Rock N Roll History
Oscar Wilde famously said in his 1889 essay that, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” The phrase is critically appraised and argued about as much as, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” However, the relationship between both life and art is rarely denied, and much like history is bound to repeat itself. In chronicling rock n roll’s roots, inception, and fruition from the birth of the industry in the 1920s through its pinnacle of the 1960s. The interdependency between the music and statuses of social, economic, and political environments were always closely associated. From rock n roll’s meagre country and blues roots of the segregated south in the Mississippi Delta, it found its creative spark. The Great Migration
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Or what associate professor David Brackett of McGill University would recall “one of the most disastrous examples of urban renewal in recent U.S history.” Education and social funding saw cuts in areas such as music programs, and opportunities were far and few between for many of the borough’s residents. Everybody may not have had access to a musical instrument, but most households still had a record player. It was in this environment a mobile disc jockey by the name of Kool Herc gained notoriety from an innovative playing style while performing at block parties in the neighbourhood parks and nightclubs. As rock critic Robert Ford Jr, noted in 1978 Billboard Magazine, Kool Herc’s playing style came from taking relatively short, unknown R&B rhythm breaks and splicing them back to back to create an infectious soundtrack. It was one record Herc recalls intimately as starting it all off, “Bongo Rock … The tune has a really good rhythm break but it was too short, I had to look for other things to put with it.” Much like the minimalistic beginnings of the bluesmen in rock n roll’s past, this was another example of making something out of nothing. But why so much popularity with inner city youth? Kool Herc points to modern music’s overproduction, “On most records, people have to wait through a lot of strings and singing to get to the good part of the record, but I just give it to them up front.” There is little doubt the evidence of punk and hip-hop’s simplistic approach in search of originality show a clear division from the extreme excess of the decade’s pop
Or what associate professor David Brackett of McGill University would recall “one of the most disastrous examples of urban renewal in recent U.S history.” Education and social funding saw cuts in areas such as music programs, and opportunities were far and few between for many of the borough’s residents. Everybody may not have had access to a musical instrument, but most households still had a record player. It was in this environment a mobile disc jockey by the name of Kool Herc gained notoriety from an innovative playing style while performing at block parties in the neighbourhood parks and nightclubs. As rock critic Robert Ford Jr, noted in 1978 Billboard Magazine, Kool Herc’s playing style came from taking relatively short, unknown R&B rhythm breaks and splicing them back to back to create an infectious soundtrack. It was one record Herc recalls intimately as starting it all off, “Bongo Rock … The tune has a really good rhythm break but it was too short, I had to look for other things to put with it.” Much like the minimalistic beginnings of the bluesmen in rock n roll’s past, this was another example of making something out of nothing. But why so much popularity with inner city youth? Kool Herc points to modern music’s overproduction, “On most records, people have to wait through a lot of strings and singing to get to the good part of the record, but I just give it to them up front.” There is little doubt the evidence of punk and hip-hop’s simplistic approach in search of originality show a clear division from the extreme excess of the decade’s pop