Rock and roll is a mirror, a map of cultural development and reaction. From the early Blues to today’s Hip Hop and Hardcore, music has changed to keep stride with an ever evolving political and social climate. In many ways, the music helps to fuel this evolution, breaking down racial boundaries, and crossing lines of class. That is not to say that it is a creation without conflict, Rock and Roll is a powerful device. It draws its power from its controversial nature, one reason for its total rise to power. Today, music is ever present, forever, like the society it is born from, it is a creation of oppositional forces. Today’s popular music is a mess of styles and ideologies. No other art form is so readily accessible, accepted and despised.
Rock and Roll is built on African-American roots (American white country music and black rhythm and blues), and with changes and advancements in society, the music changed. A strange and new black and white gospel music took hold of the younger generation. It became more accessible to both black and white teens.The music of that kind snared their senses with rhythm and energy, whitch they had never before encountered.Its initial appeal was to middle class especially white teenagers who soon came to feel it was their own. Perhaps it was because their parents hated it. For the elder generation this new music style or Rock and Roll as it came to be known was nothing than evil incarnate.It was called the race music as well because it was too rebellious, sexual and anti social to be acceptable. The name Rock and Roll was first mentioned in a radio program that played that kind of music for teens. It all started back in mid fifties with “ Rock around the clock “ by Bill Halley and The Comets. Similar pieces were performed by white and black singers, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard. Boggie rhythms and the 12-bar blues chord structure were combinated with blues song-forms, singing style ranged from blues – derived to Elvis Presley’s innovatory rhythmic treatment of lyrics. Instrumentation was slap – bass, drum kit, piano, rhythm guitar, and solo electric guitar, sometimes the saxophones of rhythm and blues were retained. The style spread all over the world!…
