Orchestral Soul

Orchestral soul is a style of soul music in which full orchestral forces, strings, horns, harp and woodwind, are integrated into the arrangements rather than added as decoration. Developed in the late 1960s by producers and arrangers such as *Isaac Hayes* and *Barry White*, it stretches soul songs into long, dynamic suites with lush, slowly shifting textures beneath impassioned lead vocals. Philadelphia soul's orchestral wing, through *MFSB* and the Sigma Sound arrangers, made the approach a commercial standard of 1970s black popular music.