Rock & Roll essays

Rock & Roll essays Rock music is very complex. In fact "Its stylistic scope is to broad to be encompassed by any single definition (Romanowski, p.1). The nearest definition suggests a kind of music that represents and speaks for the teenage society. This music is characterized by using a heavy beat. In this essay, Im going to divide Rock music into four sections: Rock of the 50s, of the 60s, of the 70s and of the 80s. Within these sections Im also going to discuss how the music affected the listeners then and now. The first section of this essay is Rock n Roll of the 1950s, when Rock n Roll was born. It emerged from rhythm and blues, a music similar to jazz played by African Americans. This kind of music started to attract white teenagers. Disc jockey Alan Freed was the one who introduced this music and later gave it the name of Rock n Roll. Record companies distributed records played by whites but composed by blacks to be the stars until Bill Haley appeared with his "Rock Around the Clock". In this decade, Elvis Presley introduced a music that was sexual suggestive and outraged adults. In time he changed the style of the music by adopting a country western style. By the end of this decade and the start of the next, Rock n Roll started to decline because it was formula ridden and it was too sentimental. Teenage audiences transferred their allegiance to Folk music. Upon speaking with Barbara Bennett, who was a teenager during the 50s, she remembered that her favorite musician was Elvis Presley. Barbara grew up in a urban community and feels that it was a major influence on her choice of music. She recalled that growing up her parents listened to a varying range of music. The most popular was jazz musicians like Billy Holiday and Louie Armstrong. When Elvis became popular his pelvic thrusts enraged her parents due to his sexual innuendoes. Her ...