Rock and its influence on the society

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Rock and its influence on the society

2006

The environment

Rock music started approximately in 50^th of twentieth century and made a real revolution in lifestyle of the people of that time, involving more and more listeners and fans. Rock is not just a musical style; it is a youth teenage culture, way of communication, a mirror of the society. Originally, it was made to be the instrument of self-expression of the teenagers, a riot and a protest, negation and redefining of moral and material values of the world. During all its history, rock shows us the eternal problem of children and their parents. Like a way of self-assuring, in the eyes of eldest generation rock looks as a childish hobby, which is dangerous and pernicious sometimes. Though rock exists comparatively long and nowadays generation has been grown on this music, it has nowadays the same problem, as it has before: incomprehension and misunderstanding. This fact shows the spiral way of developing: it does not matter how in particular it developed, because in general, it passes through the same steps. The development of rock music was connected with the technological, economic, politic and social development. The legislators of the rock were the most developed countries. Technical development gives the new impetuses to this music by improving and changing the hardware. Technological inventions lead to the fact that mostly every family has a tape-recorder, radio, stereo-system, what, of course, increases the influence of this music to the masses. High economic development rise the accomplishment of the people, therefore, allows people more free time, which could be dedicated to creating the music and listening to it. And it also improves the condition of a labor and providing the musicians with job. The good example to it is Brazilian music band "Sepultura", which have been not very interesting in its motherland because of not having nice hardware. But when "Sepultra" came to USA and gets new hardware, it immediately gets the status of a super band.

Rock is a good playground for the philosophy; all sorts of philosophical laws appear in this music. It is a remonstrance of teenagers against the ordinary everyday life, stupid system of principles that made our reality lifeless, scheduled and office-like.

The beginning of rock

You can look for the origins of rock-music in folk, jazz, blues, but rock became that "rock", by which we understand it today, in fifties of the twentieth century. Rock-n-roll of the 50^th became that instrument, which united black and white teenagers and destroy all the racial and social prejudices. "Rock and roll was instrumental in breaking down the color barrier in music once and for all. The young were less prejudiced than their parents and enjoyed music without carrying about its ethnic origins". “Mass media. Mass culture. An introduction” by J.R. Wilson and S. Le Roy Wilson, part two, chapter 11, p. 282 Two black idols of the teenagers in 50^th - Little Richard and Chak Berry were expressing the protest to obedience the racial thoughts with every sound of their music, every word of their song, every gesture they make. This disobedience has been accepted by whites, who also had been listening to their music. And they have already been ready for such an idea - they were listening to black rhythm-and-blues from local radiostations. And this music became their common secret, their plot against their parents, who disallow blacks.

Rock-n-roll was the first musical form given to a teenager and made specially for him, paying attention to all sides of teenager's psychology: earlier there were records for grown-ups, records for children, but there was nothing for a teenager, Nothing, which could express just teenage hopes and dreams, just teenage attitude in a society, thoughts about life and reality from the teenager's point of view. This traction of a teenagers to `other music" was espied by little and not famous record producers, who were more mobile in their choice and who could allow themselves a bit of risk, than giant companies, who were afraid of fail. So, rhythm-and-blues and country-and-western became to get closer and closer white and black music interfuses, allowing to black listening to white music and contrariwise. And radio waves bring the new style. And amateurs of this style started to give it more and more different features, crossing two cultures. And there was born a new music - wild, mad, contagious music named rock-n-roll.

Rock of the 50^th

Rock-n-roll breaks the placid tenor of life in the 50^th, but to the beginning of 60^th it was abated. Parents were fighting for the peace, calm and order, but their race for stability and success stamped the ideals of equality, justice and freedom. So no wonder that their children were doubting and disbelieving in this after war order, and new moods found a reflection in children's musical tastes. Folk became flourishing and found fulfillment in new performer Bob Dylan. It was Dylan's voice, which express doubts and hopes of restless generation. His songs about racial oppression and the danger of nuclear destroying became the hymns, and his song "Times, they change" was the first warning of growing social intensity. But folk actually was the music of the past, but not new generation, which did not have yet its own voice.

The rebirth of rock begins in a town far from USA - in Liverpool. When Brian Apstain, the manager of the local music shop, came once in a club "Cavern" and heard the music, played there, he was impressed.

