trend first.

There are a number of good neo-soul artists who are not quite mainstream. I wish funk bands were still popular, though. I watch a lot of old Soul Train clips on Youtube...they always put me in a good mood.

R30 why are you so mean? Loving soul and R&B is not virtue signalling. Good God, this was some of the best music people ever made.

If you take the example of Nile Rodgers - he is an amazing musician and if you track music through the time since he became influential, a lot of it can be traced directly or indirectly through him. Lead singer, session musician, writer, producer, he's like a modern day Mozart.

I love R&B, Motown, Blues, Disco and early Rap (when it was still a positive message). I also love Calypso, Reggae and Ska. Listen to some old Prince Buster - it's universal truth and good dance beats.

Some people need to seriously stop thinking about race and difference, and start thinking about human experience. Makes me quite sick, it does.

Because the RAP CRAP arrived...............horrible

Faze-O - Riding High

Rap, hip hop, caterwauling, melisma, auto tune...

These are the things that have irreparably damaged pop music.

As if any major R&B star succeeded from public school music classes.

They learned to sing and play in church and Juke Joints.

And where is the next Luther, Teddy, Sam Cooke and Otis? I guess John Legend comes close. And the women? All the female voices sound like Rhianna. One used to be able to distinguish between Warwick, Gladys and Aretha. The songs are so produced and as someone said the producer is the star. Which is fine if you consider past producers like George Duke who had people like Bill Withers do the singing on Just The Two of Us. But Duke was also a musician not necessarily just some electronic genius.

I don't hate the current stuff and I understand why it's popular. I do have presets in my car to Z100, Fresh and whatever other station. I go to them when I'm bored with the other stations but then I become disinterested and wind up listening to sports radio or WFUV. Radio is very difficult to love these days.

Pop music (R&B, funk, rock, etc) is constantly changing. Over the last number of years it has devolved, not evolved. Two primary reasons, both occurring at the same time in the '80's: the elimination of music education and appreciation in the public school system and the creation of technology where anyone can make their own music via CD's, mp3's, etc And so you had/have people with little to no understanding (many kids today don't know the difference between the sound of a trumpet and a saxophone) of "music" making "music" that is pushed by corporations for a quick buck. Lots of sampling, little to no melodies, computers and synths, etc.

Both music and cinema (according to Dustin Hoffman and director William Freidkin) are their lowest creative level. But it can't continue forever. Eventually, good music (melody, strong lyrics) will come back. Ditto for movies.

I'm an elder gay and even I say who the fuck listens to or depends on the radio for their music? Load up the old stuff you like and you can find tons of stuff out there. New and some old you might not have heard of yet. I get most of my new stuff from discoveries through YouTube. You can play these for days and not run out of anything. A lot of times I just convert them to Mp3 and put them on my player.

I get that, R41. I hook up the bluetooth in the car and listen to my music but sometimes you want to take your chances on the radio. I have noticed that Sunday mornings/afternoons are some of the best times for radio, especially if you go to a more free form station like WFUV (which can also be tedious if you listen long enough) or WKCR the Columbia University station.

Where is the next Slave? Where is the next Earth, Wind & Fire? Where is the next Ohio Players? The list goes on and on.

I think they're on the air. On the air at WKRP.

Thank you OP. I grew up listening to these musical groups too. Today's music ain't got the same soul...not like that old time rock 'n roll...

I believe that the anti disco backlash was also responsible for the devolving musical esthetic. Throwing out the baby with the bath water mentality concerning musical forms. The resentment of musical integration (along with racial) was an underlying cause for the emerging polarity in genres and formats in the immediate post disco aftermath.

[quote]And where is the next Luther, Teddy, Sam Cooke and Otis? I guess John Legend comes close. And the women? All the female voices sound like Rhianna. One used to be able to distinguish between Warwick, Gladys and Aretha.

