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Seattle is the largest city in the U.S. state ofWashington and has long played a major role inWA state's musical culture as well as an influential international role on popular music. The original birthplace of guitaristJimi Hendrix, the Seattle music scene has popularized particular genres ofalternative rock andgrunge, especially as the origin and home of bands likeAlice in Chains,Soundgarden,Pearl Jam,Screaming Trees,Mudhoney,Foo Fighters, andNirvana.[1]
Seattle is also home to the globally influential public radio stationKEXP-FM. The city and surrounding metropolitan area remains home to several influential artists, bands, labels, and venues, and is home to several symphony orchestras, world-class choral, ballet and opera companies, as well as amateur orchestras and big-band era ensembles.
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Music played a deeply spiritual role in the lives of the Pacific Northwest’s First Peoples for eons prior to the beginning of recorded time, with much of this age-old music being passed down through oral tradition.[2][3]
Prior to the establishment of the City ofSeattle in 1851, the Pacific Northwest and greater Seattle region was home of theCoast Salish and neighboring tribes (i.e.Duwamish people). These tribes sustained a rich musical tradition ofst̕il̕t̕ilib("song" inLushootseed), often accompanied by drums, clappers or rattles and sometimes flutes or whistles.[3][4] Indigenous people's usedst̕il̕t̕ilib to teach language and traditional aspects of native life, to recount important history or stories, as well as for practical uses like keeping rhythm while paddling/traversing waterways.
Seattle's physical and cultural landscape changed drastically with the arrival of the first European settlers in the 1800's, as the region established industrial growth and a signficant urbanized culture by the early 20th century, shadowed only by that ofSan Francisco (which was then the major colonial center of the West Coast).
By 1909, amidst the boosterism engendered by the city's first world's fair (i.e. theAlaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition), theSeattle City Council adopted "Seattle, the Peerless City" as the City of Seattle's official song (words by Arthur O. Dillon; music by Glenn W. Ashley).[5] Seattle became an important stop forvaudeville tours, put on by large chains likePantages andConsidine; the city also produced a major attraction in the exotic dancerGypsy Rose Lee, and theWhangdoodle Entertainers were one of Seattle's first jazz andragtime bands, active from 1907-1925.
By the 1920s, Seattle had also come to support a politically radicalAmerican folk scene, inspired in part by several lengthy stays in the region by folk singerWoody Guthrie; Seattle's folk performers includedIvar Haglund, who later founded a chain of successful seafood restaurants. The Seattle jazz scene includedJelly Roll Morton for several years in the early part of the century, as well asVic Meyers, a local performer and nightclub owner who becameLieutenant Governor in 1932.[6] E. Russell "Noodles" Smith, founder of the Dumas Club and the Entertainers Club, was another important name in the Seattle Jazz scene of the day.[7][page needed]
Early musical establishments of the "classical" vein included the art school founded byNellie Cornish, which saw residencies from bothJohn Cage andMartha Graham, and theSeattle Symphony, which gave its first concert in 1903. From 1941 to 1943,Thomas Beecham was on a world-wide tour and served as the conductor of the Seattle Symphony as well as the New York Metropolitan Opera (and apparently an occasional gig with the Vancouver Symphony).Thomas Beecham either described Seattle as a "cultural dustbin" or warned that it could become one.[8] The passage of time would prove different.
World War II brought a "flourishing" vice scene, where "booze, gambling and prostitution" were unchecked by "paid-off cops". TheShowbox Ballroom was a center for these activities; it was open twenty-four hours a day, geared towards active members of the military, featuring popular performers like the racyGypsy Rose Lee. In addition to the Showbox,Washington Hall,Parker's,Odd Fellows Temple and Trianon were also majorbig band ballrooms, all of which eventually became major rock music venues.
Music patriarchFrank D. Waldron was an early member of the just formed black musicians' union, AFM Local 458.African Americans challenged and changed the Jazz culture withinSeattle with great force.[9]
Into the 1940s, Seattle was home to a growing after-hoursjazz scene, based inChinatown, Seattle and including most famously the Black and Tan Club. This period produced several local performers of note, includingRobert "Bumps" Blackwell, a bandleader whose bands included bothQuincy Jones andRay Charles. Charles often spoke of his brief Seattle stint as a pivotal point in his career as a singer/songwriter: "I met a lot of very good friends here," he told one interviewer. "I liked the atmosphere. The people were friendly, the people took to me right away. Seattle is the town where I made my first record [in 1949]. And if you ever want to say where I got my start, you have to say that."[10]
Harry Everett Smith was a college student in the 1940s when he found a number of recordings of folk music about to be recycled at aSalvation Army depot in Seattle. He rescued the recordings, which became hot commodities when released byFolkways on the landmarkAnthology of American Folk Music.[11]
Changes to local regulations in 1949 prompted a shift from "private clubs" to "restaurant-lounge combinations" which "didn't support much in the line of creative nightlife"[citation needed] and even helped to drive out the city's jazz nightclub scene.Boeing emerged in the 1940s and 1950s as one of the city's largest employers, and, according to local music historian Clark Humphrey, helped give the city a reputation as "quiet, orderly (and) dull"; in the mid-1950s,Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Emmett Watson was asked to begin a column on Seattle's happenings, but he responded that there was nothing worth writing about.
The early 1960s saw Seattle become home to a local dance scene built around venues like the Trianon and Parker's. The city also became the major center for recorded popular music in thePacific Northwest, and had the first American pop hit from the region withthe Fleetwoods "Come Softly to Me" in 1959.
That same year, the DJPat O'Day began working forKJR, and then mounted a series of teen dances featuring bands like the Fabulous Wailers, later to become famous asthe Wailers with hits like "Tall Cool One." The Wailers first album came out onGolden Crest Records; subsequent releases came out on Etiquette, the first record label owned by the band that recorded for it. The Wailers only had one more national hit, "Mau Mau", but released a long series of regionally popular recordings. Though the Wailers were popular in the Seattle area, they were actually fromTacoma, as were several other regional bands including the Swaggerz.[12]
O'Day worked with a number of local bands, several of whom had regional hits likethe Frantics' "Werewolf" and "Straight Flush". The Frantics, the Wailers, and most other local rock bands in the Pacific Northwest were basically instrumental combos, with limited vocals or none at all.the Ventures and the Viceroys were both largely instrumental, with the former gaining national acclaim as asurf band.
Though most of the regionally important bands in the 1960s were dominated by white men, Seattle also produced a few femalecountry rock performers, most notablyMerrilee Rush andBonnie Guitar. The city's black music scene includeRon Holden, a soul singer whose "Love You So" was a Top Ten hit, vocal groupthe Gallahads and R&B instrumentalistDave Lewis, who had several hits like "David's Mood" and "Little Green Thing".
Seattle's most famous musical export isJimi Hendrix, who began performing in the city but did not gain a national reputation until moving to England.[13] Though Hendrix had to move to England to start his recording career, the reverse also became true for themusicologistIan Whitcomb, who performed in the city in the 1960s. He recorded "This Sporting Life" with Gerry Rosalie ofthe Sonics, and the song became a major hit, and an early anthem for the gay community.
Sax/conga drum vocalistGerald Brashear and Wanda Brown were fixtures in the Seattle jazz scene from the 1930s to the 80s.[7][page needed]
Music authorSteven Blush described the Seattle music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s as crucial in its "vibe and ethic" which inspiredgrunge music. The earliest local alternative music scene was based around a gay glam theater group called Ze Whiz Kids, one of whose members,Tomata du Plenty, became a fixture in New York before returning in 1976 as part ofthe Tupperwares with long-time boyfriend Gorilla Rose; Blush described this as the first punk rock in the area.[14] The first punk concert in Seattle was the Tupperwares backed by the Telepaths at the grand premiere ofPink Flamingos at theMoore Theater on New Years night, 1976. Tomata and Gorilla left for Los Angeles in 1977, but a new wave of local bands emerged in their wake, congregating at a local venue calledThe Bird. These bands included the Enemy, the Lewd,the Mentors,Chinas Comidas, the Telepaths,the Beakers, Red Dress,X-15 and the Meyce.
