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Lately, we’ve been seeing Hip-Hop make a major resurgence in our primal consciousness. As Hip-Hop makes it’s way firmly into the mainstream, artists like Sam Sparro are experiencing popularity that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. Less than ten years ago, the airwaves were dominated with such consistent pablum that it was virtually impossible to tell any of the artists apart. The new millennium introduced a new sense of adventurousness, and by 2010, Hip-Hop had firmly entered and inundated the mainstream of American culture. N.W.A and Dr. Dre had broken sales records in the early nineties, but the G Unit superstars proved to be massive sellers in their own right.

By combining and merging into several different types of music, hip-hop represented the basic melting pot of urban American culture. Instead of simply giving into the desires of the mainstream, hip-hop has actually subverted the mainstream into an approximation of itself. Hip-hop is the creative force and energy of our time, and we can only hope that human beings will continue to enjoy hip hop for many years to come. As hip-hop matures, we expect that more and more individuals will learn about the dynamic issues that underline Hip-Hop success.

In the early 1960’s, I was in college at Albany State. My major interests were music and biology. In music I was a contralto soloist with the choir, studying Italian arias and German lieder. The Black music I sang was of three types:
Spirituals sung by the college choir. These were arranged by such people as Nathaniel Dett and William Dawson and had major injections of European musical harmony and composition.
Rhythm’n’Blues, music done by and for Blacks in social settings. This included the music of bands at proms, juke boxes, and football game songs.
Church music; grospel was a major part of Black church music by the time I was in college. I was a soloist with the gospel choir.
Prior to the gospel choir, introduced in my church when I was twelve was many years’ experience with unaccompanied music – Black choral singing, hymns, lined out by strong song leaders with full, powerful, richly ornate congregational responses. These hymns were offset by upbeat, clapping call and response songs.
I saw people in church sing and pray until they shouted. I knew that music as a part of a cultural expression that was powerful enough to take people from their conscious selves to a place where the physical and intellectual being worked in harmony with the spirit.

Dubbed “the universal language,” and “the brandy of the damned,” music can incite an orgy, lull a baby to sleep, deepen a trance, inspire a couch potato to dance, and prompt an invalid in a nursing home to clap to a beat. Some research on the subconscious holds that musical instruments are the symbols of sex organs in dreams.

But the tunes are more than physical. Several belief systems present music as a way of elevating animalistic impulses and emotions into a spiritual experience. Music becomes a means of redemption. Orpheus, the musician of Greek mythology, used his lyre to charm the rulers of Hades into releasing his wife. And preachers use “Amazing Grace” to pull their flocks to the altar.

Shakespeare’s contemporaries touted the “music of the spheres.” In the beginning, goes the theory, the harmony of the universe was heralded by angels who stood on surrounding planets and filled the heavens with song. After tasting the forbidden fruit and getting the bum’s rush from paradise, we no longer could hear the angels. We could, however, detect them in fragments when we made music – our own little fiffs of divine harmony.

That idea explains my guitar strumming friend’s sweeping observation that “really, there’s no bad music.”

On the final, wrenching trills of “When a Man loves a Woman,” Percy Sledge waded into the adoring crowd, which surged ecstatically toward him.
The dewy 20 year old standing next to me shook his head in amazement, not at the music but at its effect. “Look at that! I have got to become a musician,” he said in the heady throes of revelation. “Look at the way everybody absolutely worships those guys. The women especially. That is it. I am getting a guitar tomorrow!”
I could almost see a cartoon light bulb bobbing over his head. He was on to something. In that instant, the young man understood what Shakespeare meant with the words, “If music be the food of love, play on.”
What is the appeal of musicians? Why did young women collapse like feverish rag dolls before The Beatles, and why did Odysseus’ sailors need to be tied down when passing the sirens? What is the narcotic magnetism that makes us want to rush the stage, to throw our arms around the band members’ shoulders and tell them we understand their pain, that, in fact, they are singing about us?
While it does not necessarily have to be shared, music is the most communal of the arts.

Since its beginning, rock music has accompanied a dizzying succession of dances, such as the twist, the frug, the monkey, the shake, and the mashed potato. In most rock dances of the 1960s, partners did not hold each other, as in earlier dances, but moved individually to the music’s powerful beat.

