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How did rock and roll influence the civil rights movement
How did rock and roll influence the civil rights movement
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It was no coincidence that rock ‘n’ roll and the civil rights movement started at the same time. The genre originated from African American music and was greatly discriminated against. Traditional white Americans would target anything bad about it. But as the teenager demographic of the 1950s started increasing the sales of the music, the genre started gaining more popularity. It was the style of Elvis Presley and his new voice that made girls weak in the knees and boys want to be him. Artists such as Presley had enough influence to change the view of their devoted fans on civil rights issues. Soon as protest songs and rock ‘n’ roll became more popular and influential, it began a gap between the young adult generation and their parents which led to the rebellion of the civil rights movement. Through these factors rock ‘n’ roll influenced a great deal over the civil rights movement.
Rock 'n' roll came from a type of music called rhythm and blues (R&B), which consisted of doo-wop and gospel music. It was popular mostly in the south during the 40’s but it soon grew to urban cities. It was Les Paul’s invention of the electric guitar in 1952 that added a new sound and made rhythm and blues into the rock 'n' roll we all know and love today. Most of the artists from R&B were African American, and in their song they would reference sexual matters. So together it gave a bad connotation towards the music and their race, therefore both were never fully accepted in the north. The term “rock” was slang mostly used by African Americans meaning a form of music that was easily danced to. Meanwhile “roll” was usually a euphemism for sex, such as “a roll in the hay”. It was Alan Freed who first popularized the term “rock and roll” for this gen...
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...o grew up in the tight nit-pick culture of the 50s who were influenced by this new wave of music of rock ‘n’ roll. The gap between values of parents and their children grew. As teens became more rebellious, the civil rights movement came to play. It was the same teens and young adults that took this rebellion from rock and made it lead the civil rights movement into action, realizing that not all tradition is right.
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Luminaries. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2013. Print.
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The start of transgression in rock music dates back to the birth of rock music in the 1950s with many acts such as: Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley, establishing themselves as rock musician and at the same time through their methods and style of playing established rock music as part of transgressive culture. To be established as part of the transgressive culture an act must be “against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense” (Williams, Lecture 4). And in the time period of the 1950s the style of music that rock musicians played, that is blues and gospel, was much faster than what was normally acceptable resulting in the normative culture looking down and marginalizing the people who play rock music along with the followers. At this time period another reason as to why rock musicians, especially white musicians were labeled s transgressive is due to the music in which they were playing which was blues music. Furthermore, blues music was not considered music for white people in the 1950s, it was at the time considered music made for and by African-Americans, and so members of the normative culture refused the idea of whites playing music of African-Americans for white