Overview
From its raucous beginnings to the time of its mainstream acceptance, Rock and Roll was youth music. More exactly, it was the music of the teenager. Born of postwar affluence and the increased leisure time such affluence afforded young Americans, the teenager was a thing new to the American landscape. If for some they were an object of anxiety, this had everything to do with the fact that teenagers defined themselves in opposition to the parent generation. Rebellion was a part of being a teenager. And Rock and Roll was an expression of that rebellion and of the growing gap between generations. From the teen surf culture celebrated in the music of the Beach Boys to the mini-melodramas of the Shangri-Las’ Girl Group sound and teen dances including the Twist, the Stroll, the Mashed Potato, and the Watusi, the world of the teenager was made larger and more powerful through the music itself. As 60s Soul and the British Invasion demonstrated, it would be the teenagers, inspired by their music, who would define American life moving forward.
Units
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From Rock and Roll to Rock
According to famed music critic Robert Christgau, the transition from "Rock and Roll" to simply "Rock" occurred when "rock & roll" made conscious of itself as an art form. Whereas in the early 1950s, one might define Rock and Roll as primary a social dance music, by the 1960s...
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Soul Across America
The growth of Soul's popularity in the 1950s and 1960s provided new opportunities for musicians and producers entrepreneurs across the nation. Soon, record labels sprung up across the country, each gradually creating a signature sound and cementing their position in American Music History. In Memphis, Tennessee, Sam Phillips launched Sun...
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The British Invasion
One of the most seminal developments to the evolution of Rock in the 1960s came not from America, but from across the Atlantic - in England. To be fair, the path was circuitous. American performers regularly left American shores to tour Europe at least as far bask as the...
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Music and the Civil Rights Movement
With its heritage in both West African and European traditions, Rock and Soul music have always been entwined in the history of racial relations in the United States. Indeed, the combination of these two geographically disparate traditions vis-à-vis the tragedy slave trade is what has defined and in many...
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Music and Counterculture
Like all genres of music, Rock and Soul incorporates more than just the notes you hear: it represents a vast culture made up of not just fashion, dance, and art, but also shared dispositions and attitudes. And more often than not, it is these aspects of musical movements -...