"Beatles" is a legend nowadays. It was the legendary group, which vanquished the hearts of millions people. There was a wave of absolute love, which united millions of people. It was 13^th of October 1963, on Sunday, when Beatles performed in the London hall "Palladium". The performance was translated, and program gathered 15 thousand auditors. It was the historical event. It makes the bridges between countries and styles, makes new borders between epochs and generations. "Beatles" quaked all the fundament of a teenage culture, changed the sound of rock and way of its development, found the principles, which still remain. Actually, at this day Beatlemania started. Thousand of admirers came there to the Palladium-hall, and the Liverpool four get to their car only with the help of the police. On the 4^th of November "Beatles" was the main guest in the program of Royal Variety in the theatre of prince of Wales. Queen Elisabeth II was present there and she was impressed by the song "Till there were you". Their next album "With the Beatles" released on 22 of November makes a world record with the incredible circulation of 300000. Single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" makes the famous critic admit, that "Paul McCartney and John Lennon are the greatest musicians after the Beethoven". After the release of the third album "Meet the Beatles" the band went to United Stated of America. "Beatles" gave there only three concerts, but it works so good, that no one could imagine. "Beatles" was becoming more and more famous and young people from all over the world fall in love with its dreamy, hilarious music. They were extremely enthusiastic with its ideas, moods, the sedition to nihilism and insensibility of society. "The Beatles" performed slow ballads, which found an unbelievable response in the souls of young people; they also had songs, which were the sharp social satire (for example, "Nowhere man"), in fact, they play just ordinary music, but the main difference was that this music had been created specially for the new generation. And new generation was happy with that. Young people gets what they want - nice music for the soul, leisure, amusement, romantic. There started a new fashion - to wear the same clothiers, as "The Liverpool" does, make the same hair-dress etc. Young people took guitars and other instruments in their ands and started creating their own music band, being inspired by "Beatles". The flourish idea of universal love was proclaimed in new album - "Stg. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Bans". It has a gorgeous result - hey expressed the craving of independence, of ideals and values which possessed the young world. This album defines the gist of new musical epoch, proves, that rock became am art, and art - the main form of mass communication. For example, there begins the new movement - the hippie subculture, who called themselves "the flower children". Their slogan was "Make love, not war" (as opposition to the government policy - USA was in that time involved in the Vietnam War), and their hymn was the Beatles' song - "All you need is love". Psychedelic drug users, inspired by this music, appeared. "Even though "The Beatles" broke up in 1970, their impact on our popular culture remains profound…today many radio stations are still regularly plays the Beatles' music". “Mass media. Mass culture. An introduction” by J.R. Wilson and S. Le Roy Wilson, part two, chapter 11, p. 285

Disobedience, independence, new style of thoughts - that's the new slogans for this generation.

Rock of the 60^th

"It was the time of true innovations and experiments, and almost all the cultural revolutionaries of that time were extremely young. In our epoch it's difficult to imagine, that you may have problems with other people because of your style and clothes. And often such "problems" turns out a scuffle. It's difficult nowadays to understand, how pleasant and new it was to outlive such a radical changes, such a feeling of completely independent generation. It was the time when every social change, even small, was accepted like a real revolution, maintained against musty mentality of elder generation and leading to the new world." “The Doors” by Peter K. Hogan This was the social climate, in which appears, therein "The Beatles" and Bob Dylan, thousands of new rock-bands. And very single rock-band wanted to tell other people something the want to express.

By that times in USA appeared the new music band named "The Doors". The leader, front man and vocalist of this band explain the name of the group like "We are trying to open a door to the new countries and people". But originally the name was taken from the poem of William Blake. This rock-band was not likely. The idea that lyrics are as importance, as the music is, was rather new, and "The Doors" were the first, who develop the potential of rock absolutely. The front man, vocalist and the leader of the group Jim Morrison explained the popularity of his music like with the worlds: "We are oriented on the same human need, as classical tragedy and early blues of States. It's like a spiritual seance in an environment, which became antagonistic to life. People feel like they are dying in such a landscape. And so they gather and make this seance with an aim to mercy death, lead it away, using meditation of songs, music and dancing. People are trying to cure themselves and to retrieve harmony in this world". “The Doors” by Peter K. Hogan, quote from the interview with Jim Morrison

Another legend, which was continuing the British invasion, was The Rolling Stones. They were performing for almost forty years, and these were the years of success. Their album "Tattoo you" with 3 million copies sold, and "Some girls" - with 4 million of sales. The Rolling Stones have five platinum singles, which means, those sales of each album was one million; and 28 "gold albums", representing sales of a 500,000 copies each.

