Essay On Motown

What does music mean to Americans? Well in America music is one of the main things that makes up our society. In the late 1950’s and during the 1960’s, one record company brought hits from all kinds of different singers and groups, it was called Motown. Motown was founded by Berry Gordy on January 12, 1959. Berry Gordy had borrowed eight hundred dollars from his family to start a record company. The name, a combination of motor and town, had also become a nickname for Detroit. Gordy applied the principles he learned in the factory for production of records and creation of musical groups. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned record label which achieved significant crossover success.
Motown records had to find strategies to be able to promote its artists and music, which allowed Motown records achieve crossover success. One major strategy that took place was the image of the Motown artists. How would you feel if every day of your life you had to hide your true identity? Would you be able to hide your true self? Strict control of an artist image would allow the groups to not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the music they sang. Artist had to always look their best when in public because they had to keep a good image. Artist had to wear nice clean clothing, they had to be
For the artists it was hard to keep up the big image Gordy wanted the artist to keep up their makeup image, but most artist didn’t want to live with it anymore. Motown artists also left from financial issues and others because of control issues. Motown tried to keep their groups, which eventually failed, but most of them matured and sought for other opportunities. With artist leaving it was hard for Berry Gordy to keep his record company up and