Yeah this is part of the problem too, there is a whole generation of amazing voices that emerged in the 90s and 2000s R&B and Neo Soul that still dont get airplay like the big old school acts....Tank, Raheem Devaughn, Jill Scott, Chante Moore, Faith Evans, Anthony Hamilton, Ledisi, Maxwell, Fantasia, Erykah Badu, Brandy, Monica etc. Xscape just performed for the first time in 17 years this week, and TLC has an album out TODAY. Buy their music, support them! All these people are active artists, still making albums and touring all over the place, but they generally don't get the support because radio still favors the really old school artists.

R&B died because it got old and stopped being edgy and sexy. Rap stole all that thunder. There needs to be more young people like Bruno Mars and the Weeknd to revive the genre.

My favorite group from the funk/soul genre is Cameo. I'm also a lifelong fan of Con-Funk-Shun, Switch, The Bar-Kays, One Way and Shalamar, among many others. Video killed the radio star.

All you "Reagan did it" conspiracy theorists are barking up the wrong tree. It started long before Reagan. It started at least as early as Nixon and the CIA's so-called War on Drugs. It was actually a covert war on communities of color. Money that used to go to schools, roads, and maintenance now goes to this. And when schools faced budget cuts and reached the point where they could have fully-funded arts or sports programs but not both, and the sports programs had to comply with Title IX, that means arts and the least masculine boys' sports got the axe. And as a result, audio recording technology has never been better but the actual composition of music has never been in a worse state than it is now.

Even before that, the CIA was trying to find new and creative ways to do away with homosexuals as well.

[quote]I believe that the anti disco backlash was also responsible for the devolving musical esthetic. Throwing out the baby with the bath water mentality concerning musical forms. The resentment of musical integration (along with racial) was an underlying cause for the emerging polarity in genres and formats in the immediate post disco aftermath.

This. The rockers killed disco just like their parents tried to kill rock 'n' roll, and for similar reasons. But what replaced it? The most crassly commercial, musically simplistic, douchebaggiest crap ever recorded. And dance music devolved into untz-untz; it took everything disco haters (which I am decidedly not) hated about disco, mainly the repetition of the same basic chords and beats over and over, which could also be argued about the early years of rock 'n' roll, and made it worse.

[quote]Money that used to go to schools, roads, and maintenance now goes to this.

Which exact "this" are we discussing r48?

the 70s ended.

r49 disco never died, it just went back underground as house, which spawned a number of related genres. Then it went over the pond and evolved there as well.

The real issue to me is capitalism, or oligarchical capitalism. It's not the technology, it's that the technology was co-opted from the beginning. All music was digitized to sell the most copies, i.e. compressed to shit, and loudness jacked up to hell. Artists were developed based on their voices being conducive to auto-tune, and their images being refined and spot on.

What the industry should've done is opened up all their vaults to a generic mp3 and higher quality format like FLAC, and have a central industry entity to record data on sales and collect royalty payments. A new royalty rate with artists that was more equitable would have kept them in the fold. That includes all their genres. If needed, they should have bought up or gotten into the tech market themselves. By letting in third party companies, and device makers like Apple, they lost control.

Not doing this negatively affected genres like funk, blues and jazz because they were never popular enough to be on the money makers' radar. Back in the day, of course, there were executives who were not Goldman Sachs type psychos in suits who actually championed different types of music. Now that they are gone, there's no way these genres are supported by the industry.

My two cents: The music programs in the inner-city schools, the heart of this genre, have died.

As a child of socioeconomic "challenged means," I grew up in this culture. I was part of the then subsidized music programs, where I'd learned personal discipline, personal responsibility, personal ownership, and personal pride and self worth, along with classical music theory and history, both of which are needed to fully understand this critical foundation and all genres of music it supports. Though the music program of this particular inner-city public school continues to achieve national recognition, it, too, is dying.

(I was one of the students to have arrived early for the day's instruction. I would find my music teacher listening to Bach or Wagner one day; other days I would be greeted by John Coltrane, Ronnie Laws , The Heath Brothers, Stevie Wonder, etc., etc.)

One Way - Push

Bump.

The Brides Of Funkenstein - Disco To Go

Bump.

Saw Gladys Knight in concert the other night, terrific. There should be more, but Uptown Funk was a massive hit not long ago.