Rock of 70^th and later on

"Rock, which intruded into the life of a society, is acting deeply. It is judged by its outside display, which is on the surface, like clothes, but they don't notice, what is behind this colored face: there are doubts about such traditional values as army, politics, and religion…there is a new view on communication and relations. Rock is a communication. It is the sound background of the whole generation, which identify themselves to it". “The English rock” by Alan Dister

Seventieth brought up with the new specifications. Hard-rock was the invention of the 70^th. As the sole movement, it appears even in the end of 60^th with the help of Jimmy Hendricks and it supposes an excellent music instrument-playing. Hard-rock was more aggressive and sharp. The performances of a hard-rock were trying to get an awareness of all sides of human's soul, to raise philosophical themes, reflects the occult notions in opposite to Christianity, compare Christianity with Satanism. Theme of life and death became very popular, and while musicians were thinking about the meaning of life, their lyrics calls on to the conception of short, but bright life - "Live fast, die young". There were famous groups standing at the beginning of the hard-rock, such as "Deep Purple", "Black Sabbath" and "Led Zeppelin".

Heavy-metal was the "harder" continuation of hard-rock, another version, but there was more power and energy in it. No sweet romantic, no piano, just drums, electric guitars, horrors and occult themes - here is the legislator of the heavy-metal "Black Sabbath". Heavy-metal was accepted with pleasure, that why appear other groups, playing the same genre: "Judas Priest", "Iron Maiden", "and Magnum".

The very new generation, which changed the generation of the 60^th requiring for something extremely new, which would deny everything existing, something very uprising and protesting. It was punk music. "Rock and roll had evolved from a youth subcultural movement of the 1950^s to an establishment medium that was still providing groups from the 1960s. Establishment control of the recording industry led in 1976 to the punk-rebellion in England. A youth subculture began developing a new antiestablishment music". “Mass media. Mass culture. An introduction” by J.R. Wilson and S. Le Roy Wilson, part two, chapter 11, page 287

And again, it was the riot against order, but this riot was so aggressive, that looks like the war. The war against order, against system, against all. It was a loud and swearing ode for anarchy. The first group (also the most famous) was the Sex Pistols. After the signatory of the contract with their new producer, they wrote a song called "Anarchy in the United Kingdom". The contract was dissolved, because it was a very insulting and dangerous mood - to speak in such a way about the crown. But the "Sex Pistols", and then the "Clash" "denounced the establishment's control of mass culture and spoke out against our consumer society" “Mass media. Mass culture. An introduction” by J.R. Wilson and S. Le Roy Wilson, part two, chapter 11, page 287. Punk subculture was flourishing not only in Great Britain; young people from other countries joined this subculture.

Like another form of showing the protest and freedom, punks brought up the new fashion: they did the crazy hair-styles by spiking and coloring hair in red, pink, orange, green, purple and other bright colors; they began the fashion of piercing, wearing a lot of earring, piercing their noses, eyebrows etc with the safety pins. Punks used it to symbolize anarchy, to set themselves in opposite to a society and everyday life.

Like a post-punk culture, gothic - culture appears. "The Cure" and "The Bauhaus" music band started that subculture, which became extremely popular today. Firstly they were called "dark punks" because of their style: torn tights and nets, black hair, `dark' make-up (they colored face with white and black like on the Halloween).

And the hard-rockers and heavy-rockers prefer wearing long hair and leather clothes. And there was another thing, which could characterize it: motorcycles. The Harley-Davidson motorcycle company was the most famous. The Harley-Davidson amateurs and hard-rockers became so blended, that you can't tell them apart. And it became inseparable from the hard-rock. A lot of production, like t-shirts, cigarettes, jeans with the Harley-Davidson symbols on it, appears in that time. Motorcycle-riders increased the amount of heavy-metallers by blending two subcultures, and nowadays hard-rock is associated with a guy riding a motorbike with the slogan changed a little bit - "Ride fast, die young".

Rock nowadays

Rock spread in the others forms. Grunge-rock or alternative-rock, doom-metal, death-metal, power-metal, gothic metal, black-metal…there are a lot of music styles nowadays, which involve more and more teenagers. But all these styles are based of rock. New forms, new features, new traits, new ideas, - but the core is the same: like 50 years ago young people were looking for another form of self-expression, of proving their own "I", young people of nowadays are doing the same. There were a lot of things changed, but not the main.

Now there are a lot of subcultures existing, such as rockers, motorbikers, goths, punks etc. 90% of them are people from 14 to 25. As far as they're becoming older, they are forgetting about their childish lifestyle.

Criticism of rock music

In the meanwhile, press did not sleep. Rock and roll music was surrounded by different sorts of critics. And from one side, there were a lot of titles and articles, dedicated to rock bands with the most positive appreciation. But from the other side, rock was strictly criticized.

