Overview
The teenage culture of the fifties and early sixties was the seedbed for the youth-driven counterculture of the late sixties and early seventies. This shift toward a countercultural sensibility among young people was reflected in the music itself. If in the fifties Rock and Roll had been viewed primarily as a popular entertainment, in the period of “transformation” it would come to be viewed as–in its most elevated forms–an Art. In the hands of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and others, music became a “serious” thing. As young people faced the troubling facts of a war that included them and a country that refused them the right to vote, music now offered, among other things, a megaphone through which their disillusionment could be voiced. As the nation saw the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement that followed, artists like Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder used music to express feelings of frustration about the racial divide and excitement around the possibility of change. And as the music addressed the world of which it was a part, the music grew more complex, more varied—but, importantly, that music was also changing the world in ways it hadn’t previously.
Units
Unit:
Singer-Songwriters
From today's perspective, the category seems almost odd. Singer-Songwriter? If you wrote it, you may as well sing it, right? But this is, in many ways, a line of thought that started with the Beatles and hit a high point with the Singer-Songwriters. Go back a few years before...
Unit:
Dance Music
American culture has a long and rich tradition of popular dance. From the folk dancing of Appalachia to the urban dance crazes that animated New York City in the 1920s, dance has been an important facet of social life. But dance is more than just boy-meets-girl on the floor. Dance...
Unit:
Emergence of Punk
The argument carries on: did Punk come from the States or was it England's creation? As this chapter explores, important phases in Punk's development happened on both side of the Atlantic. But no one would be claiming it for their own were it not for the fact that Punk...
Unit:
Rock Branches Out
By the early 1970s, Rock music had firmly become a global phenomenon. As Rock and Roll transitioned into Rock and more people across the country began taking up instruments to form their own groups, the genre continue to diversify, eventually becoming myriad of unique genres and sub genres, each...