what is northern soul?

Answer 1

The simplest definition of 'Northern Soul' is Black American Soul music which became popular in the North of England. The story began in the mid sixties when Motown mania swept the country and found favour with the 'Mod' Youth Culture. By the seventies 'Funk' had become the trendy music in the South of England but the North remained loyal to a more R&B influenced style. The type of venue also differed with the South adopting smaller and more intimate clubs. The North continued to utilise much larger venues such as dilapidated Victorian Dance Halls, youth clubs, working men's clubs, seaside piers. Anywhere with a large wooden dancefloor which was pre-requisite for their style of dancing.

Another notable point about Northern Soul was that it was one of the first scenes to adopt an all-night culture. Mod Clubs such as 'The Golden Torch' in Stoke and 'The Twisted Wheel' in Manchester were the first to hold 'All-Nighters' until they were closed at the end of the sixties. Considered to be havens for the drugs culture they fell foul of the local authorities. Despite the 'Mod' scene becoming outdated the Northern Soul scene continued to develop into a culture of its own as ever increasing numbers of people started attending its events. Motown and commercial soul could no longer satisfy the tastes of the aficionado who began to demand even more esoteric forms of the music. DJ's needing to satisfy this craving began to plunder America for increasingly obscure records. 'Blues and Soul' journalist and soul guru Dave Godin noticed that Northern football fans when visiting his record shop in the capital were buying a completely different style of record to his Southern Customers. To help this clientele find what they were looking for he started to put their type of records into separate boxes which he labelled 'Northern Soul'. It was thus that the term was first coined. In the late sixties and early seventies Dave visited the Twisted Wheel and Blackpool Mecca to experience the scene for himself where the size and atmosphere of the events, the devotion of its followers, was very different to what he had experienced in the South. It was in his next column of Blues and Soul that he described his experience and it was from that article that the term was publisized and stuck. Dave had become an overnight devotee.

The Northern Soul of yesteryear usually had a 100 m.p.h beat, but today it is much more sedate. This is not only because most of its aficionados are not as sprightly as they used to be but also because most of the sixties 'stompers' had been discovered twenty years ago. In order to ensure the movement was kept vibrant with new sounds continually being introduced a slower style of record was adopted. Soul fan's tastes began to mature and it is interesting that Kent's biggest selling CD to date has nothing to do with clubs or dance music but is appropriately 'Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures'. The Northern Scene is now a misnomer because clubs not only appear throughout the whole of England but also Europe and Japan as well. The 'Northern' soul scene has developed into the much more appropriately named 'Rare Soul Scene'.