Dictionary of Music - Birding America

352 rocklove ballads but deal also with sex, rebellion (bothviolent and nonviolent) against the “establishment”(the law, police, middle-class complacency, wars),civil rights, social concerns, drug use, and lifestyles. Unusual performance styles are basic torock. Vocal techniques such as portamento, falsetto,and speech are mingled in unexpected combinations.Electronic instruments, especially the electricguitar and electric bass, are important. The formeris usually played with the amplifier set for highdistortion, in contrast to the clean tone favored byjazz guitarists. The bass player, unlike the walkingbass of jazz, usually plays either the fundamental ofthe chord, repeated over and over, or a short motif,similarly repeated again and again until the harmonychanges. Special recording-studio effects such asfuzz tone, reverberation, wah-wah, and feedbackare freely used, and many can be used in live performanceas well. A wire from the guitar or bass passesthrough a “black box” en route to the amplifier, andthe player can produce the desired effect by meansof a foot-operated switch. In addition, electronicinstruments, especially synthesizers (includingguitar and drum synthesizers), embraced by manyrock musicians. Another development was the rockvideo, originally a short video version of a rocksong produced by a record company to promote arecording but soon becoming a separate audiovisualform. In 1982 MTV, an American cable televisionstation, began offering twenty-four-hour rock-videoprogramming.Beginning in the mid-1950s as an outgrowth ofblack RHYTHM AND BLUES and white COUNTRYMUSIC, along with some elements of gospel and folksong, rock was first considered music by and forAfrican-Americans. The name “rock and roll” (or“rock ’n roll”) was popularized in the early 1950s byAlan Freed, a disk jockey in Cleveland, Ohio, whoplayed such music on the air. Its popularity grew,spurred by a white singer of country music, ElvisPresley, whose recording of the song “HeartbreakHotel” broke all sales records in the late 1950s. Hisstyle, sometimes called rockabilly, has beendescribed as a mix of country music and rhythm andblues; his accompaniment used electric guitar,rhythm guitar, and string bass. Other early rock starswere Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis,and Fats Domino. The new style was adopted byother singers and vocal groups, including suchBritish groups as the Beatles and Rolling Stones.Increasingly, rock performers wrote their own songs,which they sang almost exclusively. Although rockis predominantly vocal music, there are some purelyinstrumental rock pieces and some of it is dancemusic. In the 1960s people danced the twist to it, andin the 1970s a form called disco (for discothèque, adance hall where records were played), characterizedby metronomic drumming, very simple chords,and heavy amplification, was very popular. Rockmusicians such as Jimi Hendrix developed specialeffects on the electric guitar, notably feedback anddistortion.In the mid-1960s “rock ’n roll” was shortened to“rock,” and a number of offshoots developed. Onewas folk rock, which combined the balladlike qualityof folk song with the rhythmic instrumental andvocal styles of rock. Folk rock, whose main representativeswere Bob Dylan and (Paul) Simon and(Art) Garfunkel, often had quite poetic lyrics dealingwith protest (against war, racism, injustice) aswell as more personal problems (love, youth, alienation).Other types to develop were raga rock,which used foreign instruments, such as the Indiansitar, Greek buzuki, and Arab ’ud, as well as someidioms of Asian music (such as the five-tone scale);psychedelic rock or acid rock (“acid” referred tomind-expanding drugs such as LSD), whichemployed electronic sounds and instruments tocreate a highly emotional style, intended to depictthe experience of drug users (performers include theGrateful Dead); soft rock, which returned to sixteen-barforms with accents on the strong beats(first and third), revived the acoustic guitar, piano,and country instruments like the accordion, banjo,and mandolin, and was generally softer and gentler;hard rock, which worked within the twelve-barblues form but emphasized strong, hammeringrhythms, prominent lead guitars, and a loud, jarring,raucous sound; heavy metal, also with a harddriving sound, but musically much simpler, withfour- and eight-bar phrases, rudimentary harmoniesconsisting of often-repeated simple chords andshort melodic progressions, and performed withexaggerated vocal mannerisms, sudden changes in