Viewed as a historical marker, popular music is a revealing barometer of culture. It exemplifies the diverse moods and views of the American public at different times in history. Music presents insights and multiple points of view as well as an emotional impact which other historical documents, particularly written, often lack. People listen and enjoy music. It speaks to the heart of what is America. It shows in uninhibited fashion the hopes and dreams of a people. Through music, history comes alive and we can connect directly with people and events which may otherwise seem remote to us. As such, rock and roll can be a powerful tool to introduce recent historical events and issues. It is the only indigenous American music that has been with us since the first African set foot on the North American continent.
Rock ‘n’ roll traces its origins to the African-American slave community. Rock n’ Roll began in the crucible of African culture, chattel slavery, and resulting slave resistance. Thus, from the beginning, rock and roll was a subversive activity, a protest movement. In a sense, it never really lost that tone.
Ironically, then, perhaps our most indigenous music was from an enslaved society. Every society has its indigenous music, which serves as entertainment and accompaniment to ritual and ceremony. Our music was rock n’ roll.
Rock ‘n’ roll was resurrected in the American folk music of Stephen Foster and Cole Porter.
Music historian David Townsend writes, “This last ingredient is crucial: they didn’t sing the Blues back in Africa. Rock ‘n’ roll is an African-American hybrid, but its strongest root is the very suffering, and survival, of generations of slaves, who learned how music could help a man to transcend earthly pain for awhile. The Blues sings of sadness, toil, and loss, but the reason for singing the Blues is to relieve the hurt these things cause. The Blues, with its simple, repetitive rhythms and chords and lyrical phrases, provides a comforting communal message that musician and audience can share, as long as they know where the singer is coming from. It’s no wonder that Blues singers were so popular during the Depression, especially in the South, among both black and white audiences. It’s also easy to understand the strong bonds between rock ‘n’ roll and Gospel music: from a secular point of view, singing about the Lord lifting you up and singing about the Blues fallin’ down like rain are spiritually equivalent acts.”
Nonetheless, Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid 1950s. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid 1960s, has been generally known as rock music.In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the term rock and roll to describe it.
Because the development of rock n’ roll was an evolutionary process, no single record can be identified as the first rock and roll music. In terms of its wide cultural impact across society in the US and elsewhere, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”, recorded in April 1954 but not a commercial success until the following year, is generally recognized as the first, unadulterated rock and roll of the modern era. (Stobaugh, Studies in World History, Vol III, Master Books, 2014).