soul music, term adopted to describe African American popular music in the United States as it evolved from the 1950s to the ’60s and ’70s. Some view soul as merely a new term for rhythm and blues. In fact a new generation of artists profoundly reinterpreted the sounds of the rhythm-and-blues pioneers of the 1950s—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Sam Cooke, and Ray Charles—whose music found popularity among whites and was transformed into what became known as rock and roll. If rock and roll, represented by performers such as Elvis Presley, can be seen as a white reading of