Rock, Rhythm and Blues

Catalog description

This course examines the development of American popular, vernacular music, especially in the 20th century, with attention to the special, and very American, syncretism of European and African musical cultures. Our subject is large and complex; it may be viewed through many lenses: ethnomusicological, sociological, historical, economic, and political. To gain full understanding of popular music today, one must to know its roots, the musical styles from which today-s popular music has grown out of that of our cultural past. The course only touches on jazz, though jazz certainly originated as popular music for dancing. Instead, we will be examining those musical styles that do not require sophisticated musical understanding either of performers or of listeners, those that are modern equivalents of the folk music traditions that have always nested in human communities.