“Motown” is a record company that was created by Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959. It’s name comes from “motor town,” which is a nickname for Detroit. This company is still recording today, though now it is run by a company called The Island Def Jam Music group. How can a record label also be a genre of music? This is because the artists who all recorded under Motown had very similar sounds. Motown music sounds like pop music. It has a lot of tambourines that keep a back beat. The electric bass guitar has very melodic and nice sounding lines. The songs’ melody lines and chords, plus the call-and-response style sounds like gospel music. There’s also a lot of orchestral strings, horn sections (meaning, trumpets, saxes, and trombones), and carefully arranged vocal backgrounds. The style of Motown was very influential; many musicians of this time period wanted to record with Motown because they also wanted to get the “Motown Sound.”

Famous Motown artists included:

The Jackson 5 Stevie Wonder Diana Ross

Lionel Richie Boyz to Men Marvin Gaye

Motown recorded many black artists. However, it was influential during the 1970s because its music was liked by both black and white fans. Smokey Robinson once said: “Into the '60s, I was still not of a frame of mind that we were not only making music, we were making history. But I did recognize the impact because acts were going all over the world at that time. I recognized the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I recognized that because I lived it. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated. Then they started to get the Motown music and we would go back and the audiences were integrated and the kids were dancing together and holding hands” (Wikipedia, 2013).

Motown

The Motown Sound