藉此機會，我們會在本公眾號推送一些系統介紹西方音樂的閱讀材料，供大家練習閱讀的同時，也順便了解一下相關的背景知識。為了鼓勵大家自己動腦去精讀，我們只標註一些比較生僻的詞彙，不提供中文翻譯。Happy reading.
As jazz was becoming more and more popular in the 1930s and 1940 s, another new genre was starting to develop. Many African Americans were professional blues musicians, but making money wasn't easy. They formed small bands and looked for work in cheap bars and clubs. But to get work, they had to attract audiences. Most young people who went to these places thought blues was old-fashioned, so the bands had to develop a new style, and what they created was "rhythm and blues" (or R&B).
The early forms of R&B were loud and lively and mostly played on drums (架子鼓), double bass (低音提琴), and electric guitar (電吉他). Singers were men or women with big voices, and audiences loved it.
The style quickly spread throughout the country, with larger bands adding piano, trumpet (小號) and saxophone (薩克斯風).
R&B was great fun and perfect for dancing, and by the mid-1940s many bands were selling records. Two of the biggest sellers were T-Bone Walker and Louis Jordan's "Tympany Five", who had a number-one hit (指極受歡迎的歌曲或上榜歌曲) in 1944 with G.I. Jive. Later R&B artists include Ruth Brown, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Ray Charles.
The term "R&B" is now used to describe romantic soul songs and ballads (有很多意思，可以指民謠，民歌，敘事歌曲，敘事詩等等。這裡指節奏比較緩慢的情歌), a very different style to the original R&B. Some of the best modern R&B singers include Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Whitney Huston, Mariah Carey, James Brown, and the list goes on.
Hope you enjoyed the content above. We will introduce a few more articles about some other major western music genres such as rock, RnB, so forth. Stay tuned.
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