Sunday, 13 February 2011

How useful is a production of culture perspective in understanding the birth of Rock and Roll?

Richard A Peterson, in his article 'Why 1955? Explaining the advent of Rock music' he lists six categories of reasons, which he believes provide the perfect conditions for the birth of rock music. One of the main advances is in technology. With the birth of the Transistor, smaller, portable radios are produced allowing younger people to have control of what they listen to for the first time. Also the FCC become more interested in the idea of television, allowing radio to be flooded with various new stations. However he never mentions the actual music that was beginning to emerge. The main question that arises from this is whether the rock musicians made rock and roll or did the social circumstances surrounding them allow them to emerge as a success? The culture perspective is very useful in helping us understand why rock and roll was able to explode in the 50s but it does not explain to us why it was rock music that became popular at this time.

1 comment:

  1. This is pretty good. You have done a fairly decent job of weighing up Peterson's strengths and weaknesses.

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