Music once had to move people for a musician to become successful. It had to be melodically inspiring. It had to have lyrical depth or if not that, then a sound that was personal to its creators. A sound that was their own, that had meaning to them. Audiences had high expectations for musicians because they'd grown-up listening to musicians perform and release records where there were few tech options for polishing work post recording in a studio. If a musician wasn't an exceptional talent, audiences figured it out immediately.

Now people are more than happy to support corporate, production line assembled, "white noise" masquerading as music. There are starts and stops of good music that somehow finds its way out of the corporate vice but you can almost train yourself to hear where the personality was sanded out, where even a very talented musician was strong armed into changes that had little to do with their creative perspective.

But that's what's invaluable. In the end, that's what can't be artificially reproduced by even the most advanced technology: Creative perspective formed by the living of one, unique life.

You know the old adage for writers, "write what you know"? That's what's missing in music today. It's not personal and meaningful to the people creating it. It's more about posing as something they think will be appealing and make them look culturally sophisticated rather than just allowing themselves to be vulnerable and giving in to that old, romantic concept of just singing from your heart.

That's what "soul" means. Honesty. Laying it out there and just letting your naked humanity, your vulnerability, your belief in things bigger than you, guide you. No matter how ridiculous you might look while doing it or how the sound that matters most to you, will be judged by others. Some people might turn their noses up at it. But it's your life and your song. Let them go make their own music if they think they have something important to speak in song.

I miss the music you speak of, OP. Desperately!

I think Raphael Saadiq was as close to the "Motown/Old School sound" as you could get in the late Aughts? LOVE this song!

Howlin' Wolf a musical god.

Kool & The Gang - Love & Understanding [1976]

The real question here is why did Polka music disappear from the charts?

[quote]Real music has disappeared from the charts, not just Soul. Personally, I think rock has been impacted more than R&B. Where are the rolling stones or led zepplin's of today? And if you listen to modern country, it's pretty much "pop", some of the songs are damned near R&B. No twang to them at all.

There are a few artists that are out there bringing the heart into music. Country singer, Chris Stapleton puts a lot of soul in his country music.

In regards to (alternative) rock, X Ambassadors have soul.

Leon Bridges tries to bring the old school soul back.

Anthony Hamilton tries to bring it back too.

Good music is out there, especially if you look on youtube. Here is Jamar Rogers. He was on the Voice, and I will never understand how he didn't win.

By the way, I just scroll through my favorites on youtube to find 66-69.

I love the old soul, funk and R&B, the music I grew up with (I also listened to pop and rock because there were stations that played all of those genres together back then). I do notice that the only contemporary artists/songs I listen to are the ones who have clearly been influenced by those classic soul artists and have that sound incorporated into their songs.

R36, thanks for that! One of my favorites.

Whoa...R69 really nice, suddenly it's 1966. And that's a good thing.

R55, R57, now that's WTF I'm talking about. That is some REAL get down old school funk fo' dat ass.

Cameo - Just Be Yourself and Flirt, are 2 of my all time favorite jams. Cameo produced so many hits, album after album.

Lakeside - Fantastic Voyage, another classic.

Mass Production - Firecracker

Heatwave - Grooveline, Boogie Nights

A Taste of Honey - Boogie Oogie Oogie

Bass heavy licks, that got feets to kick out on dance floors are a defining signature of classic Funk music. Ya' better akx somebody..

People will probably roll their eyes at me bringing Adele into this thread, but I kinda think she got it right with 'Rumour Has It'.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way

Wow, R69, actual singing and instruments. Haven't heard anything like that in a while, at least not anything recent.

Add to R75, Bettye Lavette. She got her start in the 1960s but didn't achieve real success till about 10 years ago. Her sound has evolved over time, modern soul with classic roots, head and shoulders above 99.9% of what you hear on the radio today.

Hey B. I miss you pal. Your W&W inspire me, and always make me smile. Hope you're doing OK.

Your appreciative flyover friend...KC. 👋

[quote]Wow, [R69], actual singing and instruments. Haven't heard anything like that in a while, at least not anything recent.