Most rock dances were improvisational and did not required dancers to learn a series of complicated steps. Among the best known rock dances was the twist, associated with a New York night club, the Peppermint Lounge, and popularized in 1961 through a television performance by the singer Chubby Checker. By the 1960s, many adults became influenced by the youth culture and danced to rock music at night clubs called discotheques.

During the 1970s, thousands of discotheques – mostly featuring recorded music – mushroomed around the country. Disco became the dominant dance music of the time. Many dances of the 1970s such as the hustle and its variants – often required intricate steps and turns, a throwback to earlier times. These dances frequently required partners to remain in close contact with each other. Also popular were line dances, in which many dancers performed the same choreographed movements. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the development of break dancing, a combination of dancing and gymnastics, often to rap music.

During the 1960s, much of the rock music by black performers was called soul, a term that emphasized its emotionality, its gospel roots, and its relationship to the black community. Soul musicians included James Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin. Motown – derived from “Motor Town USA,” a nickname for Detroit, the city from which the style emerged was a type of music that blended rhythm and blues with elements of popular music.

Among its stars were Diana Ross and the Supremes and Stevie Wonder. With Motown, African American composers and performers entered the mainstream of popular music.
A new era of British influence began in 1964 with the American tour of the Beatles, an English rock group whose members probably have been the most influential performers in the history of rock. The Beatles – the singer guitarists Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison; and the drummer Ringo Starr (all born in the 1940s) – dominated the popular music scene in the United States, along with the Rolling Stones and other British groups. Under their influence, rock musicians of the middle and late 1960s explored a wider range of sources for sounds and musical ideas. They experimented with electronic effects, with “classical” and nonwestern instruments, and with unconventional scales, chord progressions, and rhythms.

In the late 1940s, rhythm and blues became a dominant style among African Americans. Rhythm and blues (R & B) of the late 1950s differed from earlier blues in its more powerful beat and its use of the saxophone and electric guitar. Among the leading performers influenced by rhythm and blues were Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, and Fats Domino. Gospel – tinged vocal groups, such as the Driffters, and the soaring falsetto lead sounds of The Platters were also an important part of rhythm and blues style.

During the 1950s many rhythm and blues hits were issued by white performers in versions (“covers”) with less sexually explicit lyrics. Little Richard’s Tutti Fruiti and Long Tall Sally, for example, were issued in “cover” versions by Pat Boone one month after the release of the originals.

One of the earliest important rock and roll groups was Bill Haley and His Comets, whose Rock Around the Clock is often identified as the first big hit of the new style. The song was recorded in 1954, but did not become a number one hit until a year later, when it was prominently featured in The Blackboard Jungle, a provocative movie about teenage delinquency in a contemporary setting: a New York City high school.

This article is from a music appreciation textbook. Colleges offer courses such as music appreciation and art appreciation to give students a general introduction to the worlds of music and art, and students often say that these courses were among their favorite courses in college. In a music appreciation class, for example, students learn about (and listen to) all types of music, from ancient forms of music to classical music, sacred music, theatrical music and opera to modern musical styles such as Japan and China as well. Students are introduced to classical composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi and Bach, and a range of musical styles such as the ragtime style of Scott Joplin, the New Orleans style of Louis Armstrong and the bebop style of Charlied “Bird” Parker. In addition, students study the music of more contemporary performers, such as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Madona, Carlos Santana, Sheryl Crow, Alicia Keys, and Usher.

If you are a young college student, this selection about the development of rock music through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s may seem like a history or sociology lesson as much as a lesson in music appreciation, since it also presents background information about the political events and trends that occurred during these decades.

In the mid – 1950s, American saw the growth of a new kind of popular music that was first called rock and roll and then simply rock. Though it includes diverse styles, rock tends to be vocal music with a hard, driving beat, often featuring electric guitar accompaniment and heavily amplified sound. And early rock grew mainly out of rhythm and blues, a dance music of African Americans that fused blues, jazz, and gospel styles. Rock also drew on country and western, a folklike, guitar based style associated with rural white Americans, and pop music, a smooth, highly polished style exemplified by such performers as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. In little more than a decade, rock evolved from a simple, dance – oriented style to music that was highly varied in its tone colors, lyrics, musical forms, and electronic technology.

In the late 1940s, rhythm and blues became a dominant style among African Americans. Rhythm and blues (R & B) of the late 1950s differed from earlier blues in its more powerful beat and its use of the saxophone and electric guitar. Among the leading performers influenced by rhythm and blues were Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, and Fats Domino.