FollowingThe Bird, local punk centered around an old theatre calledThe Showbox, where touring bands from Los Angeles, New York, London and elsewhere played. Other, smaller venues includedThe Gorilla Room andWrex, which later becameVogue. Hardcore punk, a loud, intense and angry form of punk, first came to Seattle in the bandSolger,[citation needed] which formed in 1980. They were followed bythe Fartz, who included Paul Solger of Solger, and became well known in hardcore scenes across the West Coast, and touring withBlack Flag and theDead Kennedys. The Fartz dissolved in 1982, just as their EPWorld Full of Hate was released byAlternative Tentacles. Other local bands included the Fags, the Refuzors, the Rejectors, and the DT's; both the Refuzors and the DT's were led by Mike Refuzor née Michael Lambert.The Fastbacks were affiliated with the scene, but were not considered either hardcore or punk. Also of note from this time frame is the national emergence of progressive heavy metal artistsQueensrÿche (fromBellevue, a suburb of Seattle).
Fifteen bands of that era, includingthe Blackouts,the Pudz, the Fastbacks and the Fartz contributed songs to thefirst edition of the "Seattle Syndrome" compilation, released in late 1981 on Engram Records and regarded by music historian Stephen Tow as "a critical yardstick in the history of underground Seattle music".[15]
Heart, fronted by sistersAnn andNancy Wilson of Bellevue, got their start in the Seattle area in local bands while still in their teens. Their fame was achieved while residing in Vancouver B.C. Canada, with their 1975 debut album Dreamboat Annie. Ann's boyfriend Mike Fisher, brother of original Heart guitarist Roger Fisher, was evading the Vietnam draft in Canada. Ann met and followed him to Vancouver. Mike was the band's original manager. Upon amnesty granted by President Carter, on January 21, 1977, Heart returned to the United States and signed with Capitol Records. Heart was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in April 2013.
Prior to the mid-1980s, the local hardcore and metal scenes were often violently confrontational with each other. The opening of theGorilla Gardens venue changed that by offering two separate shows at the same time; as a result, both hardcore and metal were frequently played on the same nights. The softening of relations between the two groups helped inspire the look and sound ofgrunge,[citation needed] a term allegedly coined byMark Arm of the brief joke band Mr. Epp and the Calculations who gained some local notoriety.
Two local bands later become well-known icons of the era:The U-Men andGreen River, the latter of which has been cited as the true beginning of grunge.[16] Local music author Clark Humphrey has attributed the rise of grunge, in large part, to the scene's "supposed authenticity", to its status as a "folk phenomenon, a community of ideas and styles that came up from the street" rather than "something a couple of packagers in a penthouse office" dreamed of, as well as Seattle's isolation from the mainstream record industry.[17][18] Rebee Garofalo attributes to the unlikely rise of Seattle's alternative rock to the legacy of local rock left behind bythe Ventures andJimi Hendrix.[19]
The grunge scene revolved aroundSub Pop, a record label founded byBruce Pavitt andJonathan Poneman in 1986. Sub Pop was founded by Bruce Pavitt, who began with a local radio show and began releasing tapes of local bands.[20] Radio stations likeKJET,KGRG andKCMU and local music press likeBacklash andSeattle Rocket andCity Heat Magazine also played a vital role. Grunge's entrance into the mainstream is usually traced to the release ofNirvana'sNevermind in 1991, though others point to the signing ofSoundgarden toA&M Records in 1988 and their Grammy-nominatedUltramega OK. Though Soundgarden failed to bring in large national audiences at the time, record executives saw enough promise to send scouts out to the major bands, many of whom signed to large labels.
The 1991 release ofNevermind catapulted the local scene into international fame. Nirvana,Pearl Jam,Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and other grunge bands became bestselling national groups; many of their earlier fans greeted this development with cries ofselling out, and the bands themselves struggled with the irony of alternative rock bands entering mainstream pop culture. Seattle grunge as national fare declined within a few years, however, beginning with the suicide of Nirvana frontmanKurt Cobain in 1994[21] and ending with Soundgarden's breakup in 1997.[22]
During the 1990s other forms of music also existed, including bands such asthe Posies,Kill Switch...Klick,Faith & Disease,Sky Cries Mary, andHarvey Danger.
