2008 Woodie Awards
Rock 'n' Roll has lost sight of its roots, too commercialized
Benjamin Harris
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Opinions
Let there be...rock.
And so it came to pass, that rock 'n' roll was born. We all love it. Where did it come from?
The blues are the root of rock 'n' roll, everybody knows that. A lot of people attribute the origins of blues to the oppression of people of African heritage. But is that the whole story?
Blues did not really coalesce into the form we know today until around the 1920s. But American blacks had endured the oppression for centuries. Interestingly, around the same time blues evolved on the North American continent, expressionism began to take hold in Europe as a result of changes in the human condition due to the influence of technology and industrialized warfare.
Both of these types of music embodied a similar expressive context. However, expressionism turned into an academic experiment that virtually signaled the beginning of the end of the cultural relevance of the Western art music tradition.
Blues, on the other hand, grew out of a unique cross-pollination of European and African folk traditions. Due to the fertile cultural landscape in The New World blues was poised to make an impact that arguably few at the time could imagine.
Many people know that a producer from Memphis named Sam Phillips broke rock 'n' roll to white audiences by recording Elvis Presley doing a mix of country and blues with a driving beat. Elvis generated a huge following among the youth that began to rebel in ways that shocked the establishment. Was the music to blame? Well, perhaps not entirely. Interestingly, the breakout of rock 'n' roll virtually coincided with the first successful Soviet hydrogen bomb test.
It is difficult for us to imagine today the cultural climate of that time. There was a general apprehension that it was not merely possible, but perhaps likely, that the whole of humanity would at one point or another be wiped out in a matter of minutes. That would be billions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years of cultural development gone in the span of about a half an hour. Suddenly, nothing the teenagers were being told by their elders made sense. But rock 'n' roll did. Immediately, the Forces of Freedomâ„¢, otherwise known as the establishment, attempted to destroy rock 'n' roll. They were to fail.
And so it came to pass, that rock 'n' roll was born. We all love it. Where did it come from?
The blues are the root of rock 'n' roll, everybody knows that. A lot of people attribute the origins of blues to the oppression of people of African heritage. But is that the whole story?
Blues did not really coalesce into the form we know today until around the 1920s. But American blacks had endured the oppression for centuries. Interestingly, around the same time blues evolved on the North American continent, expressionism began to take hold in Europe as a result of changes in the human condition due to the influence of technology and industrialized warfare.
Both of these types of music embodied a similar expressive context. However, expressionism turned into an academic experiment that virtually signaled the beginning of the end of the cultural relevance of the Western art music tradition.
Blues, on the other hand, grew out of a unique cross-pollination of European and African folk traditions. Due to the fertile cultural landscape in The New World blues was poised to make an impact that arguably few at the time could imagine.
Many people know that a producer from Memphis named Sam Phillips broke rock 'n' roll to white audiences by recording Elvis Presley doing a mix of country and blues with a driving beat. Elvis generated a huge following among the youth that began to rebel in ways that shocked the establishment. Was the music to blame? Well, perhaps not entirely. Interestingly, the breakout of rock 'n' roll virtually coincided with the first successful Soviet hydrogen bomb test.
It is difficult for us to imagine today the cultural climate of that time. There was a general apprehension that it was not merely possible, but perhaps likely, that the whole of humanity would at one point or another be wiped out in a matter of minutes. That would be billions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years of cultural development gone in the span of about a half an hour. Suddenly, nothing the teenagers were being told by their elders made sense. But rock 'n' roll did. Immediately, the Forces of Freedomâ„¢, otherwise known as the establishment, attempted to destroy rock 'n' roll. They were to fail.
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Maurice Colgan
posted 2/04/08 @ 4:40 AM CST
Are you so sure Blues are the root of Rock n Roll?
Music history is all enveloping including the Ancient Greeks, the Religious, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms etc. (Continued…)
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