Rock Music for Different Generation
Rock was born as a musical genre of African American origin formed by different popular styles developed in the United States since the fifties.
Despite the great diversification of its currents, rock music has some common features: from the musical point of view, especially as regards the instrumental setting, the use of amplified guitars and electric keyboards is prevalent; from the point of view of the contents, the lyrics of the songs are often inspired by social and topical themes absent in the other forms of light music.
The starting point for the development of rock is rock and roll, a musical genre born in the mid-fifties that, following the extraordinary success of Rock Around the Clock (1955) by Bill Haley, established itself all over the world thanks to interpreters like Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. The Soundtracks will amaze you surely.
Rock And Roll
After the spread of the genre from the United States to the rest of the world, in the sixties its renewal took the opposite direction: from Europe, and in particular from England, groups like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who invaded the market American.
- At the same time, the abbreviation “rock” began to replace the name “rock and roll ” and the music itself began to loosen its ties with the original formal structure by absorbing influences of various origins.
- Towards the end of the Sixties, rock was the vehicle and point of reference for youth protest: the lyrics became busier, the variety of instruments expanded, the weight of electronics increased, and the presentation of the groups became more accurate and scenographic.
- The late sixties was also the period of the great mass outdoor concerts (in the United States, Monterey Pop in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969; in Europe, the Isle of Wight in 1970), which coincided with a radical transformation of the culture and customs of an entire generation.
The vitality of rock continued in the Seventies also thanks to new and elaborate contaminations with other musical genres : from the encounter with jazz was born the soft rock jazz of the Weather Report; European classical music inspired the progressive rock of Genesis, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. While the glamorous rock of the British David Bowie and Roxy Music started from the New York avant-garde, the unmistakable voice of Bruce Springsteen brought back to the world stage songs and ballads of the origins of rock.
The Birth Of Rock
The rock of the seventies also developed the amplified and strongly rhythmic styles of the hard rock of the Sixties. A central role in this regard was groups like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, from which heavy metal was born. As a form of extreme expression of social protest, punk rock was born in the middle of the decade, an opposite and specular tendency to the emergence of disco music. In the United States emerged the talent of Patti Smith, who made his own the previous experience of urban rock by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. The punk was marked by the extreme manifestations, on stage and in life, of its exponents: the Sex Pistols and the Clash in England, and the Americans Ramones.
