rock music type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world.

Origins of Rock

Essentially hybrid in origin, rock music includes elements of several black and white American music styles: black guitar-accompanied blues; black rhythm and blues, noted for saxophone solos; black and white gospel music ; white country and western music ; and the songs of white popular crooners and harmony groups. Emerging in 1954–55, rock music was initially referred to as "rock 'n' roll." After 1964 it was simply called "rock music." The change in terminology indicates both a continuity with and a break from the earlier period; rock music was no longer just for dancing. After 1964 the music was influenced by British groups such as the Beatles .

The 1950s—Bill Haley and Rock 'n' Roll

The first rock 'n' roll record to achieve national popularity was "Rock Around the Clock" made by Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955. Haley succeeded in creating a music that appealed to youth because of its exciting back beat, its urgent call to dance, and the action of its lyrics. The melody was clearly laid down by electric guitar; the lyrics were earthy and simple. Haley abruptly ended the ascendancy of the bland and sentimental ballads popular in the 1940s and early 50s. He also succeeded in translating black rhythm and blues into a form that adolescent white audiences could understand.

Blues, and rhythm and blues, were too adult, sexual, angry, and solely identified with black culture to be acceptable either emotionally or commercially without adaptation. Major record companies had for years been producing records for black audiences called "race records." The emergence of rock 'n' roll signified a slight weakening in resistance to black culture. The unadulterated black rock 'n' roll that Haley transformed can be heard in the sexually adult work of such artists as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ( "Work with Me, Annie" ) or "Big" Joe Turner ( "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" ), the latter song adapted by Haley for white audiences and the former transformed into "Dance with Me, Henry."

Rock 'n' roll was for and about adolescents. Its lyrics articulated teenage problems: school, cars, summer vacation, parents, and, most important, young love. The primary instruments of early rock 'n' roll were guitar, bass, piano, drums, and saxophone. All aspects of the music—its heavy beat, loudness, self-absorbed lyrics, and raving delivery—indicated a teenage defiance of adult values and authority. Influential performers of the 1950s include Chuck Berry ( "Johnny B. Goode" ), Little Richard ( "Good Golly Miss Molly" ), Sam Cooke ( "You Send Me" ), Buddy Holly ( "Peggy Sue" ), Jerry Lee Lewis ( "Great Balls of Fire" ), and Carl Perkins ( "Blue Suede Shoes" ).

The Late 1950s and Early 60s—Elvis, Motown, and the British Invasion

The greatest exponent of rock 'n' roll from 1956 to 1963 was Elvis Presley , a truck driver and aspiring singer from Tupelo, Miss., whose plaintive, wailing, dynamic delivery and uninhibited sexuality appealed directly to young audiences while horrifying older people. As rock 'n' roll became a financial success, record companies that had considered it a fad began to search for new singers; they generally succeeded in commercializing the music, robbing it of much of its gutsy, rebellious quality. In the late 1950s, for example, there was a fad for sentimentally morbid songs such as "Laura" and "Teen Angel."

At the turn of the decade Detroit became an important center for black singers, and a certain type of sound known as "Motown" [motor town], named for Motown Records, developed. The style is characterized by a lead singer singing an almost impressionistic melody story line to the accompaniment of elegant, tight, articulate harmonies of a backup group. Popular exponents of this style are the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Rock music again surged to popularity in 1962 with the emergence of the Beatles, a group of four long-haired lads from Liverpool, England. They were initially acclaimed for their energy and appealing individual personalities rather than for any innovations in their music, which was derived from Berry and Presley. Their popularity inevitably produced other groups with unusual names. One of the most important of these was the Rolling Stones , whose music derived from the black blues tradition. These British bands instigated a return to the blues orientation of rock 'n' roll, albeit in ever louder and more electric reincarnations.

