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Rock music began in the 1960s, as a fusion of earlier jazz styles (especially rhythm-and-blues) with those of newly-emerged pop (especially rock ‘n’ roll). Like jazz, it is as often instrumental as vocal, and is intensely virtuosic. Like pop, it interacts with popular culture in general and fashion in particular, to the point where artists can cross over from one style to the other without undue compromise. Rock makes extensive use of electronic instruments, notably drums, guitars and keyboards. Rock musicians are at the forefront of development in this field, and their enormous popularity has had incalculable effect on the spread of new instruments and new playing techniques. The main branches of rock include folk rock (close to folk, with a serious-mindedness about its lyrics and a reticent musical style), glam rock (the nearest to pop, with a dependence on light shows, high-fashion clothes, extravagant make-up and dance and a corresponding fining-down of complexity in the music), hard rock (and its coarser derivative heavy metal), which often favour aggressive images of violence and protest, and push amplifiers, instruments and voices to extremes, and progressive rock (innovative, experimental and closest in technique to both jazz and electronic music). KMcL |
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