Research into Music Genres

Rap
More than a century before rap came onto the scene in America, West African musicians told stories rhythmically using one instrument - usually a drum. This was a similar story on the Caribbeans Islands were people also told stories in rhyme. Indeed, these singing poets from Africa and the Caribbean lay the foundation for modern-day American rap music.

The definition of rap music nowadays is that it's generally performed in a vocal style in which the lyrics are spoken, rather than sung. This type of music often deals with the hardships of inner-city life. Musicians typically remix these sounds and rhythms, adding their own innovations and often synthesised musical elements.

Nowadays rap is typically for a youth audience from around 16+ and therefore has a demographic of E and D, this is partly because of the age of the artists, majority are very young - sometimes still in their teens. Over recent years rap has continued to grow and make it's way into the charts, however I believe it's still not as recognised as it would like to be.

Hip-Hop
Hip-Hop is a lifestyle with its own lingo and dress code.

Hip-hop music is a genre consisting of a stylised rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements which are: rapping, scratching, break dancing and graffiti writing. Other elements include beat boxing. Hip-hop first developed during the 1970s when block parties became popular in New York City.

Hip-hop nowadays is a musical melting pot. It's a combination of sounds that includes elements of soul, jazz, gospel, rock and live instrumentation. The likes of De La Soul, a Tribe called Quest and most recently, Kanye West are recognised for championing the soulful rap movement. Other artists like Azealia Banks tend to blend hip-hop with elements of dance music.

Hip-hop is a very wide spread genre because of it's origin. Therefore it has a wider target audience but also a little older than Rap with a demographic of E and D, ranging all the way up to 36 years old, stereotypically African-American males.

Rhythm and Blues (R&B)
R&B combines soulful singing and a strong backbeat, this was the most popular music created by and for African Americans. Artists like Ray Charles, Little Richard and James Brown rank among the most influential R&B performers.

Early R&B artists broke away from the big band formula by typically performing in small groups and emphasising blues-style vocals and song structures. Saxophone and piano were still prominent , but electric guitar and bass added volume and intensity - making the new sound ideal for radio and jukeboxes.

In the early 1980s, funk and soul had become more sexual with the work of Prince and others. The modern style of contemporary R&B came to be a major part of American popular music. R&B today defines a style of African-American music. It combines elements of soul music, funk, pop and eventually hip-hop - in what is now called contemporary R&B.

The target audience for R&B music today is teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13 and 25, therefore sharing a demographic of E,D and possibly C2 of mainly females. The popularity with the female gender could be due to the actual artists mainly being male and therefore causing an attraction between the female audience and the male artists, but also could be due to the sound of the actual music - R&B music can be quite a soft, feminine noise.

Reggae
Reggae music is a very popular style of music in Jamaica and it's roots can be traced back to the 1960s. Overtime, reggae music found its way to the United States, which popularised reggae and slowly brought it to mainstream audiences. By the 1970s reggae had become an international style which was particularly popular in the UK, United States and Africa. Reggae was embraced in the USA largely through the work of Bob Marley - both directly and indirectly (as a result of Eric Clapton's popular cover of Marley's "I shot the sheriff" in 1974. Bob Marley was the artist that took reggae to the masses and made it a universal language.

In the 1980s and 90s dancehall came around and popularised very quickly. The dancehall deejays refined the practise of toasting which is rapping over an instrumental track. These deejays influenced the emerge of hip-hop music in the USA and extended the mar get for reggae into the African-American community.

The lyrics in reggae music focus on many themes and subjects including: love, injustice, poverty, faith and other broad social issues.

Today, reggae is a worldly recognised genre that has continued to grow at a fast pace over recent years. Typically, because of the origin, the main target audience would have a demographic of E as the audience used to just be the working class Jamaicans, however when the genre spread over seas - so did the target audience and therefore the people listening to reggae now include all ages and races, with people nearly in all demographics.

Dubstep
Dubstep is a new genre compared to the others I have looked into, it's a genre within electronic dance music. You can tell if a piece of music is of this genre by the reverberated sub-bass. The sub-bass is reverberated at different speeds to give a sense of movement and insistence.

Dubstep arised in the late 90's and early 2000's, the genre has recently become increasingly popular over the last year and has been seen more in mainstream music. Dubstep originated from dub remixes of 2-step garage that was taking over London at the time. Remixers attempted to introduce new sounds into the 2-step genre, which resulted in a sound that soon required it's own name. A popular artist today involved in the Dubstep genre is Skrillex.

Dubstep has a very deep sound with a lot of bass and electronic noises. Therefore the target audience for this genre would typically be teenagers from the ages 14+. This is partly because the genre is relatively knew and therefore older teenagers would have grown up when it was around in the 90's. Also, the older generation wouldn't warm to this genre as it has quite harsh beats and a lot of bass and it's something that older audiences aren't used to. Therefore the demographic for the Dubstep genre is E and possibly D.