Shosanna Spill
Tricia Swoope
ENG 112
03 July 2010
Rock Music
Rock is a popular form of music that has evolved over the past couple of decades starting in the 1950s until present day. Rock music has been known to be used as a form of expression over the years. Despite its sometimes negative and defiant lyrics, rock is a form of art that allows one to release his/her feelings through singing in an expressive tone. Later styles of heavy rock music in the 1990s, such as grunge, the typical example being Seattle's Nirvana, show influences of heavy metal but are typically not labelled sub-genres of heavy metal, as opposed to thrash metal and glam metal. The general absence of virtuosic guitar solos is perhaps one reason grunge bands haven't been considered heavy metal bands. Another key artist during this time was Megadeth, which combined the relentless, speedy thrash metal riffs with the fancy guitar soloing of speed metal like Judas Priest.
Rock-n-Roll has never just been music. Heavy metal, Rhythm & Blues, Art Rock, New Wave, and the rest may be primary styles or genres but as sub-categories of rock, or rockin’ roll they do not cumulatively add up to the whole. Rock n’ Roll is a movement, a lifestyle, in many ways a belief system and all that Rock n Roll is today it owes to history: two years, no more than three when the fabric of American popular culture was torn apart and rewoven, and a new era explosively began. Rock n Roll started with slavery. To understand we must understand what slavery was and where it left the sons and daughters of African who knew nothing of European rods of American culture. Every society has its indigenous music, which serves as entertainment, story teller, and accompaniment to Ritual and Ceremony. It is not nearly sufficient to identify black musical heritage from slave work songs through Rag Time, Blues, Jazz, Gospel,