Listen to a short story of rock’n’roll and answer the following questions:

1. What kind of music was popular with African-American in the early 1950s?

2. How can you describe ‘R & B”?

3. When did rock’n’roll become popular?

4. What singers got famous in the time?

5. Who appeared in the 60’s?

6. How did rock’n’roll change in the 1970’s?

7. What other rhythms have appeared recently?

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Post-lab activity

What kind of music do you like? Why? Who is your favorite singer/band?

A (very short) history of Rock Music

Rock music in one form or another is now the most popular type of music all over the world. But where did it come from?

BLACK MUSIC

Rock began in the the USA in the early 1950s. At that time, ‘rhythm and blues’ music was very popular with black Americans. ‘R & B’ was a mixture of black religious usic (gospel) and jazz. It has strong rhythms that you could dance to and simple, fast lyrics.

ROCK’N’ROLL

Noticing the success of R & B music, white musicians started to copy the same style. By the mid 1950s, this new R & B music, called rock’n’roll, had become very popular. Singers like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley attracted millions of teenage fans. Their music was fat and loud. Many older people thought that rock’n’roll was very dangerous.

By the early 1960s, even rock’n’roll had become old-fashioned. Many of the songs had begun to sound the same. It was at the time that a new group from England became popular: The Beatles

THE BEATLES

The Beatles first started by singing American style songs, but they soon developed their own style, with more complicated melodies. They also introduced different instruments, such as the Indian sitar. Groups like The Beatles had a very important influence on the style of popular music. By the early 1970s, rock’n’roll had developed into a new form of music. Electronics had replaced the amplified guitars and drums of rock’n’roll. “Rock” had arrived.

 ROCK TODAY

Rock music has continued to change and develop. It has combined with music from different parts of the world. Today, there are hundreds of different types of rock and almost every country has its own form of rock. There is “heavy metal” which is extremely loud with hard rhythms, ‘reggae’, from Jamaica, that combines rock with jazz and Latin rhythms, ‘rap’ that developed on the streets of New York, ‘disco’ a type of soft rock music for dancing, ‘Afro-roc’ that combines rock with African rhythms, ‘Mex-rock’, which combines rock with traditional Mexican melodies… and many, many more.