Rock And Roll Influence On Pop Culture

1. Introduction

In this day and age we have an enormous music catalogue that would feed the needs of any consumer, helping them easily find something suitable for their own taste. There’s hundreds of different musical genres, millions of musicians pushing the sound of music forward from day to day. It’s a snowball effect, we see music progress daily with new genres appearing and disappearing while influencing other ones. But what happens when a genre of music is so influential in any possible way that it becomes something more than just a genre? The genre turns into a subculture with its own lifestyle, fashion and ideas. Both hip-hop music and rock & roll have both went through this evolution and became global and influential in many ways.

Easily relatable songs with a groovy beat quickly took over the youth and just like that rock & roll made a huge impact on teenagers and their lives. Heavy drug usage and wild behaviour gave the rock & roll generation a bad name but it certainly influenced the youth culture in many ways we still fell to this day. The rebellious generation glorified “sex, drugs and rock & roll” but still took a stand against important political issues. During 1950’s rock & roll became a dividing and uniting force at the same time. Rock & roll set the parents, mass media and the government against teenagers. Parents were against the influence and message that rock & roll carried, from lyrics filled with sexual and rebellious messages to African Americans performing the songs. What rock & roll did was changed the attitude towards African American people because white teenagers were listening to music that wasn’t just inspired by, but often performed by African Americans, embracing a part of culture which was forbidden in many households. Going to shows where artists and the audience was black, watching movies like “Blackboard Jungle”, which was heavily influenced by rock & roll, inspired youth to question authority. The global culture of rock & roll contributed to braking down long standing

Creating a culture that wasn’t scared of blending races together it brought the black culture to white American teenagers. Rock & roll came to be one of the leading causes in racial integration, willingly or not in advancing the agenda for civil rights. The new youth culture became a threat to segregation, cultivating mutual respect between the black and white sides of America. With their protest songs, recklessness and anti-segregation ideology enraged groups of segregationists found a threat and would target and seek to destroy rock & roll and its supporters.

Back in 1985 Live Aid, a concert held to help the cause of Ethiopian famine. Multiple rock & roll acts simultaneously performed at London and Philadelphia capturing the attention of over 1.5 billion people in 110 countries. During the broadcast of the show more than 40 nations also held telethons for African famine. The event helped to raise over $125 million to help the cause. The money and publicity that Live Aid generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa.