Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.

The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B".

Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world. The term "rhythm and blues" was used by Billboard in its chart listings from June 1949 until August 1969, when its "Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles" chart was renamed as "Best Selling Soul Singles".

Teesta Setalvad is a journalist, educationist and civil rights activist. She is granddaughter of India's first Attorney General M. C. Setalvad

She was awarded the 2003 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award and Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award.

She graduated with a degree in Philosophy from Bombay University in 1983 and started work as a journalist. She reported for the Mumbai editions of The Daily (India) and The Indian Express newspapers, and then for Business India magazine. Appalled by the communal violence during the Bombay Riots, she, along with activist husband Javed Anand, quit full-time journalism in 1993 to start a monthly magazine Communalism Combat.

Teesta is an ethnic Gujarati and the daughter of Atul Setalvad, a Mumbai based lawyer, and Sita Setalvad, a rural crafts exponent.^{[citation needed]} She and husband Javed have two children, Tamara and Jibran.

In 2007, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India for her role in "Public Affairs in Maharashatra".

In November 2004, Setalvad was accused of pressuring Zaheera Sheikh, the key witness in the Best Bakery case, to make certain statements, leading to the unprecedented transferral of the case outside Gujarat. In August 2005, a Supreme Court of India committee absolved her of the charges of inducement levelled against her by Zaheera.