Music of Chicago

Guitarist Buddy Guy (born in 1936) performing at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in 2006

Chicago's music scene has been well known for its blues music for many years. "Chicago Blues" uses a variety of instruments in a way which heavily influenced early rock and roll music, including instruments like electrically amplified guitar, drums, piano, bass guitar and sometimes the saxophone or harmonica, which are generally used in Delta blues, which originated in Mississippi. Chicago Blues has a more extended palette of notes than the standard six-note blues scale; often, notes from the major scale and dominant 9th chords are added, which gives the music more of a "jazz feel" while still being in the blues genre. Chicago blues is also known for its heavy rolling bass. The music developed mainly as a result of the "Great Migration" of poor black workers from the South into the industrial cities of the North, such as Chicago in particular, in the first half of the 20th century.[3]

Chicago is one of the places where the faster, juicier boogie-woogie emerged from the blues. The most renowned early recordings of boogies were made in Chicago with Clarence Pinetop Smith, who might have been influenced by the brothers Hersal Thomas and George W. Thomas from Houston, who were together in Chicago in the 1920s.[4]

Chicago blues and boogie music continues to be popular today with the annual Chicago Blues Festival, and with appreciation of many musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Willie Dixon; guitar players such as Tampa Red, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Elmore James and Lefty Dizz; and "harp" (blues slang for harmonica) players such as Big Walter Horton, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Syl Johnson, Charlie Musselwhite, Paul Butterfield, Junior Wells, and, most notably, James Cotton.[5]

An honorary street name sign in Chicago for house music and Frankie Knuckles (1955–2014)

House music originated in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse. Chicago house is the earliest style of house music. While the origins of the name "house music" are unclear, the most popular belief is that it can be traced to the name of that club. DJ Frankie Knuckles originally popularized house music while working at The Warehouse.[6]

House music was developed in the houses, garages and clubs of Chicago, and was initially for local club-goers in the "underground" club scenes, rather than for widespread commercial release. As a result, the recordings were much more conceptual, and longer than the music usually played on commercial radio. House musicians used analog synthesizers and sequencers to create and arrange the electronic elements and samples on their tracks, combining live traditional instruments and percussion and soulful vocals with preprogrammed electronic synthesizers and "beat-boxes".

House, perhaps more than any other form of black music, has birthed many offshoots and spread its sound far and wide. The prevalence of four on the floor beats in dance music is largely derived from house. It has influenced, in some capacity, Garage house, Jungle music, Eurodance, Electropop, Dubstep, and even certain elements of Alternative rock and Hip hop.[7]

Important musicians in the Chicago house scene include Adonis, Mark Farina, Keith Farley, Felix da Housecat, Fingers Inc., Ron Hardy, Larry Heard, Steve 'Silk' Hurley, Marshall Jefferson, Curtis Jones, Paul Johnson, Frankie Knuckles, Lil' Louis, Jesse Saunders, Joe Smooth, Julius the Mad Thinker and Ten City

The city is host to the Chicago House Music Festaval, the event is held at Millennium park in the late summer.[8][9]

During the mid-1960s to the late 1970s a new style of soul music emerged from Chicago. Its sound, like southern soul with its rich influence of black gospel music, also exhibited an unmistakable gospel sound, but was somewhat lighter and more delicate in its approach, and was sometimes called "soft soul".

Popular R&B/soul artists from Chicago include The Impressions, Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Lou Rawls, The Five Stairsteps, The Staple Singers, Earth Wind & Fire, Rufus, Chaka Khan, Dave Hollister, The Emotions, The Chi-lites, R. Kelly, Carl Thomas, and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago soul labels, including Vee-Jay, Chess Records, OKeh, ABC-Paramount, Brunswick, and Curtom, established a major presence in R&B/soul music.

Fall Out Boy in 2007

In 1965 Chicago's burgeoning pop rock horn sound moved into national exposure with the brass arrangements in early recordings by The Buckinghams, who recorded their first hits at the historic Chess Studios. Their horn sound was followed quickly and expanded upon substantially by the rock band Chicago, originally named the Chicago Transit Authority. Other popular Chicago-based bands from the 1960s and 1970s include Shadows of Knight, Cryan' Shames, The Buckinghams, The Flock, Ides of March, New Colony Six, Mason Proffit, Styx, Survivor, REO Speedwagon (Champaign) and Cheap Trick (Rockford).

As documented in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, the 1980s independent music scene was alive and well in Chicago. Some of the more famous punk and "post-punk" products originating from the city were Naked Raygun, The Effigies, 88 Fingers Louie, Big Black, The Queers and Screeching Weasel, with punk legend Patti Smith also born in the city. Many of these bands would become major precursors to pop punk (Screeching Weasel and The Queers) and post-hardcore (Big Black and Naked Raygun).[24] At this time Steve Albini (of Big Black) also began his prolific recording engineer work with acts both local and national.[25] The Victims represented Chicago on the New Wave scene.

The 1980s punk scene eventually gave way to the 1990s alternative rock boom with artists like Local H, Eleventh Dream Day, Ministry, Veruca Salt (the band Seether is named after their song "Seether"), My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Material Issue, Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, LaTour, The Tossers, The Jesus Lizard, and The Smashing Pumpkins gaining fame. Many of these bands got their career started at noted alternative music venues Metro (originally Cabaret Metro) and Lounge Ax, and later on influential alternative music station Q101. Alternative icons Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), Adam Jones (Tool), and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) also attended school in the area. In the late 1990s, along with Milwaukee, WI and Champaign-Urbana, IL, Chicago also supported a healthy midwestern emo/post-hardcore scene that included Cap'n Jazz, Braid and American Football.

