Avant-Soul
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Avant-Soul is soul music willing to become strange: fractured song forms, unusual harmony, art-rock influence, jazz freedom, electronic texture, spoken passages, odd rhythm and vocals that value risk as much as smoothness. It is not anti-soul; it treats soul's emotional directness as material for experiment. The style can be beautiful, difficult, spiritual, political or surreal, often sitting just outside commercial R&B grammar.
History
Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Shuggie Otis, Rotary Connection and Betty Davis opened experimental doors inside soul and funk. Later Prince, Meshell Ndegeocello, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Sa-Ra, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Solange and Moses Sumney expanded the field through art music, jazz, psychedelia, electronics and Black experimental traditions. Avant-soul matters because it protects R&B's future from becoming only nostalgia or formula.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Family Affair — Sly and the Family StoneSpotifyYouTube
- Living for the City — Stevie WonderSpotifyYouTube
- If I Was Your Girlfriend — PrinceSpotifyYouTube
- If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) — Meshell NdegeocelloSpotifyYouTube
- Untitled (How Does It Feel) — D'AngeloSpotifyYouTube
- Window Seat — Erykah BaduSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Avant-soul and neo-soul histories
- Black experimental music criticism
- artist biographies
- R&B album retrospectives