Classic Soul Music

The Influences of Northern Soul Music

Do you love dancing to the beat of Soul music? Northern soul music is the genre wherein you can render your disco steps and trip around with your funky grooves and dance moves. With its soulful beat and energetic appeal, Northern soul music was also an expression of fashion statements in the mid 1960’s onwards. Northern soul music originated in Northern England, often associated with much dancing and movement techniques. It resembles the later dance moves such as disco dancing and even break dancing. It mainly features athletic dance moves and intense, energetic movements such as the flip, spin and backdrop.

Northern soul music was most influential during the 1960’s to the 1980’s. It included audiences of the “mod” movement. The British Mod movement was linked with a lifestyle of “all-night long dancing” and fashion. Also, modernists are into the funk music, with the fusion of American, African, British and even Jamaican cultures. They stated their fashion using custom-tailored suits and riding in Italian Vespa scooters. There is no other way to describe the British Mod movement but fashionable, music- oriented, popular and modern. They were a big influence in the improvement and development of Northern Soul music.

The emergence of the Modernists in Great Britain was believed to have started when British teenagers during that period began to reject the “prim and proper” impression for British people. They made a way to alter that impression by reading and indulging themselves to Italian fashion magazines and articles, and many other means to become hip, smart and fashionable. They paved a way for new and exciting expression of their culture from a very refined and repressed society. With the help of Northern Soul music, they have realized that they can also inaugurate a “street smart” impression. Though it was kind of a rebellious movement, they have surfaced the influence of Northern Soul music.

Northern soul music has evolved into the so-called punk rock or psychedelic rock, which was also initiated by the later mod groups of Northern England. Along with psychedelic rock, then emerged the very popular and timeless disco and acid jazz. From the musical influence of Northern soul music, the new wave era was derived. New wave was so phenomenal that up to the present times, listeners find it so cool to listen to. And with the unique stresses of pounding beats and danceable rhythms, listeners find it easy to distinguish that certain genre and often colligate to a sense of colorful and hip fashion and lifestyle. The Mod lifestyle however was not that distinguished because of the mixed and confusing cultures they were executing. But somehow, they left a dye in the fashion and music scene, that their culture is modern, inventive and open to changes.

Northern soul music style made up a destination for the springing up of famous night clubs, non stop night life and retro clothing. Bowling shirts, collar shirts with buttons and hip trousers are the remarkable fashion styles the Mod fused Northern Soul music with. Up to now, though rarely used, some prefer to use retro clothes for they express fashionable lifestyle. Some are even modified but that touch of class is unchanged. These and more are the influences of Northern Soul music. It is Northern soul music at its best, northern Soul music at its finest.

Article Source: http://www.cursebustersound.com/article

TJ Grooves is author of this article on Soul Music. Find more information about Sweet Soul Music here.

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