History of the electric guitar and its music - Research Paper Example

? History of Music History of Music The term rock and roll was first used by Alan Freed, a disc jockey from Cleveland, inspiring its name from the song “My Baby Rocks Me with a Steady Roll”. Even though the impressions of rock and roll were quite visible in jazz and country music of the 1920’s and 1930’s, this genre came to be known as rock and roll after Alan Freed first used this term. In the beginning of rock and roll, piano or saxophone was usually used as a lead instrument but it was eventually overtaken by guitar when artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Beatles popularized this genre. Classic rock and roll is played with the assistance of two guitars; one as beat and one as rhythm, although drum kits occasionally takes over the role of either the beat guitar or the rhythm to be a part of rock and roll, but guitar is still associated with rock and roll throughout the world. Guitar and instruments that can be considered as the predecessors of guitar had been invented thousands of years ago during the time of the Romans and Greeks and in the Indian subcontinent in the form of sitar and tamboro. After the invention of bass guitar or electric guitar, it rapidly overtook many instruments like piano or drum kits as the lead instrument of any artist. The reason for the popularity of the guitar was its association with rock and roll as has been already mentioned before. Guitar, although there for a thousand years, enjoyed renewed success after the invention of electric or bass guitar. During the great depression, when every walk of life suffered from economic downturn, music was virtually not affected by it. And it was during this time that the folk and blues cherished; it has to be comprehended that guitar were relatively cheaper and easier to play than other instruments that were available during those times. After the release of the Catcher in the Rye, which revolutionized the American youth and created a rebellious nature in them, teenagers who were particularly involved in achieving their dream of becoming a musician picked up the guitar. Guitar was always the first choice with the looks that it brought to a person and the sign of individuality that was illustrated by playing a guitar was its appeal and this fascinated the teenagers and men in their post teens. When rock and roll was at its peak and bands and singers like Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Rolling Stones were dominating the arena of rock and roll, guitar became increasingly important in their influence. Rock and roll also influenced a new genre that was heavily influenced by guitar music now popularly known as metal music. This type of guitar music was influenced by highly amplified distortion, emphatic beats, and a thick, massive sound and over all loudness. Metal Music was traditionally associated with masculinity and machoism. “Rock music can change things. I know that it changed our lives.”~ Bono (Abbey 2006) The first mass produced electric guitar was created by Les Paul. (Shaughnessy 1993) Although attempts to transform guitar into an electric guitar had been going on for two decades starting the 1930’s, the pioneering inventor of rock and roll who has been given credit for the invention of an electric guitar, was Les Paul. After the Second World War teenagers were becoming more and more rebellious, and they found satisfaction of that rebellious nature in rhythm and blues of which rock and roll was a mirror, which in turn was a map of cultural development and reaction. From the music industry in USA, with blues to today’s hip and hop and hardcore, every musical genre has taken some sort of an inspiration from rock and roll, inspiring musicians while keeping pace with evolving social and political climate. In one way or the other rock and roll has helped to fuel this evolution, breaking down lines of class and tearing apart racial boundaries. Here the point is not that it was created without conflict. As the saying goes, controversy creates cash. rock and roll is the type of music which tapped into this notion; it draws its power from its controversial content which is partly attributed to its success. Today rock and roll has inspired many new genres, and it is the only art form that is so readily easy to get to, acknowledged and reviled. The environment of 1950’s filled with the right type of cultural, social and political conditions paved way for a new musical form which became a need of the generation of the 1950’s. From 1946 America experienced baby boom, resulting in an increase in birth rates; the veterans coming home from the war started families en mass. An increasing importance was placed on the theme of family and any sign of dysfunction was kept discrete. Any deviation from the norm was identified and rooted out. The separation of the sexes or the gender differences was greatly enforced during this time; education was designed harboring the special needs of the boys and girls. Girls were taught to idealize their mothers. Through “domestic sciences” taught at schools domestic fulfillment was mastered. Television also inspired this ideology by teaching girls that “you cannot get a man without brain”. Rock and roll was not without controversy. Older