Modern Soul ► Relaxing soul music | Best soul music compilation 2024
Soul is alive and kicking in the 21st century, Modern Soul. We would never have believed it in 1964 when we first appreciated this burgeoning genre of music, that we first heard going down the steps into a dark dingy cellar in a back street in Manchester in 1964. That club is now famous as the instigator of the phenomena known these days as Northern Soul. In 64 it was mostly Blues and pop music and British bands that imitated state-side sounds of original blues artists and there was early Soul too. In fact it was the only location outside London that played this type of music.
Soul music grew in intensity in the UK as an underground MOD scene in London and Manchester and some other cities. Eventually towards the end of that decade Soul was well established and had gone mainstream with a great many major artists that we all know about these days; but in those mid sixties days, especially in Manchester and probably due to the DJ that kicked it all off in the North: Roger Eagle.
In the seventies the music went overground and moved towards Disco, much of it derided by the original Soul elitists but today we can include and love disco as an integral part of the soul movement. Simultaneously in that 70’s decade arose from the ashes of underground clubs like The Twisted Wheel and another (underrated) Soul club that also had Roger Eagle as its formative DJ – The Blue Note; the Soul show had to go on. It did first at The Torch and then at The Wigan Casino. A new underground movement was born based on that original sound of Soul and plethora of Soul music that had been collated at the Soul clubs and merged into new 45 vinyl finds: thus adding continuous value and originality to what should have been a dead or dying out scene. But no. It flourished: Christened as Northern Soul.
The 80, came, and the 90’s and the Northern scene wobbled but continued and the mainstream of pop embraced Soul and great new artists emerged. The 2000’s and even more came into the genre, and we love it ALL.
Today we have what we have classified Modern Soul, its got the whole range within it: Classic, Northern, R&B, etc with traceable roots but with modern and new artists embracing modernizing, changing adapting and newly inspiring the sounds od SOUL.
Isn’t that great. Its still growing and looks like building up once again to a huge influential musical appreciation movement that everyone, young and old, can all appreciate. From Simply Red and M People to Amy Whinehouse and Ben Aiken, to new instrumentalists and groups such as Drizabone and very many more. Of course American artist still dominate Soul music but there is an increasing flow of British Soul that easily compares; what a difference 60 years makes!
Soulbot is an inclusive catalogue of the Soul genre from its roots to the NOW and we’re still alive and kicking, glad to have been in at the start of a great sounding dance scene and all the other slow, fast, instrumentals right up to today’s sounds and still lovin’ all those good music artists that make it so.
We include most genres, even artists not known for Soul but with a significantly good Soul genre song. However you will notice by its absence much of Hip Hop and even less of Rap as we regard Rap as mindless almost rhyming Crap.
See our growing catalogue of the new and more Modern Soul genre.