How Did Rock And Roll Influence African American Culture

Rock and roll has had huge contributions from various types of people and African Americans are certainly one of them. Rhythm and Blues, Urban Blues, Boogie-Woogie, Jump Blues, Blues Shouters are all African American music as we learned in Unit 1. Considering the fact that white majorities were always trying to keep the Black America separate from white and huge immigration of African Americans going on, I believe African Americans do not get the credit they deserve for their contribution in rock and roll. Urban blues, one of the popular version of blues, came out when African Americans moved out of south to northwestern cities like Chicago and Missouri. They reflected on the dynamic of the cities and made a new rhythm. Blues gave boost to

Big Joe Turner is mostly known for this style of music. He teamed with Pete Johnson and merged boogie-woogie with blues shouters. Big Joe Turner moved away from the regular slow blues to harder and faster style which would anticipate rock and roll. At first glance, it might look like country music and African American music are two complete opposite things, but African American music has tremendous influence in country because of Jimmy Rodgers who brought blues into the country in the 1920s. Hillbilly Boogie and country honky-tonk are essentially the rural white eco of African American blues. The Hillbilly Boogie used piano styles of Pete Johnson to create a different version of boogie-woogie but it was obviously indebted to African American music. Helen Kolawole is correct in claiming that Elvis the other white rock and rollers of the 1950s — “cloud the true picture of rock’n’roll” at the expense of black artists. African American music something that wasn’t likely to get popular became popular because of the change in record buying public. Before World War 2, it was all adults buying but now it was all the baby boomers growing up and becoming the largest record buying public and their main music interest ?? ROCK AND