I know, right! I love me some Anthony Hamilton. You should hear Charlene. Next, I'm going to post Jamar Rogers. DL was acting strange at the moment I was trying to link him.

And here is Jamar Rogers, who is purely amazing too!

That's it for the newbies for now. I love me some Shirley Brown. This song is so everything.

Dear iHeart bastards: please bring back R&B, Smooth Jazz, and EDM. Stop all your fucking AM (and FM!) right wing hate brainwashing propaganda talk.

Charles Bradley - Change For The World

Skool Boyz - Your Love [1981]

I think OP wants to know where are the new soul artists are?

Along with my offering of Anthony Hamilton, here is Tre Williams

And another one.

Lin Manuel Miranda deserves to be blamed for part of it.

I INSIST upon this.

The History Of Daptone Records

I heard this song (which I knew from the past and hadn't heard in a while), and I thought "wow, that sounds good!"

I was looking for music yesterday and came across this

R89) I'm sorry but that's elevator music. R88) Is pretty much soft disco that will play as elevator music.

Both songs don't have the base that strings throughout soul and R&B. R89) Doesn't sound like funk, but I'm not a fan of funk. However, I know it when I hear it. It borders on soft jazz, imo.

R88) Seems like it borrowed from Motown, but since it was made in the 70s, they wanted a bit of disco in it. It's not bad, but certain parts I hear a soft version of Stomp.

Betty Lavette - Let Me Down Easy

Inez Foxx - You Shouldn't Have Set My Soul On Fire

R91) I think the OP wanted to hear modern songs of soul and wondered where they are.

I think this song is the answer.

R90: Say what? Ain't nobody died and made you Be-all. "No fan of funk" well shred your cred, Jim, you got none.

Mellow soul - go ahead on & dig Jackie Moore

R94) That song is a poor knock off of the Brothers Johnson's Stomp. The riffs are there but just less strong.

[quote]Leon Bridges tries to bring the old school soul back.

And succeeds. Best album of 2016

The Blackbyrds, "Rock Creek Park", Oct. 8th, 2012, Kassel (Germany)

There is a world of good music being made. It’s not mainstream and promoted by the powers that be.

If you look, it’s there.

Blacks don’t make the kind of music anymore,op. The youth today are conditioned from a very early age to listen to rap only.

I agree with you 100%, r100.

Slave - Watching You

Faze-O - Riding High

My friends and I listen to soul and blues...I don't enjoy hip hop.

Rap, hip hop have destroyed black music. AIDS just didn’t kill off creative gay men, it killed a lot of black folks in the music world. It has been a downward slide ever since, right into Mount Beyoncé.

MAZE - Live in New Orleans: November 15, 1980

Because all other forms of music are dead now too. Why should these survive when we get the pleasure now of listening to Rihanna and Ariana and Brianna etc.

You’re OLD!!!!

There's a funk band called "Here Come the Mummies." They perform in costume, identities unknown, all rumoured to be very in-demand studio musicians with exclusive contracts with major artists.

Hence the secrecy.

Very, very funky. Great hooks. Insane musicianship. Goofy, double-entendre lyrics. Just a bit kitsch.

Worth a listen.

I hate female singers and their yodeling or sounding like they want to be fucked and are using fake baby voices.

I would say that Atlanta was trying to put some interesting, palatable musicians out: Outkast and Janelle Monae. I went to see the Roots years ago (really great in person), and their opening band, Robert Randolph Family Band knocked my socks out:

It was an odd thing, in the 70s Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind &Fire were played on same radio stations as The Eagles and Bruce Springsteen. Then in the 80s - thanks to Reagan -- radio formats were racially segregated again like they'd been in the early 60s.

I don't know about it disappearing. Bruno Mars had huge success with his last album which was retro 80s soul/R&B with 24k Magic (even won Album and Song of the Year at the Grammys).

Charles Bradley [R.I.P.] - Where Do We Go From Here? (live @ 80/35, Des Moines, IA 7/7/2017)

Steve Arrington's Hall Of Fame - Sugar Mama Baby

The Jones Girls - Nights Over Egypt [1981]