Soul and Hip Hop Music - Essay Example

Various types or genres of music always have distinctive features with which they can be categorized. It is the distinctive characteristic that gives a lifeline to any given genre. A case in point is the musical categorization of soul and hip hop songs. The soul and the hip hop genres differ in terms of history, composition, flow, instrumental accompaniment, and even lyrical content. Discussing these song types along with these criteria clearly brings out their differences.  Though they both originate in the United States of America, soul music and hip hop came out at different times.

While the birth of the soul can be traced to the 1950s, the onset of hip hop is dated between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Soul, therefore, flourished at the height of the civil rights movement in the US; hip hop, on the other hand, was more of a post-civil rights movement’s reality. The historical setting of the songs greatly affected their lyrical content as we shall see shortly.  In terms of composition, the two genres can be said to be both fission but of different musical ingredients.

The soul is a mixture of rhythm and blues, jazz and gospel music; while hip hop comprises rapping, Dee-Jaying, beat manipulation, and song sampling or synthesis. These combinations, in turn, affect the musical flow of the two genres. Soul music always has a smooth flow with a soothing effect as opposed to hip hop music whose tempo is faster; mostly ascribing to the 4/4 time signature.   Instrumentation and accompaniments also contrast the soul from hip-hop music. Soul music has basically relied upon the traditional instruments namely guitars, piano, bass keyboard, organs, and drums.

Hip hop, on the other hand, heavily depends on drum machines, turntables, and synthesizers for its success. As such, hip hop is characterized by the DJ’s isolation of the percussion breaks of dominant songs, sometimes by the use of double turntables to expand the breaks. Other turntable methods such as beat mixing, beat juggling, beat matching and scratching are also common with hip hop.