Rhythm and blues in the context of "Contemporary R"

A line dance is a choreographed dance in which a group of people dance along to a repeating sequence of steps while arranged in one or more lines or rows. These lines usually face all in the same direction, or less commonly face each other. Unlike circle dancing, line dancers are not in physical contact with each other. Each dance is usually associated with, and named for, a specific song, such as the Macarena or the Electric Slide (associated with the 1982 single "Electric Boogie") which are a few of the line dances that have consistently remained part of modern American culture for years.

Line dancing is practiced and learned in country-western dance bars, social clubs, dance clubs and ballrooms. It is sometimes combined on dance programs with other forms of country-western dance, such as two-step, western promenade dances, and as well as western-style variants of the waltz, polka and swing. Line dances have accompanied many popular music styles since the early 1970s including pop, swing, rock and roll, disco, Latin (salsa suelta), rhythm and blues and jazz.

Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

Blues music is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African Americans.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew from the black musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other styles. Rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers.

Usually, rock is song-based music with a
₄ time signature and using a verse–chorus form; however, the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the western world from the 1960s up to the 2010s.

Jazz fusion (also known as jazz rock, jazz-rock fusion, or simply fusion) is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars and basses, amplifiers, and keyboard instruments (including electric pianos and organs) that were popular in rock began to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.

Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies, in a similar fashion to progressive rock. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz.

The culture of the United States encompasses various social behaviors, institutions, and norms, including forms of speech, literature, music, visual arts, performing arts, food, sports, religion, law, technology, as well as other customs, beliefs, and forms of knowledge. American culture has been shaped by the history of the United States, its geography, and various internal and external forces and migrations.

America's foundations were initially Western-based, and primarily English-influenced, but also with prominent French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Scottish, Welsh, Jewish, Polish, Scandinavian, Spanish and Portuguese regional influences. However, non-Western influences, including African and Indigenous cultures, and more recently, Asian cultures, have firmly established themselves in the fabric of American culture as well. Since the United States was established in 1776, its culture has been influenced by successive waves of immigrants, and the resulting "melting pot" of cultures has been a distinguishing feature of its society. Americans pioneered or made great strides in musical genres such as heavy metal, rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, country, hip hop, and rock 'n' roll. The "big four sports" are American football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. In terms of religion, the majority of Americans are Protestant or Catholic, with a growing irreligious population. American cuisine includes popular tastes such as hot dogs, milkshakes, and barbecue, as well as many other class and regional preferences. The most commonly used language is English; while no law designates it official, a 2025 executive order declares English the official language. Distinct cultural regions include New England, Mid-Atlantic, the South, Midwest, Southwest, Mountain West, and Pacific Northwest.

Salsa music is a style of Latin American music, combining elements of Cuban and Puerto Rican influences. Because most of the basic musical components predate the labeling of salsa, there have been many controversies regarding its origin. Most songs considered as salsa are primarily based on son montuno and son cubano, with elements of cha-cha-chá, bolero, rumba, mambo, jazz, R&B, bomba, and plena. All of these elements are adapted to fit the basic Son montuno template when performed within the context of salsa.

Originally the name salsa was used to label commercially several styles of Hispanic Caribbean music, but nowadays it is considered a musical style on its own and one of the staples of Hispanic American culture.

Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in African American communities throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body movements, are an important hallmark of soul. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead and backing vocalists, an especially tense vocal sound, and occasional improvisational additions, twirls, and auxiliary sounds. Soul music is known for reflecting African American identity and stressing the importance of African American culture.

Soul has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues, and primarily combines elements of gospel, R&B and jazz. The genre emerged from the power struggle to increase black Americans' awareness of their African ancestry, as a newfound consciousness led to the creation of music that boasted pride in being black. Soul music became popular for dancing and listening, and American record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential in its proliferation during the civil rights movement. Soul also became popular worldwide, directly influencing rock music and the music of Africa. It had a resurgence in the mid-to late 1990s with the subgenre neo soul, which incorporated modern production elements and hip-hop influences.

A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youth in London, England, in the 1960s. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Motivated by social alienation and working-class solidarity, skinheads are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel toe work boots, braces, high rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The movement reached a peak at the end of the 1960s, experienced a revival in the 1980s, and, since then, has endured in multiple contexts worldwide.

The rise to prominence of skinheads came in two waves, with the first wave taking place in the late 1960s in the UK. The first skinheads were working class youths motivated by an expression of alternative values and working class pride, rejecting both the austerity and conservatism of the 1950s–early 1960s and the more middle class or bourgeois hippie movement and peace and love ethos of the mid to late 1960s. Skinheads were instead drawn towards more working class outsider subcultures, incorporating elements of early working class mod fashion and Jamaican music and fashion, especially from Jamaican rude boys. In the earlier stages of the movement, a considerable overlap existed between early skinhead subculture, mod subculture, and the rude boy subculture found among Jamaican British and Jamaican immigrant youth, as these three groups interacted and fraternized with each other within the same working class and poor neighbourhoods in Britain. As skinheads adopted elements of mod subculture and Jamaican British and Jamaican immigrant rude boy subculture, both first and second generation skins were influenced by the rhythms of Jamaican music genres such as ska, rocksteady, and reggae, as well as sometimes African-American soul and rhythm and blues.

The Teddy Boys or Teds were a mainly British youth subculture originating in the early 1950s to mid-1960s and then revived in the 1970s who were interested in rock and roll and R&B music, wearing clothes partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period, which Savile Row tailors had attempted to re-introduce in Britain after the Second World War.

Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in late 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries. It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz.

Elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits) and music (including soul, rhythm and blues and ska, but mainly jazz). They rode motor scooters, usually Lambrettas or Vespas. In the mid-1960s, members of the subculture listened to pop groups with rhythm and blues (R&B) influences, such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.