Press paid attention to the rock and roll lyrics. There came a huge wave of critical articles about the releasing music with hidden messages in lyrics, which could strongly affects young peoples' minds. There are two main compliance about hidden messages: subliminal embeds (hidden messages in a form of voice below level, which could be heard, so the listener gets information from nowhere, as he thinks. But in reality it came from a music like hypnosis) and backward masking (hidden messages which appears when you turn the record backwards).

Religious leaders were strictly against this music-style, because they called it satanic. And while they were turning backwards the record of Led Zeppelin `Stairway to heaven' they heard phrases which sound very likely to `I live with Satan' and `Here's to my sweet Satan' Of course, they were astonished by it and made a whole campaign for destroying this style, which is a creation of the devil.

In USSR in those times, when rock just started, there was a policy of `iron curtain', which rejects every foreign influence and called it `anti-Soviet intervention'. The policy was very strict, but for young people, who love everything forbidden, it was extremely interesting. A tern `music on the bones' appeared and it refers to medical radiographs, which were used like a record. Rare soviet groups, which appear in that time, perform in an atmosphere of a great secret.

There appear a lot of articles, describing wicked escapades of rock-stars, their miserable lifestyle, dictated by the slogan "Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll". In 1967 Mick Jagger, Kaithe Richards and Brian Jones - the members of the Rolling Stones were arrested for the illegal drug-keeping. Strange death of James Douglas Morrison (Jim Morison, the leader of the Doors) was, probable, conditioned with drugs-using. Press writes about the calamitous influence of the rock-stars on the society, especially on the minds of young people, which are so receptive both to the good ant to the evil. Parents were in despair - all their attempt of upbringing failed because rock opened all the potential force of disobedience, which was sleeping in every teenager and now begins to flourish. Of course, old generation blame rock in all these disasters. "This new rebel music" had a very bad influence on their children - something new, revolutionary and mad came into there calm life and made a real earthquake. Children behave so strange, so unlikely. They started to smoke, to drive motorbikes, to use drugs - just to feel like their idols, to copy them, to feel freedom; they start to leave there homes, looking for adventures.

"The influence of rock was bad and evil" - writes the press, - "our children have such a low-cultured, miserable ideals. It could be stupid childish joy, if it could not be so serious wave". But most press-writers didn't critic rock, because rock became so famous and popular, that it was an advantage to write positive things if you want to gain a lot of money for your article - just give people whatever they want (most part of readers were the same teenagers). And in general, press could not understand the one main thing: it wasn't rock who influence so badly on the young people, it was young people, who just express themselves, who create rock. It was an outbreak, an explosion, which has to take place sooner of later, it was the voice of youth, trying to find their place, their way, their style, trying to find themselves.

Childish mental state is very sensitive and instable. It is very simple to change it, to influence and to affect it. Often very young people are accosting to rock as to an invisible friend - who else, except this rock-singer, could express his feelings so good? They are trying to get rid of problems with parents, with coevals, with school etc. They are trying to overcome the loneliness, the lack of love, understanding with the aggression, the provocative behavior. They are trying to fell and behave like they don't need it. They are trying to find a joy in depression and consolation in rock's tunes. This is the way how they find new friends of misery. Seems that they are stronger together, they opposite the society and they are very pleased with themselves, though they spent their days with alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. And all this - just to be like their rock-ideals, who haven't got any problems and who are proud of wasting their lives; just to be like others within the subculture. Rock clubs are filled with underage public - they really thinks, that it's cute to drink alcohol and to smoke. Just imagine, how awful it looks, when a young girl of about 13-14, wearing black clothes, is coming out of such a club so drunk, that she could not walk by herself. It is real. And it does not have any romantic side - just rude, stupid reality, covered with the romantic aureole. Another example is gothic-culture, which is based on the singing death and depression. Hundreds of teenagers are involved in this subculture: they like black colors, crosses and cemeteries. And the final point of each true goth is to commit a suicide. It could be funny, but there are a lot of impressionable persons, who could not overcome their love-drama (for example), and killed themselves.

Not long ago there was a publication about the case in Blagoveshensk, which occurs on September, 28^th, 2006. Two girls jumped out from the balcony on the 11^th floor together. One girl was 14 years old, the other - 16. Before their death they had left a note: "Our death is dedicated to the lonely warriors of decadence".

Another popular critic about rock - that it becomes commercialized. And there is a total withdrawal from the spiritual roots of the rock, which was made for the riot.

But this music as an expression of rebel young soul, found a lot of space for creativity and new ideas. It does revolutions inside minds of generations. It is unknown, what should happened to this style in he future, but the past history was really impressive. And whole critic majority cannot controvert that. And, of course, if rock evokes such a lot of criticism, it worth respect and attention.