Slang, youth subcultures and rock music

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Rock is better defined, then, by its eclecticism than by reference to some musical essence, and it is better understood in terms of its general use of technology rather than by its use of particular instruments (such as the guitar). Early rock-and-roll stars such as Presley and Buddy Holly depended for their sound on engineers' trickery in the recording studio as much as they did on their own vocal skills, and the guitar became the central rock instrument because of its amplified rather than acoustic qualities. Rock's history is tied up with technological shifts in the storage, retrieval, and transmission of sounds: multitrack tape recording made possible an experimental composition process that turned the recording studio into an artist's studio; digital recording made possible a manipulation of sound that shifted the boundaries between music and noise. Rock musicians pushed against the technical limits of sound amplification and inspired the development of new electronic instruments, such as the drum machine. Even relatively primitive technologies, such as the double-deck turntable, were tools for new sorts of music making in the hands of the "scratch" deejay, and one way rock marked itself off from other popular musical forms was in its constant pursuit of new sounds and new sound devices.

Rock and youth culture

This pursuit of the new can be linked to rock's central sociological characteristic, its association with youth. In the 1950s and early 1960s this was a simple market equation: rock and roll was played by young musicians for young audiences and addressed young people's interests (quick sex and puppy love). It was therefore dismissed by many in the music industry as a passing novelty, "bubblegum," akin to the yo-yo or the hula hoop. But by the mid-1960s youth had become an ideological category that referred to a particular kind of hedonism, individualism, and modernism. Whereas youth once referred to high-school students, it came to include college students. Moreover, rock became multifunctional--dance and party music on the one hand, a matter of serious attention and intimate expression on the other. As rock spread globally this had different implications in different countries, but in general it allowed rock to continue to define itself as youthful even as its performers and listeners grew up and settled down. And it meant that rock's radical claim--the suggestion that the music remained somehow against the establishment even as it became part of it--was sustained by an adolescent irresponsibility, a commitment to the immediate thrills of sex 'n' drugs 'n' outrage and never mind the consequences. The politics of rock fun has its own power structure, and it is not, perhaps, surprising that Madonna was the first woman to make a significant splash in rock history. And she did so by focusing precisely on rock's sexual assumptions.

Authenticity and commercialism

Madonna can be described as a rock star (and not just a disco performer or teen idol) because she articulated rock culture's defining paradox: the belief that this music--produced, promoted, and sold by extremely successful and sophisticated multinational corporations--is nonetheless somehow noncommercial. It is noncommercial not in its processes of production but in the motivations of its makers and listeners, in terms of what, in rock, makes a piece of music or a musician valuable. The defining term in rock ideology is authenticity. Rock is distinguished from pop as the authentic expression of a performer's or composer's feelings and the authentic representation of a social situation. Rock is at once the mainstream of commercial music and a romantic art form, a voice from the social margins. Presley's first album for RCA in 1956 was just as carefully packaged to present him as an authentic, street-credible musician (plucking an acoustic guitar on the album cover) as was Public Enemy's classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, issued by the CBS-backed Def JamDef Jam in 1988; Madonna was every bit as concerned with revealing her artifice as art in the 1980s as Dylan was in the '60s.

Реферат опубликован: 7/06/2006