Musical Melting Pot
If you have seen the excellent time-travel movie Back To The Future then you know that the young Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) inadvertently sparks the invention of rock-and-roll at a school dance in 1955 by substituting for an injured band member and playing a futuristic guitar solo. I am now writing in 2005 and it’s fifty years since that fateful, if fictional, night, so it seems as good a time as any to explore the family tree of modern popular music.
To understand the phenomenon of modern popular music we need to go back in time to America in the mid 1950s. It is impossible to track the development of any given musical genre to a particular year, so it is mistaken to say that “rock-and-roll started in 1955” but to suggest that something was happening circa 1955 is a much safer bet. The term circa will be utilized and can be taken as saying “plus or minus five years” in this text. But now back to that school dance in 1955...
The United States in the 50s was a musical melting pot. Distinct trends were cross-pollinating in a way that was to change the face of music forever and give global mass society a set of themes and moods to carry them into the Twenty First Century. The fact that the USA is a world power of the modern era is an important one to remember in considering America as the site of this cross-cultural whirlwind. Several factors contributing to its superpower status also allowed for it to become the home of modern popular music.
These factors included a cosmopolitan society in which cultures can interact and affect one another, a democratic polity allowing for free expression of many different and sometimes alternative perspectives, and a powerhouse economy (both domestic and international) allowing for the mass distribution of all manner of cultural product. In addition, technological advances in areas such as amplification, recording, communications and transport cannot be overlooked.
Three separate but related musical genres in particular interacted in this time – they were country and blues and gospel. At front-and-centre of this array of change agents was the blues. The blues began as a rural or small-town form of Afro-American music played by solo artists on acoustic instruments such as harmonica, guitar and piano. In the post-war era many Afro-Americans moved from the Mississippi Delta to metropolises like Chicago and transformed the blues into an urban music played by small bands including a prominent use of the then new electric guitar along with string bass and drum kit. Artists playing this music included Muddy Waters, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, B B King and Fats Domino.
The energy and drive of this music was hugely popular among Afro-Americans and also among young Americans of Anglo-Celtic decent. As it became more popular, and musicians of all backgrounds took to it, the music industry felt it necessary to cater to the strong racist character of 1950s American society (particularly in the south) by distinguishing between black and white artists. They made use of the term rhythm-and-blues to refer to the black urban blues performers. In contrast they adopted the term rock-and-roll (Afro-American slang for sexual intercourse) for the white musicians who had taken to the same music. In practice these musicians played much the same kind of faster-tempo urban blues. They also both drew on other musical forms such as country and gospel according to personal preference or background. Stars of the era like Bill Haley, Little Richard and Elvis Presley can be regarded as performing a kind of music that drew on all three of these genres and more.
To understand the phenomenon of modern popular music we need to go back in time to America in the mid 1950s. It is impossible to track the development of any given musical genre to a particular year, so it is mistaken to say that “rock-and-roll started in 1955” but to suggest that something was happening circa 1955 is a much safer bet. The term circa will be utilized and can be taken as saying “plus or minus five years” in this text. But now back to that school dance in 1955...
The United States in the 50s was a musical melting pot. Distinct trends were cross-pollinating in a way that was to change the face of music forever and give global mass society a set of themes and moods to carry them into the Twenty First Century. The fact that the USA is a world power of the modern era is an important one to remember in considering America as the site of this cross-cultural whirlwind. Several factors contributing to its superpower status also allowed for it to become the home of modern popular music.
These factors included a cosmopolitan society in which cultures can interact and affect one another, a democratic polity allowing for free expression of many different and sometimes alternative perspectives, and a powerhouse economy (both domestic and international) allowing for the mass distribution of all manner of cultural product. In addition, technological advances in areas such as amplification, recording, communications and transport cannot be overlooked.
Three separate but related musical genres in particular interacted in this time – they were country and blues and gospel. At front-and-centre of this array of change agents was the blues. The blues began as a rural or small-town form of Afro-American music played by solo artists on acoustic instruments such as harmonica, guitar and piano. In the post-war era many Afro-Americans moved from the Mississippi Delta to metropolises like Chicago and transformed the blues into an urban music played by small bands including a prominent use of the then new electric guitar along with string bass and drum kit. Artists playing this music included Muddy Waters, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, B B King and Fats Domino.
The energy and drive of this music was hugely popular among Afro-Americans and also among young Americans of Anglo-Celtic decent. As it became more popular, and musicians of all backgrounds took to it, the music industry felt it necessary to cater to the strong racist character of 1950s American society (particularly in the south) by distinguishing between black and white artists. They made use of the term rhythm-and-blues to refer to the black urban blues performers. In contrast they adopted the term rock-and-roll (Afro-American slang for sexual intercourse) for the white musicians who had taken to the same music. In practice these musicians played much the same kind of faster-tempo urban blues. They also both drew on other musical forms such as country and gospel according to personal preference or background. Stars of the era like Bill Haley, Little Richard and Elvis Presley can be regarded as performing a kind of music that drew on all three of these genres and more.
posted by Dan at 22.2.06
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