Music Iconography

By Ryan Simson

Genre: Soul
Soul is a genre that originated in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues to create a new sound. This was largely popular in the 1960-1980 time period. The main instruments used in this genre are guitar, keyboard/piano, drums and the vocals of the singer. Since the creation of soul, many sub-genres of it have been formed, including British soul. Most recently soul in Britain has been rejuvenated in artists such as Adele, Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Leona Lewis which all have had chart singles. Often soul artist are solo artists that are popular with both genders and quite a large target audience. These artist often have similar aspects to them and also have their differences which split them apart. I have found that not many artists have a logo and they prefer to use their self as the logo.

Genre

 In the genre (soul, singer/songwriter) across the different media types we can draw links to imagery used, the main image is often as close up image of the artists head. A convention of the genre is that often the name of the artist is their real name e.g. Adele, compared to genres such as rap where they have stage names such as 50 Cent. Although there are some soul-singer-songwriters which have stage names. Across all the media types we can clearly see the name of the artist bigger than the rest of the text. This causes the audience to see the name first and remember it. Often this is a calligraphic font. Also for the more upbeat singers brighter colours, such as yellow, are used in the imagery. This makes the image more memorable. Although if the songs are slower, darker colours are used to create a more serious note. The artists also have a memorable factor about them, such as a hat, glasses or facial hair. This gives a reason for the audience to remember the person for a unique factor.

Amy Winehouse

 For my artist she follows some of the genre iconography and goes against other aspects. Such as she follows the convention of having her name as the biggest text on the piece of media as this allows the audience to clearly see who the artist is if they do not know her and also as it is largest words on the media it draws the audiences attention to it. How ever she doesnt follow the convention of calligraphic fonts for her text, as she has a more modernised Broadway font across all of her media types. This makes my artist memorable as you can link each piece of media to each other creating an impact on the viewer that makes her more memorable, this also makes her stand out from the other soul-singer-songwriters. Across the majority of her media pieces the colour black is used, this creates the effect that the artist is serious and this therefore creates an effect on the audience that she is serious about what she does and therefore makes them want to see what the lyrics include as they may have something relating to their life. She also has an image of herself on all of her media, this is getting the audience to become more acquainted with her as she is seen everywhere on her media, this makes her seem more memorable and therefore sell more products. Our artist also has a unique factor to remember about her, she has a large hair-do and tattoos. This causes the audience to remember her as she is unique in her genre as not many females have such large hair or tattoos.