The soul music is the creation of changing social conditions and diverse musical influences. Finding its roots into the traditional folk songs of the African slaves that were brought at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, soul music was actually the 'African Spirituals' of the period between 1825 and 1850. These spirituals had important harmonious and metrical relationships with West African songs and were mostly used by black slaves as a way of secret communication. By the end of the 19th century, they were substituted by gospel songs.

At the time of World War I, many black people moved from the agricultural South to the industrial North and they changed the setting and made a new demographic group which developed a new music genre called as R&B Soul. Soul artists did not evolve until the mid-50s with the resurgence of gospel and doo-wop and the commercial blast of music for African-Americans. Finding its roots in rhythm & blues and gospel, soul music was related with the black civil rights movement through the metamorphosis of black music into a form of rhythmic confirmation. Besides, the prominent trend of the 1960s towards cultural integration helped the development of soul as a means to combine black and white America.