Soul Revival?

Since many of today's pop stars are of African American heritage, it seems almost ironic that after listening current Top 40 and urban radio formats one so frequently finds themselves asking "Where's the soul?" "Most of these artist out here are being mass produced" says G, owner of Black Star Video and Music,"they [record labels]get a sound,it's successful and they want to sick with it. So in the process they got Ne-Yo in the studio working with everybody and producing the same song over and over. But soul is about being real and there's nothing real about what their doing."
While many American R&B artist are sticking to formulaic and often predictable sources for their music,there are still those who make music from the heart and don't adhere to the generic, hit oriented, ideology of there peers, unfortunately many of these artist find themselves and their music habitually marginalized. Recently a new wave of European artist, such as Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone, Adele and Duffy emerged exploring the gutsy, emotional vocal styles and jazzy musical elements of classic soul, but some black music enthusiasts fear the commercial success artist such as Winehouse, who scored 5 Grammy's earlier this year and the mainstream rejection of new black soul artist like Ledisi, who lost the best new artist Grammy to Winehouse, is a bit dubious and may harbor underlined racism.
"I don't have a problem with white artist performing black music" says Marcus Gibbons, an avid soul fan. "My only issue is that their calling this new wave of white British girls with good voices a soul revival, as if it [soul music] ever went anywhere. These girls are winning Grammys and selling millions of records, all the while black soul artist such as Ledisi, Alice Smith and Sharon Jones are being almost completely ignored by the the media and radio, it seems almost like a diss to black people. They want the big black voices, but not big black women, so the record labels sign Christina Aguilera and Amy Winehouse, because they are easily marketed, but where does this leave the black women who they are imitating."
At the dawn of the millennium artist such as Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and D' angelo, were at the spearhead of the neo-soul revolution. In their footsteps artist whose music drew comparisons to 60's and 70's soul were receiving praise from critics and audiences alike. Jill Scott, Floetry and Musiq Soulchid were being heralded the new generation of uncompromising soul stars. Unfortunatly by mid decade much of that success had run out, as demand for "bootylicious" dance divas and southern rappers reached a climax.
But some don't agree that racism is at play in current situation. Many cite the laws of supply and demand as the key culprit. "Right now people don't want to think" says G. "People want to dance and party and music has always been and still is the best background for that, but soul music needs to be listened to, you have to savor it like wine, kids don't really have time for that. The audience for neo-soul has always been relatively small when compared to that of Beyonce or Rihanna, what happened was for a time the media chose to put a spotlight on that small community of artist after Lauryn Hill blew up, but the attention span of the media is very short and they moved on to something new and those artist returned to the underground.We live in a culture of instant gratification, people want something that they groove to immediately and not have to really spend time with. Winehouse was able to break though on the strength of Rehab, which was too catchy to deny and as a result she had a major hit record and a lot of people bought her CD and that brought a lot of the mainsterm back to soul. So now artist like Ledisi are entering conversations, that wouldn't have happen without Rehab blowing up the way it did. So maybe Winehouse's success will give some of these record labels incentive to properly promote black soul artist to this growing audience."
Rather or not black soul artist gain mainstream support, it is important that fans support black, independently owned record stores. Norma, a manager at 2 Live Music, has a more unified outlook on the situation. " We sell a lot of Amy Winehouse and a lot of Ledisi, I think what people are looking for is good music, maybe radio isn't necessarily the format for that anymore, but now Myspace and Youtube have become very powerful sources of exposure to music that wouldn't have seen the light of day before. But to the question of rather or not white artist in soul are detrimental or beneficial, i don't know, I just think its great that their is good soul music out there being made rather its by Anthony Hamilton or Robin Thicke, it doesn't matter to me. It's just reassuring to me to know that soul music isn't going anywhere and thats what's really important."