The Unacknowledged Economic and Political Forces Which Shaped the Rise of Rock and Roll
Dr Mark Naison Fordham University
As someone who has taught a course called “From Rock and Roll to Hip Hop” for sixteen years, I have been frustrated by the absence of an historically grounded, nuanced, explanation for the rise of Rock and Roll comparable to the one we have for the origins of hip hop.
Every historian of the subject agrees that Rock and Roll arose, during the early 1950’s, when a variety of figures in the music industry, mostly in small record companies and local market radio stations, noticed that white youth were buying rhythm and blues records that had originally be targeted for an all black market, and decided that giving a non-racial label to the music could lead to a vastly expanded market and far greater profits. They were able to do this, historians argue, because of a post war prosperity that put disposable income in the hands of ( mostly white) adolescents, allowing them to emerge for the first time in US history as a “teenage consumer market” to which an exciting, and rebellious form of popular music could be marketed and sold. In doing this, the DJ’s, record company entrepreneurs and concert promoters who were the formative figures in the rise of Rock and Roll- the Allan Freed’s and Sam Phillips’s of the world- ended up crossing racial barriers with deep roots in American culture and history, provoking and angry reaction not only from segregationists and white supremacists, but from a cross section of political and religious leaders who felt the music undermined important moral standards. Rock and Roll, which began as a marketing innovation, ended up subverting racial norms and undermining racial CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: The Unacknowledged Economic and Political Forces Which Shaped the Rise of Rock and Roll