generation complained that this new form of art will erode the values of the society and will have a bad impact on the new generations. Thus the question of censorship was raised. Just like there had been a ban on the sale of questionable books same was the case with rock and roll; however, the case with banning books was far much easier to suppress than banning rock and roll. This form of art accepted and embraced everything that was opposed though television. Weirdness was accepted though people such as Little Richard. Rock and roll and its African American origins, its lyrics, style and rebellious implications threatened the white parental society. Through this particular form of art rebellion against the suburbia was started. This phenomenon weakened the conformity of the 1960’s and thus during this decade rock and roll was labeled as subversive. According to the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, the first rock and roll record was named “Rocket 88”, and the credit of “Rocket 88” was given to Jackie Brenston and its original composition was recorded by Turner Brand (Miller, 1980). It was recorded in Tennessee, Memphis in the Sun Studios. In the song, fuzzy guitar rifts, strong beats were filled as well as sax. It basically laid the foundation of rock and roll and surprisingly resembled a lot to what rock and roll had to be to become. One of the stories in this regard is also of Bill Haley who started as a country and western musician and soon moved over to the rock and roll arena, with several national airplays years before anybody had even heard of Elvis Presley. The financial success of Haley soon let many country and western musicians to cross over to the newly established rock and roll market (Portis 2002). The role of guitar in rock and roll was quite the same throughout the entire history of rock and roll. if a band consisted of four members, two or three of them would be playing guitar, and this established that no matter what, piano drums or harmonica never played a major role in the development of rock and roll; rather, it just had a supporting role toward the guitar which played a dominant in role in most of the rock and roll songs. Guitar transformed the rock and roll to a level that no other medium has. Although guitar was played during the 20’s and 30’s, its tunes were soulful and did not have the kind of variation that rock and roll had introduced. Musicians played guitar, giving it their most rebellious tones and not the kind of soulful tunes that had become the convention for people to hear with high pitched beats to add affects. There were many players who transformed rock with guitar and a few of them have been mentioned before who are considered the gods of rock and roll, including Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan etc. The guitar players who truly defined rock and roll after Elvis Presley was the Beatles. although Beatles had taken a great deal of inspiration from Elvis, their music was listened to all around the world, and it has been claimed that Beatles were far more popular in North America than Elvis Presley was ever and ever will be in the United Kingdom. Beatles’ music, before its breakup, featured rock and roll in almost every of its song. Even after the break John Lennon went around to become an anti-war activist, with songs being hugely inspired by rock and roll, his principle genre, and his non-war songs, such as Instant Karma, were also popular as the tunes of rock and roll and its impact had been huge on the people and they had still not gotten bored of it. After Beatles rock and roll was just called rock, because the tune of rock and roll had been changed significantly since the 50’s and during the 80’s, with the rising popularity of metal bands, rock and roll took a different role, and its beats and intensity changed drastically. With rock and roll influencing metal genre, it further influenced other sub-genres of the metal music most notably Christian Metal. Christian Metal genre exemplified the Christian faith through the use of songs and tracks mostly with the techniques and rhythms most associated with metal music. "Elvis Presley was bigger. Chuck Berry was better. But Bill Haley was first" (Sumrall 1994). In 1953 the first true rock and roll song entered the Billboard magazine charts with Chuck Barry’s “Crazy man Crazy”. This song gave a boost to other rock and roll that had been fascinated with its appeal but were afraid that rock and roll might not get the kind of approval from the American society for it to become commercially successful. The song “Crazy man Crazy” was a huge single at the time, selling more than 20 million copies around the world, (Sumrall 1994). Bill Haley again struck in 1955 with “Round around the clock”. This song defined rock and roll from the perspective of 1950’s, and the American society in general. Haley was extremely conventional from the viewpoint of musical revolution as it was Elvis Presley who took the ground as the revolutionary of rock and roll. Haley was a normal musician and there was nothing revolting about his image, his dressing or his vocal abilities, and that was the reason partly attributed to his limited success after “Round the Clock”, the song he was most remembered for. After the emergence of Elvis Presley, he