Music of the United Kingdom
The music from the United Kingdom includes English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Manx, Cornish folk forms, as well as foreign forms from immigrant communities, especially Jamaicans, Arabs and Indians, and various genres of popular music.
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2 Northumbrian folk 3 Sea shanties 4 British rock 5 Acid house, techno and electronica 6 Jamaican music 7 References |
Broadside ballads were a form of popular music from the 16th century to the early 20th century England. They were purchases on streetcorners for a small amount and performed at home and at fairs and other gatherings.
Northumbria, at the northern edge of England, bordering on Scotland across the Tweed River, is characterized by the use of Northumbrian smallpipes as well as a strong Scottish and Celtic influence. Northumbrian pipes are small and elbow-driven and the music is traditionally very swift and rhythmic. Northumbrian pipe music has seen a recent revival due to the touring of artists like Kathryn Tickell. Another distinct form of Northumbrian pipe is called the "half-long" or "border" pipe. Northumbria is also known for its long history of border ballads, such as "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" and dances, including social ones like the Elsdon Reel and others, like rapper dancing and Northumbrian clog dancing, more typically seen in concert halls.
Sea shanties are a form of work song traditionally sung by sailors working on the rigging of ships. There are several types, divided based on the type of work they set the rhythmic base for. For example:
Rock and roll is form of music that developed among African-Americans during the 1940s and 1950s. While rock music and its country-influenced cousin, rockabilly, topped the American charts, a group of blues musicians started to become very popular in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s and early 1960s. British blues soon became a distinct genre, while rock, rockabilly and other forms of popular music mixed, resulting teen crazes like mod and merseybeat.
By the mid-1960s, British rock dominated charts over much of the world; this was known as the British Invasion. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Animals and other artists played a form of pop rock, with some grit and swagger. After the disintegration of one of the grittiest, The Yardbirds, a group called Led Zeppelin formed. Led Zeppelin, along with contemporaries like Black Sabbath and American bands like The Velvet Underground and Blue Cheer, invented heavy metal music. By the end of the 1960s, British psychedelia was reaching its peak of influence with dark bands like The Doors and glam rock artists like David Bowie and Mott the Hoople and splitting into more experimental directions, such as in the Canterbury Scene and the further evolution and popularization of progressive rock bands like King Crimson, Procol Harum, Genesis and The Moody Blues.
In the 1970s, music from the United Kingdom further diversified. Heavy metal music grew into hair metal in the United States, and other American metal bands like Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith and KISS helped move the UK from the forefront of the metal world. A late-1970s influx of British metal bands, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, helped change this, especially bands like Judas Priest. At the same time, disco grew to prominence world-wide and a brief fad for Jamaican lovers rock also sold well in the UK. The mid- to late 1970s saw the rise of punk rock in the UK and US. Bands like The Clash and the Sex Pistols became very controversial, attacking institutions and authorities and using a quick, simple rhythm alongside humorous, immature, nihilist or thought-provoking lyrics.
In the early 1980s, the death of Sid Vicious (of the Sex Pistols) and the alleged selling-out of bands like The Clash and The Jam led to still-frequent cries that punk is dead. Hardcore punk diversified into Gothic rock, including Siouxsie & the Banshees and The Cure, and New Wave bands like Adam & the Ants. The rebellious punk esthetic was adopted by a group of independent record labels and bands playing distinct and uncompromising alternative rock arose. By the end of the 1980s, alternative rock in the United Kingdom had split into multiple genres, including dream pop, twee pop, shoegazing and space rock.
In the early 1990s, American alternative rock bands became mainstream in the US and achieved great popularity in the UK as well. Grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam helped inspire the British alternative rock scene. By the middle of the decade, the British charts were dominated by Britrock, a melding of British rock and roll forms from the last thirty years. Bands like Blur, Suede and Oasis helped lead this charge.
Later in the 1990s and into the next millennium, melodic British rock groups like Radiohead and Coldplay achieved great critical and commercial success.
During the mid to late 1980s, techno and house music, originally developed in Detroit and Chicago, respectively, influenced many British musicians and DJs (see History of house music). By the end the 1980s, a uniquely British spin on house music, known as "acid house" had emerged as a result of the underground party scene based around, amongst others, the so-called "Orbital" raves near the M25 motorway of London. Early pioneers of this sound were the Manchester-based 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald, Sheffield-based LFO and London-based Orbital. It was in the early 1990s after the so-called "Summer of Love" in the late 1980s that the concept of an outdoor rave began. In part as a reaction to the aggressive anti-rave policy of the government, during this time the music become harder and darker and eventually led to forms such as hardcore techno and, later in the decade, drum and bass.
As the audience for electronica, techno and other forms of electronic dance music matured, various acts topped the charts in the middle of the decade, especially artists like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Paul Oakenfold. These forms combined and mutated into dozens of subgenres, including various combinations of drum and bass, jungle, trance, house and trip hop.
Jamaican immigrants to the UK has resulted in a large community and its attendent cultural institutions. Island Records and Trojan Records, for example, introduced Jamaican music to the British during the 1970s. Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" was the beginning of the popularization of reggae, which influenced everything from pop and reggae to the mod and punk sounds of two-tone in the 1980s. Radio attention has always been scarce, with little outlet until the 1981 founding of the Dread Broadcasting Corporation, a pirate radio station.
The 1970s saw the first major flowering of British reggae with bands like The Cimarons, Aswad and Matumbi. Many of these bands adopted pop forms to appeal to mainstream audiences, a practice which peaked in the 1980s, when Aswad's "Don't Turn Around" (1988) became the first chart-topper from a British reggae band and the emergence of UB40's pure pop reggae.. At the same time, other groups, including Steel Pulse, kept the distinctively Jamaican confrontational lyrics. The later part of the decade saw the rise of the two-tone groups, often interracial, who included The Selecter, The Specials and The Beat. 1970s saw the rise of dub poetry, exemplified by Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sister Netifa and Benjamin Zephaniah. Louisa Marks' "Caught You in a Lie" began a major craze for lovers' rock music at the end of the decade, and the genre soon became popular across the United Kingdom.
The 80s and 90s also saw the rise of Saxon DJs from Wood Green, north London, including Peter King and Smiley Culture. Later, fusions with hip hop became popular, led by London Posse and the crossover star Apache Indian, and a techno fusion with reggae called jungle also became popular among a new generations of Jamaican-Brits.
Broadside ballads
Northumbrian folk
Sea shanties
British rock
Acid house, techno and electronica
Jamaican music
References
See also
External links