Since the late 1990s/early 2000s, Chicago has also become a major force in the American heavy metal scene including a handful of deathcore, death metal and industrial metal groups supported and promoted by indie labels like Wax Trax! Records among others. Bands such as, Disturbed, SOiL, From Zero, No One, Ministry (band), Dance Club Massacre, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, Macabre, Oceano and Lovehammers hail from the Chicago area.

Since the 2000s Chicago has remained a hotbed for independent music. Being home to a number of independent record labels such as Touch and Go Records, Thrill Jockey Records, Bloodshot Records, Drag City Records, Victory Records and Hozac Records, Chicago continues to have one of the most active indie scenes in the United States. The area is home to the foundations of American hardcore punk, alt-country, noise rock, industrial music, and many other independent music scenes.

Contemporary bands with ties to Chicago include Wilco, Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Califone, The Greenskeepers, The Mekons, Smith Westerns, Andrew Bird, Umphrey's McGee, Neko Case, and Matthew & Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. The 2000s have also seen many punk/pop/rock bands from the Chicago area attain national success, including Disturbed, SOiL, Alkaline Trio, Kill Hannah, The Academy Is, Rise Against, The Audition, Spitalfield, Chevelle, the Plain White T's, and OK Go.

Fall Out Boy, from Wilmette, Illinois, has been the most commercially successful band to come from the Chicago area in recent years, scoring 4 #1 albums on the Billboard Hot 200.

Despite the scene's frequent distaste for local politics, city funding has allowed Chicago to become America's premier music festival city,[26] hosting popular indie headliners such as Superchunk, Black Francis, Pavement, The Flaming Lips, Spoon, De La Soul, Mos Def, Isis, Olivia Tremor Control and Junior Boys. It has also hosted music festivals such as Pitchfork Music Festival, Lollapalooza (since 2005), Chicago Blues Festival, Alehorn of Power, Riot Fest, and a free weekly Monday music series called "Downtown Sound", at Millennium Park's Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

Chicago's music scene varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, but overall has a large focus on independent music due to its influences from local record stores and local radio stations WXRT-FM and Loyola University Chicago's WLUW.

Chicago is home to media tastemakers Pitchfork Media, The Onion's The A.V. Club, Consequence of Sound, the nationally syndicated Sound Opinions radio talk show, and CHIRP,[27] a community radio station providing the internet with independent music. The station also bids for support to convince the United States Congress and the FCC to remove existing barriers to low power FM radio licenses in urban areas.

Lil Durk

King Von (d. in Atlanta in 2020)

The hip hop of Chicago is sometimes called "Chi-town"[28] in the music industry. It became commonplace for serious rappers to cite the Nation of Islam, a Black Muslim organization headquartered in Chicago, as a lyrical and ideological influence in the 1980s and 1990s, a rap theme often resulting in controversy.[29]

Kanye West's first album was nominated for Grammy Award for Album of the Year and won Best Rap Album. Lupe Fiasco's 2006 album Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor was a #1 selling rap album.

Today, Chicago is well established within the hip hop industry. Drill music was also born in Chicago.

Chicago artists and impresarios have been important in the development of the Gospel music genre.[30] Its origin and rise in popularity is mainly due to the "godfather of Gospel music", Thomas A. Dorsey. Dorsey began his career as a blues pianist, but later began composing religious music to the rhythms of jazz and blues, later calling it "Gospel".[31] His most popular song, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand", was a favorite of Martin Luther King Jr., and was sung by Mahalia Jackson by his request at his funeral. Many other artists have recorded their own renditions of "Precious Lord", including another Chicago Gospel artist, Albertina Walker. Dorsey influenced other Chicago Gospel artists such as The Caravans and Little Joey McClork.

Tired of the treatment he received in other music publishing houses, Dorsey founded his own called Dorsey House of Music.

Music historians often cite Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood as the birthplace of Gospel music. Originators of the genre, including James Cleveland, The Staples Singers, and the Edwin Hawkins singers, have performed there.

Other instrumental members in the Gospel music movement were Roberta Martin, Sallie Martin, Kenneth Morris, and "Little Lucy" Smith.

The influences of jazz and blues have been replaced with more contemporary influences such as hip hop music, rap, and rhythm and blues.[32]

Chicago is home to the annual GospelFest where traditional and contemporary Gospel choirs perform.

Rev. Milton Brunson and The Thompson Community Singers originated in Chicago. Dr. Charles G. Hayes and Rev. Dr. Clay Evans both had chart-topping choirs in Chicago. Urban contemporary gospel artists such as Ray and Percy Bady, Darius Brooks, Ricky Dillard & New Generation Chorale, Joshua's Troop, New Direction, Shekinah Glory Ministry, and VaShawn Mitchell all have had Gospel hits and hail from Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.[33]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Music of Chicago.

• City of Chicago
• "Chicago Jazz Archive". The University of Chicago Library This site may move. Uncomment this archive if it is suddenly lost. Archived from the original on 2007-08-20. Retrieved 2008-03-22.