took the pioneering role of rock and roll genre from Bill Haley; Haley may have been the first but from the viewpoint of sex appeal and commercial success, Elvis was much bigger in magnitude. Although both the men played guitar, it was Elvis who made guitar the instrument of the youth. Elvis broke again on to the charts in 1956 with his unforgettable single “Heartbroken Hotels”, and this was the song that set the tone for rock and roll for years to come. Elvis, with his guitar and dressing, made his presence felt at stage which was highly sexual. His whole image was filled with sex and upheaval with a slight tone of androgyny and homo-erotic plead. It was an image that inspired millions and would be imitated by many an artist and fan for years to come. Among these artists were, "Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Del Shannon, Rickey Nelson, and Eddie Cochran" (Sumrall 1994). Elvis’s influence was not exclusive just to 50, but throughout the 60’s and 70’s his artistic trends were widely copied. Elvis can basically be called the person who used his guitar to make rock and roll what it is right now. Rock and roll during the 60’s played a major role with its instruments. Anti-war rock and roll choirs were heard everywhere and this increased after the war (Vietnam War) started being unpopular in the homeland. This indeed was the new form of rebellious music or, in other words, a new form of rebellious entertainment that matched the wavelengths that the American anti-war audiences were feeling. This new kind of music was an anti-establishment tool with which the government was faced. Flash, Las Vegas style norm was developing among the American youth and rock and roll was the tool they used the most. One of the artists of this generation was Bob Dylan who used his music as a sign of protest with which the coffee house culture was born. Race difference was eliminated as black and white students started to mingle; new rebellious ideas were scattered and new values were put in place in opposition to the conservative values which had been a part of the American societal system since its inception, while prejudices regarding race, religion, and creed were dithered. (Miller 1980) During the 1960’s many conservative adults dismissed the rock and roll music by stating that it is just a phase of the music and not a form of art like the rhythms and blues or jazz. They even condemned it as a threat to the American societal system. During the mid to late 1960’s, however, rock and roll started to be widely accepted as a legitimate art form by contemporary music listening audiences. The spread and popularity was now not limited to young listeners but was also among older audiences in America as well as abroad. Also, during this decade rock and roll moved away from its parent genre i.e. blues and country music, and it simply became known as rock. In 1970s rock was not just popular music as a solo performances or a group band with a singer, two guitar players and a piano player; it also became a fashion trend and was a part of every American walk of life like churches, films, fashion and politics, with politicians regularly praising Elvis Presley and Rolling Stones to get political support. Moving to the 1980’s, rock and roll broke away all the barriers of traditional music and traditional rock and roll itself and started to draw influences from international bands. Today rock and roll is not just an American art form but rather a global art form that is been listened to all around the world. The colossal fame and worldwide scope of rock and roll has resulted in an unexpected level of social impact on the American societal system. It is not just a musical style anymore; rock and roll influences the way of speaking, attitudes, fashion, standard of living in one way or another with an unprecedented magnitude that no other social developments have matched. The magnitude of influence of rock and roll is so large that rock stars are worshipped all around the world and remembered in houses much more than Jesus himself, and the performances of artists in diverse arts and cultures are leveled to and valued as being like that of a “rock star” or a “superstar”. For the last half century, since the inception of rock and roll, this genre has been using lyrics which are increasingly expressive – with lyrics filled drugs, sex, sadism and the most controversial of them all, sexual violence. Heavy metal and rap lyrics are the types of rock and roll inspired genres that have elicited the greatest concern as they promote a culture or environment in which teenage use of drugs, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, injuries, suicide and homicide pregnancy is increasingly become part of the social norm. References Abbey, Cherie D. Biography Today Annual Cumulation 2006: Profiles of People of Interest to Young Readers. New York: Omnigraphics Inc, 2006. Miller, Jim. The Rolling Stone illustrated history of rock & roll . Los Angeles: Rolling Stone, 1980. Portis, Larry. Soul Trains. London: Virtualbookworm Publishing Ltd., 2002 . Shaughnessy, Mary Alice. Les Paul: an American original. Michigan: University of Michigan, 1993. Sumrall, Harry. Pioneers of rock and roll: 100 artists who changed the face of rock. Los Angeles: Billboard Books, 1994. Read More