ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the 1960s, many bands such as the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, the Chambers Brothers or Funkadelic decided to experiment with psychedelia in order to explore new spaces for their creations and propose new sounds to their audiences. Sound experimentations were an important part of the modifications of soul music to achieve its transition to psychedelic soul. However, the influence of psychedelia in soul music was more than a radical shift in terms of sounds and textures. It also represented a change in some compositional basis and methods used in both rock and soul. Although psychedelic soul seemed to offer a sort of consortium and a convergence of many of its actors, different processes of musical structuring should be defined, and different uses of psychedelia artefacts should be observed. This chapter will focus on psychedelic soul as a transitional state that shows a transformation of music production and ways of thinking that place sound at the centre of the compositional processes. It will also explore how through the evolution of psychedelic soul into black rock, rock music aesthetics, marketing strategies and stereotypical representations have been redefined.
