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Popular music

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: popular music
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Any music intended to be received and appreciated by ordinary people in a literate, technologically advanced society dominated by urban culture. Unlike traditional folk music, popular music is written by known individuals, usually professionals, and does not evolve through the process of oral transmission. Historically, popular music was any non-folk form that acquired mass popularity — from the songs of the medieval minstrels and troubadours to those elements of fine art music originally intended for a small, elite audience but that became widely popular. After the Industrial Revolution, true folk music began to disappear, and the popular music of the Victorian era and the early 20th century was that of the music hall and vaudeville, with its upper reaches dominated by waltz music and operettas. In the U.S., minstrel shows performed the compositions of songwriters such as Stephen Foster. In the 1890s Tin Pan Alley emerged as the first popular song-publishing industry, and over the next half century its lyricism was combined with European operetta in a new kind of play known as the musical. Beginning with ragtime in the 1890s, African Americans had begun combining complex African rhythms with European harmonic structures, a synthesis that would eventually create jazz. The music audience greatly expanded, partly because of technology. By 1930, phonograph records had replaced sheet music as the chief source of music in the home. The microphone enabled more intimate vocal techniques to be commercially adapted. The ability of radio broadcasting to reach rural communities aided the dissemination of new styles, notably country music. U.S. popular music achieved international dominance in the decades after World War II. By the 1950s, the migration of African Americans to cities in the North had resulted in the cross-fertilization of elements of blues with the uptempo rhythms of jazz to create rhythm and blues. Rock and roll, with figures such as Elvis Presley, soon developed as an amalgam of rhythm and blues with country music and other influences (see rock music). In the 1960s, British rock groups, including the Beatles, became internationally influential. Rock quickly attracted the allegiance of Western teenagers, who replaced young adults as the chief audience for popular music. From the late 1960s black pop (see Motown) achieved greater sophistication and a wide audience. The history of pop through the 1990s was basically that of rock and its variants, including disco, heavy metal, punk rock, and rap, which spread throughout the world and became the standard musical idiom for young people in many countries.

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Music Encyclopedia: Popular music
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Music of the populace. The term embraces all kinds of traditional or ‘folk’ music which, originally made by illiterate people, was not written down. Forms of popular music designed to entertain large numbers of people arose particularly with the growth of urban communities as a result of industrialization. The term ‘popular music’ is most commonly applied to music of, and since, the ‘Tin Pan Alley’ era, i.e. from the 1880s in the USA and the early 20th century in Europe. It has however been developing distinctive characteristics since the early 19th century, for example in the sentimental ballads of the mid-19th century, the music of the dance halls and pleasure gardens (including military marches), the music hall and the operetta repertory, and (under American influence) the development of styles more or less based on African-American music, as heard in American minstrel shows. American popular music gained further ground in Europe with the coming of ragtime in the years immediately preceding World War I.

For popular music since World War I see Musical comedy, Blues, Jazz, Swing, Country music, Soul music, Rhythm-and-blues and Rock.


WordNet: popular music
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: any genre of music having wide appeal (but usually only for a short time)
  Synonym: popular music genre

Wikipedia: Popular music
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"Popular songs" redirects here. For the album by Yo La Tengo, see Popular Songs.
This article is about popular music of various genres. For the pop music genre, see Pop music.
Popular music
Timeline of musical events
2000s • 1990s • 1980s • 1970s • 1960s • 1950s • 1940s • 1930s • 1920s • 1910s • 1900s • 1890s • 1880s • 1870s • 1860s • 1850s • 1840s • 1830s • 1820s • 1810s • 1800s • 1790s • 1780s • 1770s • 1760s • 1750s • 1740s • 1730s • 1720s • 1710s • 1700s • 1690s • 1680s • 1670s • 1660s • 1650s • 1640s • 1630s • 1620s • 1610s • 1600s • 1590s • 1580s • 1570s • 1560s • 1550s • 1540s • 1530s • 1520s • 1510s • 1500s • Early history
List of popular music genres
Justice in concert (2007).

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres, and stands in contrast to art music,[1][2] and traditional music which was disseminated orally.[2][3] Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the term pop music usually refers to a specific musical genre.

Contents

Form

Main article: Song structure (popular music)

Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, and bridge.

Genres

Main article: List of popular music genres

Popular music dates at least as far back as the mid 19th century, and is commonly subdivided into genres. Different genres often appeal to different age groups[citation needed]. These often, but not always, are the people who were young when the music was new. Thus, for instance, Big band music continues to have a following, but it is probably a rather older group, on average, than the audience for rap[citation needed]. For some genres, such as ragtime music, the original target generation may have died out almost entirely.

With the increasing social and economic independence of young people, this "generation gap" has grown wider and wider since the second World War. Music hall and other forms before the 1940s were not so clearly marked by generation. From the Depression through the end of the war, Bing Crosby was the highest-selling recording artist in the United States. His fan base had no age division. The average Kraft Music Hall listener was 21 years old. But after Crosby's semi-retirement in 1954, a large generation gap emerged. Elvis Presley became the most popular recording artist among teenagers[citation needed], while Frank Sinatra was most popular among adults[citation needed].

See also

Sources

  • Tagg Philip (1982) "Analysing Popular Music : Theory, Method and Practice" in Popular Music, 2
  • Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
  • Bennett (1980).
  • Birrer, Frans A. J. (1985). "Definitions and research orientation: do we need a definition of popular music?" in D. Horn, ed., Popular Music Perspectives, 2 (Gothenburge, Exeter, Ottawa and Reggio Emilia), p. 99-106.
  • Hall, S. (1978). "Popular culture, politics, and history", in Popular Culture Bulletin, 3, Open University duplicated paper.
  • Everett, Walter (1997). "Swallowed by a Song: Paul Simon's Crisis of Chromaticism", Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510004-2.
  • Hamm, Charles (1979). Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-01257-3.
  • Manuel, Peter (1988). Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505342-7.

References

  1. ^ "Arnold, Denis (1983)
    • "Art Music, Art Song," in The New Oxford Companion Music, Volume 1: A-J, Oxford University Press, p.111. ISBN 0-19-311316-3
    • "Popular music" in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 2: K-Z, Oxford University Press, p.1467. ISBN 0-19-311316-3
  2. ^ Arnold, Denis (1983).
    • " Art Music, Art Song,"idem
    • " Popular music," Ibid vol.2 p.1467.

External links


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Popular music".  Read more