What is Rock Music - Research Paper Example

Rock Music Rock Music Rock music is an interesting genre of music for any funny who cares to listen to words and flow of instruments. Rock is a genre of music that sounds like an all jumble of loud musical instruments and artistes with no definite direction and purpose. I do not listen to it since the experience leaves me feeling intruded upon, and trying to understand the theme is an exercise in futility. This is because my preference is a sedate pace to music, soothing beats and generally, a sensible approach to performance and music content.

I even find it difficult to understand anything from the rock music, and listening to something that I do not understand it’s a big challenge. The rock music is a different kind of music for anyone to listen, save for those who love it for their own reasons. The genre came into being as ‘rock and roll’ in the United States in the 1950s. It has various styles developed over years worldwide. Rock music has heavy influences from rhythm and blues, country music, folk music, jazz and classical music.

More specifically, early origins of rock music can be traced to African American music modes in the Mississippi Delta.1 Rock and roll refers to the first wave of this phenomenon in the 1950s that developed into rock music, and both terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same music genre. Michael Lydon observes that there are a lot of theories about rock music, attempting to define and distinguish it, but all these theories overlook the importance if the rock genre as music2. In this regard, rock music usually features the guitar, a rock group, and a 4/4 time signature in a verse chorus form.

There have been several variances from this norm, depending on the kind of theme being enhanced by the particular artist doing a rock music. The music mainly explores themes in the social and political spheres, and is dominant among white youths. Incidentally, rock is hinged on electric live performances, and based on an ideological framework of originality and authenticity. Some have defined rock music as part of the United States tradition3 but Wicke opines that it is a midway between folk music and bourgeois music.

This midway is characterized by an emphasis on individuality and distortion of perspective. Rock music is also a midway between the pre mass media explosion and the current age, being the first genre of music commercialized and distributed through media such as television, radio and film as opposed to bourgeois music with its concert hall performances and strict structure. Wicke goes on to assert that rock music is the product of social process and change evidenced in the 50s and 60s4. It was a mode of protest against societal framework through music.

Such expression has led to rock music’s association with activism, race and sex debates, youth non conformity and drug use.BibliographyWicke, Peter. 1990. Rock music: culture, aesthetics, and sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.