Mrs. Thornton
Advanced Speech
12 Dec 2012
Rock and Roll The 1950’s was a busy century. It contained everything from wars to new inventions, segregation to the year of consumerism. This era also had its ups and downs; what was accepted and what wasn’t. In this case, rock and roll gained both acceptance and rejection. While the youth longed for a revolution in their pop culture, the older generation caused havoc in saying no. Alan Freed just about had the starring role in the 1950’s, by giving this genre of music the name ‘rock and roll’. He decided to play rhythm and blues records on his radio show one day and, “borrowed a term used in many R&B hits (such as “my baby rocks me with a steady roll”) and called his music “rock and roll”…” ("www.scaruffi.com"). Freed’s radio show was gaining popularity among young whites and was listened to by many. Western bands began to appeal to his sound of music, such as “Bill Haley and the Comets”, and soon in 1954, rock and roll was born. …show more content…
There was strong recognition from the youth of the 1950’s for rock and roll, mainly because it was a new sound and it was possible to make it their own. Seeing this pattern, “ geographers and anthropologists call this the reterritorialization of popular culture…” (Fouberg, Murphy, and Blij ). With this said, teens saw this as an opportunity to embrace this new kind of music, especially with many more singers being discovered that were capable of taking on the sound of rock and roll. Looking more into this generation, it was clear that, “Through rock’n’roll, young people began searching for an identity…” and found that they could relate to this new music