Rock music originated in the postal service in the 60s of the last century and remains popular and relevant today. Now we can listen to many subgenres of rock, from art rock to Christian rock. But where did it all begin?
Rock music is a generalized name for a number of popular music styles of the second half of the 20th century, which originated from rock and roll and rhythm and blues. The term Rock is obviously an abbreviation of Rock’n’roll and literally translates as “to shake; to shake”. Rock also refers to a kind of lifestyle of some rock music fans that has outgrown the subculture.
Rock music has a large number of styles: from dance rock and roll to heavy metal. The content of the songs ranges from light and easygoing to gloomy, deep and philosophical. Rock music is often contrasted with pop music (the so-called “pop”), although there is no clear line between the concepts of “rock” and “pop”, and many musical phenomena balance on the edge between them.
Prerequisites for the genre’s emergence:
The postwar development of foreign musical culture took place in the context of a deepening split in the world, intensified struggle between two socio-economic systems, military and political blocs, the outbreak of the Cold War, atomic psychosis, and ideological and cultural confrontation. Humanity, which suffered unimaginable human, material, and spiritual losses during the Second World War, faced large-scale tasks of raising material culture from the ruins, healing the wounds of spirituality and civilization.
The most characteristic feature of the culture of this period is the further development of the so-called “mass culture” and the replication of the culture of “mass production,” which was greatly facilitated by scientific and technological progress that brought revolutionary changes in the media (in particular, the rapid development of television, radio, sound recording, and cinema). Unlike in communist countries, where mass culture was strictly regulated by the ideological guidelines of the Communist Party, in capitalist countries the development of mass culture was closely linked to the commercial entertainment industry.
At the same time, the democratization of culture, its “serialization,” creates certain specific problems for the functioning of culture. There is a process of alienation of culture, which gives rise to the phenomenon of counterculture in the depths of mass culture-a subculture of protest and rebellion. In the second half of the twentieth century, rock became such a counterculture.
From the very first years of its existence, rock music had its own instrumentation.
The main instrument was and still is the electric guitar. Connected to a speaker, the electric guitar allows you to play loudly and gives the music a sharp, piercing and at the same time deep sound. Over time, the number of “guitar pickups” increased, which made it possible to diversify the sound of the instrument. The electric guitar could do it all: squeak and growl, lead a clean, beautiful melodic theme and hammer out hard chords.