Early British popular music, in the sense of commercial music enjoyed by the people, can be seen to originate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the arrival of the broadside ballad as a result of the print revolution, which were sold cheaply and in great numbers until the nineteenth century. Further technological, economic and social changes led to new forms of music in the nineteenth century, including the brass band, which produced a popular and communal form of classical music. Similarly, the Music hall sprang up to cater for the entertainment of new urban societies, adapting existing forms of music to produce popular songs and acts. In the 1930s, the influence of American Jazz led to the creation of British dance bands, who provided a social and popular music that began to dominate social occasions and the radio airwaves.
Read more about Early British Popular Music: Broadside Ballads, Brass Bands, Parlour Music, Music Hall, Dance Bands (big Bands)
Famous quotes containing the words popular music, early, british, popular and/or music:
“The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races.... The economics of this musical esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is so very late that we
May call it early by and by. Good night.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Music, ho, music such as charmeth sleep!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)