Rock And Roll And American Culture

7 Pages 1838 Words

“I love Rock n Roll, put another dime in the jukebox baby” (Joan Jett). “Still like that old time Rock n Roll, That kind of music just soothes the soul, I reminisce about the days of old, With that old time Rock n Roll”(Bob Segar). These are just a couple examples of the numerous rock groups that sing about rock n roll. Music has been a part of American Culture for as long as America has been a country, probably even longer than that. Music is the art of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion (Oxford Dictionary). People of any race, age, social class, intelligence, etc. can enjoy music that is a popular form of entertainment. There are many different kinds of music, but Rock and Roll is one of the biggest and most popular. Rock and Roll is a combination of a blues and country music. Rock and Roll has strong roots and has been a major part of American culture, which created many controversies and anti-Rock and Roll groups. Rock and Roll has influenced our culture in the past, present, and will in the future. Rock and Roll is here to stay.
During the 1950’s, the relationship between whites and blacks was weak, but the music was going strong. There was diversity in music with performers singing blues, country, and classical music, although the greater portions of the performers were black. Since racial barriers already existed, this created a problem for the black performers audiences. Many white radio stations and record company owners refused to make music by black performers widely available (Charlton, 1990). Fortunately, for the black performers, some disc jockeys refused to represent racial discrimination. Their sounds were reaching white teens across America thanks to these disc jockeys and the increased availability radios.
Eventually white performers, such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley began to re-record recordings by black per...