The Late 1960s and Early 70s—Rock's Golden Age

Folk Rock

An important transformation of rock occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan , noted as a composer and writer of poetic folk songs and songs of social protest like "Blowin' in the Wind," appeared, playing electric guitar and backed by an electrified rock band. A synthesis of the folk revival and rock subsequently took place, with folk groups using rock arrangements and rock singers composing poetic lyrics for their songs (e.g., the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood,""Eleanor Rigby" ). The Byrds' arrangement of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a folk-rock classic. Performers like the Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Donovan; and the Lovin Spoonful sang a kind of music designated "folk rock."

Protest Songs and the Drug Culture

In the 1960s music mirrored the tensions of the Vietnam War era and played an important role in American culture. The verbal content of rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and, increasingly, drugs. Many groups, among them Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, tried to approximate in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, producing long, repetitive, occasionally exquisite songs with surreal lyrics (known as "acid rock" or "hard rock" ).

In 1967 the Beatles again made history with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, in addition to including drug-oriented songs, presented a body of interrelated pieces that constituted an organic whole. This is considered the first "concept album." Subsequent products of this trend were rock musicals such as Hair (1968) and rock operas like Tommy, composed and sung by the Who.

Rock Comes of Age

By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz , while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll.

From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969. Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder. By 1970 several of rock's top performers—Janis Joplin , Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix —were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music.

The Late 1970s to the Present—Punk Rock, the Music Video, and Middle-aged Rockers

A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the form of punk rock, which was a response to the stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. The music was filled with contempt for previous styles; its fast-tempoed songs, usually propelled by electric guitar, featured irreverant lyrics often obscured by the clangerous music. Evident in Great Britain, performed by such bands as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk also quickly became popular in the United States, played by the Ramones and other American groups. By the early 1980s, it had changed rock music considerably as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and other groups adopted political protest themes as the core of their music.

During the 1980s music videos became a popular form of promotion and entertainment. In the late 1980s, however, several bands, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam, continued to follow the path of early punk rock by focusing on political themes and celebrating their own lack of technical virtuosity. Punk persisted into the 1990s with such bands as Green Day and the Offspring. Also in the 90s the continuing popularity of older bands, such as the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, bore witness to the enduring appeal of this form among both the young and the increasingly middle-aged. The appeal of older and past rock bands was also evident in the fanfare surrounding the opening (1995) of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Meanwhile, a young audience made rap music , with its pounding rhythms and strong, sometimes shocking spoken lyrics, a popular phenomenon, and other young rockers, largely club-goers, made the dance-based, electronically sophisticated techno another, though less pervasive, popular form.

Bibliography

See C. Gillett, The Sound of the City (1970); C. Belz, The Story of Rock (2d ed. 1972); M. Jahn, Rock (1973); A. DeCurtis, ed., Rock and Roll and Culture (1992); P. Romanowski et al., ed., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (rev. ed. 1995); P. Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History (1996); F. Goodman, The Mansion on the Hill (1997); B. Ward, Just My Soul Responding (1998); D. Clarke, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (rev. ed. 1999); J. Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 (1999); J. Stuessy and S. Lipscomb, Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development (4th ed. 2003).

ROCK 'N' ROLL

Restless Blood and Jungle Rhythms

At a time when America's most serious domestic problem in the minds of many people was the integration of schools, when federal integration laws were being defied across the nation, when angry parents were rioting in the streets to protest being forced to share public facilities with blacks, American teenagers became infected in epidemic proportions with an insatiable urge to dance to what their parents called jungle rhythms. Rock 'n' roll was a musical revolution in which young people, white and black, united in spirit, if not in person, outside segregated schoolhouses to adopt a criterion for musical judgment that had never been widely accepted before. Emotive expression laid over an insistent backbeat were the primary elements of the music they danced to—not pleasing melodies, clever lyrics, or even virtuosity.

Soul

If a performer had soul—the ability to experience and express deep feeling—other qualities in his music were incidental. Thus, a not particularly talented white prerock singer named Johnny Ray who writhed, agonized, fell to the floor, and cried what seemed to be real tears was hailed for his raw talent because he sang from the heart. An extremely animated, gaudily dressed black singer named Little Richard, whose talent lay in barely controlling a series of musical yells and screams, became a star because he was able to communicate his ecstatic emanations with unusual effectiveness and his rhythm never faltered.

Turn Me Loose

Rock 'n' roll was an expression of independence by adolescents socially secure enough to reject their parents' musical tastes, which valued songs in which primal impulses had been refined beyond recognition. Vic Damone, Peggy Lee, Pat Boone, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, even Nat King Cole sang songs that lacked relevance to young listeners. It was too inhibited, too class-conscious, and too slow. The young audience of the 1950s responded to basic musical expression that they could understand and that they could even perform, if so moved. Most of all it had to be music with a dance beat—not a foxtrot, closer to a jitterbug.

"Got a Backbeat, You Can't Lose It."

The formula was simple. As Ray Charles observed, "When they get a couple of guitars together with a backbeat, that's rock and roll." Elaborate instrumentation was not required—only a singer, a rhythm guitar, a bass guitar, and, most important, drums—overstated rhythm was the foundation. Simple were mandatory. The music had to be loud, and a little distortion was acceptable, but it had to sound authentic, unlike highly rehearsed, clean sounding popular music. The quality of the singer's voice and his articulation were secondary to soulful expression. The words did not matter; the feeling did. The music was reduced to elemental values: basic chords, simple melodies, uncomplicated arrangements. One did not have to be practiced to become a rock 'n' roll musician.

R&B

Rock 'n' roll sprang from a southern blues tradition that came in two forms—white and black. Black blues and its city brother rhythm and blues, or R&B, had their roots in slavery, borrowed their rhythms from the church, and took their vitality from the intensity with which people who endured hard lives enjoyed good times. Black blues in America was nearly as old as the nation itself, yet in the 1950s it was still classified as race music and was sold and broadcast narrowly to black audiences. In the South that meant that it reached poor, white audiences as well, because the towns were small and segregation had almost as much to do with social class as with race.

Hillbilly Music

White blues was called hillbilly music. It was songs of grief, loneliness, and sometimes rough-edged humor by rural musicians closely in touch with folk traditions. It was the music of poor rural people, who sang and played soulfully on the instruments at hand. Hillbilly music was crude, simple, rhythm-bound, and cloyingly sentimental, so much so that when country fans moved to the city, they were quick to turn their backs on that unsophisticated music associated with heartache and failure.

EL DORADOS' TOUR

Late in 1955 the five-man rock 'n' roll band El Dorados went on a fifteen-city tour that lasted two months. They began in South Bend, Indiana, on 6 November and ended in Detroit the day after Christmas. In between they played, in order, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, Gary, Pittsburgh, Ypsilanti, Atlanta, Newark, Newport News, Philadelphia, Canton, Lima, and Flint. Over the course of the tour they grossed a total of $4186.80, of which the agent took 10 percent. Their nightly earnings ranged from $150 for the concert in Boston to $800 for the date in Philadelphia.

By the end of the tour each band member had earned $753.62. The agent maintained a drawing account for expenses on the road. On 31 December the account balance was $132.62: each musician had $26.52 to show for his work.

Source:

Philip Ennis, The Severnth Stream: The Emergence of Rocknroll in American Popular Music (Hanover & London: Wesleyan University Press, 1992).

Sun Records

In the early 1950s record producer Sam Phillips remarked that all he needed to become a millionaire was a white country boy to sing black music. Young black R&B musicians were innovative and energetic, and their music had a strong rhythmic base and an aura of sensuality that he knew would appeal to young audiences. At the time, black blues and R&B records were not sold in white record stores, available on jukeboxes in. white restaurants, or played on white radio stations. Of nearly eleven thousand disc jockeys in the country, only seven hundred played R&B. However attractive ethnic black music was, it could not be sold outside the black community. So Phillips determined to find a white band that could perform with its own intensity, rhythmic drive, and honesty of expression.

City Rock

Meanwhile, a disc jockey named Alan Freed was experimenting in Cleveland and New York with the concept of what he called rhythm reviews, in which a program of black R&B groups played for white audiences. The reaction was surprisingly enthusiastic. He drew crowds of three times capacity and thus even had to turn fans away. He also began broadcasting a late-night radio program in New York in which he played race music with an unorthodox presentation. The program was popular, and Freed was encouraged to find a way to bring R&B to a wider audience. The solution was clear to him when he heard Elvis Presley and saw the sales of a sanitized version of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" by a white country-roots band called Bill Haley and his Comets soar after release of the 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle in which they played the song: Freed understood that his audience would respond to a variation on the black music he had been promoting. He turned to what he called rock 'n' roll, which was two parts rhythm and blues, one part country, and one part pure performance.

"Gotta Be Rock 'n' Roll Music.…"

After Elvis a wave of rock 'n' roll musicians overwhelmed the industry. The success of such stars as Buddy Holly from Texas, Jerry Lee Lewis from Memphis, and Eddie Cochran from Nashville opened the way for presentation of black groups to white audiences. Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker, Lloyd Price, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and a series of singing groups, both white and black, took over the airways and elbowed their way to the frontstage of the entertainment industry. By the end of the decade much of the resources of the record and entertainment industries were devoted to rock 'n' roll, and radio found its salvation in rock music at a time when traditional programming was being challenged by television. Rock 'n' roll was the music of youth and the music of the future. By 1959 it was also very big business.

ROCK AND ROLL

ROCK AND ROLL was originally a youth-based musical form. It is hybrid in origin, drawing from African American musical forms, such as the blues and gospel, as well as from white country and folk music. The path of rock and roll is inextricably linked to one of race in America, and as such, its history is complicated and contested. Although widely debated, Jackie Bernston's "Rocket 88," pressed in 1951, is often cited as the first rock and roll record, and it stands as an apt starting point for understanding the form. Breston was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, center of the delta blues. Sam Phillips, who would introduce Elvis Presley to the world on his Memphis-based Sun Records label, produced "Rocket 88." At the Sun Records' studio, blues singers such as Howlin' Wolf and B. B. King created music that younger white artists like Presley incoporated into their country-based styles. The result was a cultural revolution feared by many white adults because of its black origins and its overt sexuality, while at the same time fervently embraced by American youth. Presley was undoubtedly at the center of this revolt. Covering many black musicians' songs, including Junior Parker's "Mystery Train" and Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog," Presley, a Mississippi native, recorded his first hits in the mid-1950s, and he dominated music charts for decades. His performances departed radically from the staid white ballad singers of the era. Presley swung his hips so wildly that when playing for television's The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, it showed him only from the waist up. Presley's appearance caused a sensation and broke all of television's single-night ratings up to then.

Black artists also recorded rock music that appealed to teens, white and black, throughout the 1950s. Chuck Berry, perhaps the greatest of the rock and roll poets, created enduring standards such as "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), and Little Richard topped charts with hits such as "Good Golly Miss Molly." Richard also stunned audiences with his frantic, explosive performances, earning him wide popularity among youth while drawing the enmity of the white establishment. By the late 1950s, another distinctive sound that would last through the 1960s emerged at Detroit's Motown Records, a black-owned recording studio. The Motown sound was characterized by a lead singer delivering melodic story lines accompanied by the elegant, tight harmonies of a backup group. Popular Motown artists included the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Diana Ross and the Supremes. By the end of the 1950s, rock and roll, made by and for youth, had become big business, and the lyrics turned increasingly to safe topics, namely a host of teenage

problems—school, summer vacation, cars, parents, and young love.

Rock and roll seemed to stagnate at the end of the 1950s. Presley had joined the Army, Berry was in prison, and Little Richard was in (temporary) retirement. Some mourned the supposed loss of rock and roll's original rebellious, gutsy quality. By the mid-1960s, however, the popularity of the music soared again with the emergence of a number of British rock groups. Known as the "British Invasion," this era began with the debut of the Beatles, who dominated American popular music charts after their 1964 smash hit, "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Influenced greatly by Sun Records' artists, the Beatles were followed by other British recording groups, including The Who and the Rolling Stones, whose music derived from American blues. These latter British bands initiated a return to rock's blues orientation, albeit in louder and more electric incarnations. Another important transformation in rock and roll occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan, noted folk and protest singer, appeared playing an electric guitar, backed by an electrified band. While many were outraged over his bastardization of acoustic folk, others were enthusiastic. A synthesis of rock and roll and the folk revival followed, becoming known as "folk rock." By the mid-1960s, rock and roll, which was no longer perceived as just for dancing, became known simply as rock.

In the 1960s, rock mirrored the social and political tensions of the Vietnam War era. The spirit-possessed performances of Otis Redding (crossover gospel singer) to the hyperkinetic screams of James Brown ("Say it Loud—I'm Black and I'm Proud," 1968) asserted black pride, gave expression to the Civil Rights Movement, and stunned white audiences. Motown artists also employed the African American tradition of "masking" messages within their songs. Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston's hit, "It Takes Two" (1967), for example, was a love song as well as a masked call for desegregation. The lyrics of other rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and drugs. Groups, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, approximated in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, creating a genre known as "acid rock," featuring long, repetitive songs with surreal lyrics. During the later 1960s, rock festivals became a fixture of American popular culture and a site of important protest activity. The most famous of these was Woodstock (1969), held in rural New York.

The 1970s and 1980s also witnessed turning points in rock music. The "punk rock" of the mid-1970s was a response to the perceived stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. Emergent among British bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk quickly became popular in the United States and has had a lasting influence on rock music. Funk and disco also emerged in the 1970s. Both were based largely on the polyrhythmic grooves of Brown and his band, the JBs. Disco, which flourished in gay communities, was met with a strong backlash, fed by homophobia as well as by the racism that has always challenged rock and roll. Funk coalesced around artists like Stevie Wonder, the one-time child prodigy of Motown. But George Clinton's Parliament and Funkadelic groups likely left funk's most enduring influence. Not only did Clinton's music create enduring social commentary, his beats became among the most sampled in rap music, a dominant musical form of the 1980s and 1990s. Whether rap is actually rock is debated, but it clearly captures the earlier rebellious and socially conscious energy of Little Richard and Motown. The music video of the 1980s, played on cable network's Music Television (MTV), changed how rock was promoted and consumed. Artists such as Madonna successfully exploited this new medium, combining sexual provocation and steely business acumen to win huge commercial success.

Initially considered a passing fad and vilified as the devil's music, this now highly varied musical form is well entrenched and widely popular around the world among all ages. In 1995, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was opened in Cleveland, Ohio, where it receives thousands of visitors each year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bangs, Lester. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Baraka, Amiri. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York: Morrow, 1963.

Decurtis, Anthony, et al. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. 3d ed. New York: Random House, 1992.

Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music. 4th. ed. New York: Plume, 1997.

Palmer, Robert. Rock & Roll: An Unruly History. New York: Harmony Books, 1995.

Werner, Craig Hansen. A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America. New York: Plume, 1999.

Lisa M.Tetrault

See alsoJazz ; Music: African American ; Music: Gospel ; Music: Popular ; Music Industry ; Music Television .

Rock ‘N’ Roll

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rock ’n’ roll, a hybrid popular musical form that emerged in the United States in the early 1950s, became one of the most important cultural forces around the world. Rock ’n’ roll began when musicians mixed black rhythm and blues with Southern white country and gospel musics, helping to spark a cultural revolution in the 1950s and 1960s. The first exhilarating blasts of rock ’n’ roll defied the Eisenhower era’s puritanical emphasis on social and political conformity. This interracial music, edgy and rebellious, broke down social barriers by challenging sexual, racial, and, later, political taboos. The music made a powerful statement that young Americans were less divided by race than their parents.

During the 1950s white musicians such as Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis and black musicians such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino created rock ’n’ roll; often fast and highly dance-able, it posed a challenge to urban pop music from Tin Pan Alley and rural-oriented country music. Haley took rhythm and blues songs and reconfigured them for a white teen audience. Influenced by the electric blues, Berry created the distinctive rock ’n’ roll guitar style. Presley, known as “Elvis the Pelvis” because of his suggestive, hip-swinging performances, became the first rock superstar, aided by skillful marketing. American rock ’n’ rollers also developed a large following in Britain and Europe.

Rock ’n’ roll evolved into rock in the early 1960s and became the heart of that decade’s youth movement. American society in the 1960s grew to be deeply divided over the war in Vietnam, protest movements against racism and sexism, and “countercultural” youth who flouted social norms. In 1963 the Beatles began a “British Invasion”—a wave of U.K. rock groups, such as the Rolling Stones and the Kinks—that electrified American audiences and energized rock. “Beatlemania” reached around the world, spawning local imitators and spreading new fashions. The Beatles revolutionized recording technology and matured from top-selling pop stars to musical philosophers; many of their later albums, such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), are infused with deep meaning. Bob Dylan, once a folk singer, wrote poetic songs exploring the human experience, including politics. The probing music of Dylan, the Beatles, and the musicians they influenced played a major role in protest and social movements. New rock styles also emerged. Hence, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash created country rock and folk rock, while the Beach Boys expanded the boundaries of Southern California–based surf music. Often inspired by drug experiences, San Francisco musicians like the Jefferson Airplane and the bluesy Janis Joplin created psychedelic rock. The innovative guitarist Jimi Hendrix laid the foundation for heavy metal and hard rock. The merging of rock music, political protest, and the counterculture of disaffected youth led to the Summer of Love in 1967, when thousands congregated in San Francisco, and culminated in the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969, when 300,000 rock fans crowded a New York farm.

By the early 1970s several rock icons (including Hendrix and Joplin) had died, the war in Vietnam had wound down, protest movements had faded, and a more conservative social and political environment had emerged in the United States. New rock-derived styles developed over the next four decades. In the United States and especially Britain, punk music—loud, fast, and anarchic—appealed to alienated working-class youth with its frontal assault on prevailing social and political values. Heavy metal, with its deafening guitars, was angry and often obsessed with sex and violence. In contrast, dance musics such as disco, techno, and rave were escapist. But some rock musicians directly addressed social and political issues. The superstar Bruce Springsteen, mixing rock and folk, criticized U.S. foreign policies and the neglect of the working class and poor. In the 1990s punk and heavy metal were combined into a new style, grunge, most prominently represented by the Seattle group Nirvana. By the twenty-first century rock had fragmented into diverse styles with niche audiences.

African Americans created popular musics influenced by rock. The soul music of the 1960s, from artists like James Brown and Aretha Franklin, conveyed a message of black self-respect and unity parallel to the civil rights movements. The slickly produced Motown sound appealed to both blacks and whites. Beginning in the 1980s rap, an eclectic urban mix of African American and Caribbean traditions, became the most cutting-edge, politicized music, sometimes called the CNN of the black ghetto. The boastful, angry lyrics highlighted conflict between black and white, rich and poor, male and female. Like rock, rap was adopted by alienated groups around the world, but in the United States its radical message was watered down by the twenty-first century. Whether rock and its kindred musics were empowering or diversionary, promoting social and political change or helping maintain the status quo, remained subject to debate. Whatever the case may be, these debates reflected the enduring appeal of musics rooted, despite five decades of changes, in the black-white fusion of early rock ’n’ roll.

SEE ALSO Blues; Eisenhower, Dwight D.; Jazz; Music; Music, Psychology of; Reggae; World Music; Youth Culture

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Garofalo, Reebee. 2005. Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Szatmary, David P. 2007. Rockin’ in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Wicke, Peter. 1987. Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, and Sociology. Trans. Rachel Fogg. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Craig A. Lockard

rock and roll (also rock 'n' roll) • n. a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums. DERIVATIVES: rock and roll·er n.

rock 'n' roll see rock music .