In 2001, the University of Washington-affiliated KCMU station changed their call sign toKEXP-FM. The station gained major technological updates with funding from Paul Allen, as the station's engineers developed the radio industry's first real-time playlist, and launched the industry's first online streaming archive by 2002. While the station unveiled its live video-streaming service via YouTube in 2014, KEXP quickly attracted over 500 million viewers worldwide by 2016[23] and more than 1 million subscribers by 2019, becoming a global influence for established artists while also continuing to champion emerging Seattle music.[24] In 2024, the station surpassed 3 million subscribers on YouTube and announced the launching of a broadcast station in San Francisco as well.[25][26]
Even though the prolific grunge era had faded by the late 1990s, Seattle music has continued to maintain a strong influence in the independent music world via the expansion of KEXP, as well as through the sustained work of Seattle labels likeSub Pop,Suicide Squeeze Records (est. 1996) andBarsuk Records (est. 1998), who signed and promoted influential Seattle and Northwest-regional bands such asModest Mouse,Sleater-Kinney,Sunny Day Real Estate,Death Cab for Cutie,Band of Horses,Fleet Foxes,The Head and the Heart,Shabazz Palaces,David Bazan,Minus the Bear, andKinski (band). Seattle has also become an established home of influential hip hop music, withSir Mix-a-Lot andIshmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces being followed by the likes of theBlue Scholars,Macklemore,Common Market,Oldominion,Jake One,Lil Mosey,THEESatisfaction,DoNormaal, Gifted Gab, Travis Thompson andClipping (band).[27]
While the grunge-era venueThe Crocodile Cafe closed in 2007 (i.e. where Nirvana played some of their earliest live shows), the venue reopened in March 2009 and later relocated into a larger space within Seattle's Belltown Neighborhood in 2021.[28][29] Numerous cherished venues such asthe Vera Project,[30] Neumos, Sunset Tavern and the Tractor Tavern have all continued to adapt and showcase live performances of both nationally touring acts and local bands.[31] The Tractor tavern celebrated 30 years of live music from Seattle'sBallard neighborhood in 2024, and the beloved Conor Byrne Pub also re-opening under a cooperative model in the same year.[32][33]
Despite the adverse impacts on independent artists caused by rising cost of living in Seattle over this time,[34][35] Seattle's robustDIY and feminist punk scene flourished through the 2000's and 2010's, led by bands such asTacocat,Childbirth, andThunderpussy among many others.[36][37] DIY labels like Help Yourself Records[38] and the Sub Pop imprintHardly Art[39] led the promotion and curation of many emerging PNW acts in this time such asVersing,Dude York,The Moondoggies, andChastity Belt (band), with other significant bands likeGreat Grandpa andSpecial Explosion emerging onto the national indie music scene in the late 2010's. Crane City Music emerged as a premier purveyor of Seattle-area Hip Hop,[40] while DIY upstarts such asFreakout Records[41] Youth Riot Records,[42] and Den Tapes[43] also emerged in the late 2010's as champions for local and regional musicians.[44] Other more experimental labels in this period included Hush Hush Records,Sublime Frequencies,[45] and the influentialLight in the Attic Records, which established itself in Seattle in 2002 and grew to become one of the "most successful re-issue labels in the world" by 2016.[46]
Seattle'selectronic music scene and festival scene has also become well known throughout the country as well as internationally. Emerging electronic artists like Chong the Nomad,[47][48] and established acts like the electronic duoOdesza[49] have garnered critical acclaim particularly for their live productions.The Gorge Amphitheatre inGeorge, Washington became an established destination venue for festivals in the Pacific Northwest via theEDMParadiso Festival held there from 2012-2019, as well as the prominence ofSasquatch! Music Festival from 2002-2018, and theWatershed Music Festival held at the Gorge from 2012-present. Seattle also remains well known today for theCapitol Hill Block Party andBumbershoot music festivals, both held annually in urban Seattle neighborhoods.[50]
Below is a partial list of notable venues: