Mason Hamar
MUS 1013
Sarah Weisbrod
Critical Essay A
Music has been slowly evolving with humans for hundreds of years, but in the 20th century, Rock and Roll loudly and suddenly burst onto the stage. Rock and Roll, originating from rhythm and blues, has its roots in African and African American culture. With the integration of African Americans into white society starting in the mid-19th century, their music came with them. Musical elements and artists from other groups began meshing with the genre until it developed a new and original style and sound of music. Social interactions and relations between different groups in the United States helped contribute to the music’s distinct sound, part of which can be shown by James Johnson’s novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
Rock and roll’s distinct sound can be traced back to the amalgam of cultural and religious influences in its predecessor - R&B, which was influenced by racial relations of the early-mid 20th century. Early rock and R&B, instrumentally, consisted of pianos, guitars, drums, and bass, along with brass and woodwind instruments like trumpets and saxophones. Most R&B was produced and sung by black artists, and their songs tended to have elements from Latin America, such as maracas, and the Church in them. Most of the instruments were of European and some Latin origin, but the musical style and lyrics were entirely Black. While not all of the elements and instruments came from black artists or culture, interactions with other groups and
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The music offers insight into how different groups and cultures interacted in the United States and that in turn can explain the music’s unique sound and popularity. While the genre no longer reflects racial relations in the US today, that message still exists in other forms of music, such as rap, soul, etc., created by artists all over the
[the black musician] improvises, he creates, it comes from within” (Gerard 28). Despite Malcolm X’s criticism of the classically-trained musician’s inability to improvise, the European-influenced creole musicians began to learn to create variation within ragtime’s syncopated form. Likewise, blues musicians adopted parts of the genre of ragtime and implemented it into their call-and-response based music. The merging of these two styles of music occurred as a result of external socio-political pressure of Jim Crow segregation, but ultimately helped establish an innovative and swinging genre of jazz
Rock and Roll was one of the first medias to end segregation within itself, it brought blacks and whites together and was lead by not surprisingly the youth culture.
In this extremely controversial work, Glenn C. Altschuler takes aim on the government’s accusations, the prejudice from the police, and the affect that rock ’n’ roll made in America through the late forties and fifties. Glenn makes many accusations of his own through the way he shifts the momentum of the story from time to time. Through the years back then and now, music has caused many racial and gender controversies. In this book, Glenn explains all these problems and what rock did to start or get of them.
All Shook Up: How Rock N’ Roll Changed America, fits into the overall historical literature of the topic because the book has to deal with rock n’ roll being both politically and culturally inspired back when African Americans were still having to deal with being segregated. Altschuler talks about how the beginning of rock n’ roll was during the same time period as African Americans trying to obtain their Civil Rights. People did not want African Americans to be friends with white people because music seemed to bring teens and people of all races together. In most dance halls where African Americans played their music, white people became interested and at times would go. This was the biggest problem for the nation, African Americans becoming
What was originally slang for ‘having sex’ became a new aggressive music genre. Innovations in musical instruments and technology, young fresh talent and savvy record producers created a young population of new consumers who helped change ‘race music’ into rock and
As history progressed, music did with it, allowing for development changes based on surroundings and circumstances. “The final topic I want to discuss is black-white musical interaction. In the narratives, one finds references to blacks listening to white music and, as just noted, whites listening to black music. One can also find a few references to whites teaching blacks how to play an instrument, mostly the fiddle,” in this quote, Robert b. Winens highlights how the interaction between two different cultures can pose different sides. Although learning about and respecting other cultures is valuable, especially in the hopes of gaining a better understanding and creating community, this usually fails to be the case between African American and white cultures.
How Rock and Roll Has Been Affected and Evolved Through the Ages Larry Williams, the blues and rock and roll singer, once said, “Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself.” With this quote, he shows that rock and roll truly is an ever-changing enigma. Its lifespan is similar to that of a human’s life because it has consisted of many phases like rockabilly, doowop, and many others. It has had its ups and its downs with the appearance of young new talent that inspired people around the world, and the death of superstars has ripped fans apart as long as this historical music genre has existed.
According to artists in that era, Rock n’ Roll was associated with some level of ruggedness and unruliness. Rock n’ Roll also provided an opportunity for people to escape from prevailing challenges and further challenge the status quo. African-Americans played an important role in the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll by infusing elements of the sounds hummed during cotton picking and Black gospel music with country music and other progressive styles of the time (Blues and Jazz). The music had an impact on people’s attitude by introducing an unprecedented level of confidence, especially among the youth. White people were also introduced to a new style of dance that required movement of the waist and the legs, which
MUS 1013 Critical Essay A Racial relations between African Americans and European Americans in the early 20th century had a substantial impact on the evolution of rock music in America. A prominent example of racial disparity in regard to music is James Weldon Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”. This novel portrays the experience of a mixed-race man in the early 1900s, grappling with his race, and facing challenges in society, greatly divided at the time. Johnson’s novel spotlights the cross-cultural synthesis of musical elements as different communities attempted to assert their cultural identity.
Fans and musicians were now using rock and roll to fight for social equality, while the unrecognized roots of the genre were a part of the issue in question. Rock was born in an age of segregation. From education to music, the racial division of Jim Crow America was everywhere. For decades, the music industry had been separated into “black music” and “white music.” Black and white artists both made music targeted either adults or children; so teenagers would listen to both.
obsessively revered and imitated African-American blues and rock musicians. This type of musical inspiration isn’t inherently bad—it’s practically unavoidable (Zimmerman 2014).” Are African American’s appropriating African Culture? During, the British colonization of American they were met with a number of conflicts.
This would have an impact on such things as rock and roll, and even hip hop music too. Rock and Roll music faced many challenges in its early years because it was created in a time when racial segregatiofn was still very common and overt racism still rampant, and yet it appealed to teens and young adults of all ethnic backgrounds. The American Civil Rights Movement (around 1954) had barely started, but this actually helped to facilitate the spread of Rock and Roll while also aligning more and more young Americans to the fight for equal rights and an end to racism. This is because the genre combines different styles of music that had previously been labeled strictly as “black” or as “white”, but which disappeared when merged into Rock and Roll
Originating from African Americans residing in the deep south, blues music began to spread. Chicago bloomed with blues and became the roots for this style of music. The use of pathos and ethos allows the author to delve into the Stones and how they made a name for African American musicians. He uses direct quotes from blues musicians, like Muddy Waters, to provide an emotional attachment to the struggles of African American musicians during this time. He also provides a detailed background with interviews to provide a glimpse into their life and credibility.
This can be attributed to the network programmers who played only mainstream pop singers such as Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, and later Frank Sinatra. In 1957, Frank Sinatra is quoted as saying that, “Rock and roll is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression – lewd, sly, in plain fact, dirty – a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac and the marital music of every side-burned delinquent on the fact of the earth (www.ushistory.org/us/53d.asp). Obviously, rock and roll was not created overnight -- it all started with the first Rhythm and Blues artists that received mainstream attention even though they were black.
The migration of workers to urban areas, prosperity, and the anxiety of social change all contributed to the development of Rock and Roll and Civil Rights. Social anxieties of the Civil Rights Movement such as: institutionalized racial slavery, segregation, discrimination, and the struggle for equality were strongly exemplified throughout African American music, which would soon transform into Rock and Roll. Essentially, Rock music originated amongst the African American culture deriving from jazz, gospel, rhythm, and blues. Ultimately, these genres together corresponded to create Rock and Roll. Seeing that music has the ability to reflect and influence social movements and interactions, the music that becomes popular can gain national recognition (“Concurrent