History of Rock music

Rock music started in the United States in the 1940's and 50's, its was originally based with music from other genres such as electric blues and folk , but with a different twist. Rock music has also created the 'rock and roll' title which influences a lot of different artists from different genres since the  50's. There is a large debate as to what the first ever rock song released was, but the first rock song that topped the Billboard magazine's charts and airplay was Bill Haley with the song "Rock Around the Clock". This showed the rock genre that their music has been accepted in the music industry, which is why rock is still around in 2016.

Rock often involves heavy instruments such as drums and an electric base guitar, these create a very hard and loud sound which rock is known for. The typical lyrics in the songs are about romance, love and often social or political views that the artists express throughout their songs. This genre in past years has been seen to be white and male dominant, which effected the themes that are involve din the music. However more recently there are rock bands lead by females and other ethnicities.
Throughout time such as in the 1960's rock has developed subgenres such as blue rock, folk rock, country rock, raga rock and jazz rock. It also influenced the Punk genre in the 1980's and in the 90's, forming from Punk, Alternative rock which dominated the 90's rock scene with grunge, Britpop and indie rock. Since the 21st century there has also been the creation of pop rock, rap rock and rap metal which are very different to the original rock sound, but have been created to keep up with the new social trends and to stay a modern genre. This is the link to one of the 21st century creations of rock, Rap metal

 

Rock music often has the stigma of young people rebelling to social standards and not conforming to the adult consumerism that they witness in their youth. This links to the political expressions that certain rock groups express through their music. When artists express their own views on social issues and politics they often have a very large impact and influence on their listeners, especially when they have the views to be defiant to their societies social norms and values and this can create certain sub cultures, for example the 1970's punk culture created 'Goth's' and 'Emo's'. A typical 'Goth' would typically be dressed in very dark clothing, often Victorian style with very pale makeup on their skin but very black eye makeup and hair, to make them even more different from what society would deem as normal. Whereas the 'Emo' culture was a lot less physically obvious as it was more about the emotion that the music involved and the term 'Emo' actually comes from the "emotional hard-core" title that the punk fans were given. Even though the emo culture has changed overtime and moved into more indie music, the subculture does still exist.
 

Eventhough the rock genre has changed and evolved overtime with social trends to modernise itself it still very much exists and is still as popular as it was in the original rock and roll era.