Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie woogie, gospel, as well as country music. While rock and roll's formative elements can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until 1954.
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock music also drew strongly from a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical, and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political.
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Kinks, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, the Yardbirds, the Who, and Them, as well as solo singers like Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, and Donovan, were at the forefront of the "invasion".
Skiffle is a genre of folk music with influences from American folk music, blues, country, bluegrass, and jazz. generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a form in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, it became extremely popular in the UK in the 1950s, where it was played by such artists as Lonnie Donegan, The Vipers Skiffle Group, Ken Colyer, and Chas McDevitt. Skiffle was a major part of the early careers of some musicians who later became prominent jazz, pop, blues, folk, and rock performers, The Beatles and Rory Gallagher amongst them. It has been seen as a critical stepping stone to the second British folk revival, the British blues boom, and the British Invasion of American popular music.
Anthony James Donegan, known as Lonnie Donegan, was a British skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the "King of Skiffle", who influenced 1960s British pop and rock musicians. Born in Scotland and brought up in England, Donegan began his career in the British trad jazz revival but transitioned to skiffle in the mid 1950s, rising to prominence with a hit recording of the American folk song "Rock Island Line" which helped spur the broader UK skiffle movement.
Folk rock is a hybrid music genre that combines the elements of folk and rock music, which arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival and the influence that the Beatles and other British Invasion bands had on members of that movement. Performers such as Bob Dylan and the Byrds—several of whose members had earlier played in folk ensembles—attempted to blend the sounds of rock with their pre-existing folk repertoire, adopting the use of electric instrumentation and drums in a way previously discouraged in the U.S. folk community. The term "folk rock" was initially used in the U.S. music press in June 1965 to describe the Byrds' music.
British blues is a form of music derived from American blues that originated in the late 1950s, and reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s. In Britain, it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin.
Throughout its history, the United Kingdom has been a major producer and source of musical creation, drawing its early artistic basis from church music and the ancient and traditional folk music and instrumentation of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom has its own diverse and distinctive folk music forms, which flourished until the era of industrialisation when it began to be replaced by new forms of popular music, including music hall and brass bands. Many British musicians have influenced modern music on a global scale, and the United Kingdom has one of the world's largest music industries. Global music widely developed by British acts include pop, rock, as well as subgenres of the genre; avant-funk, new wave, acid jazz, neo soul, trip hop, dubstep and industrial.
British popular music and popular music in general, can be defined in a number of ways, but is used here to describe music which is not part of the art/classical music or Church music traditions, including folk music, jazz, pop and rock music. These forms of music have particularly flourished in Britain, which, it has been argued, has influenced popular music disproportionately to its size, partly due to its linguistic and cultural links with many countries, particularly the former areas of British control such as United States, Canada, and Australia, but also a capacity for invention, innovation and fusion, which has led to the development of, or participation in, many of the major trends in popular music. This is particularly true since the early 1960s when the British Invasion led by The Beatles, helped to secure British performers a major place in development of pop and rock music, which has been revisited at various times, with genres originating in or being radically developed by British musicians, including: blues rock, heavy metal music, progressive rock, punk rock, British folk rock, folk punk, acid jazz, drum and bass, grime, afroswing, dubstep and Britpop.
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat is a popular music genre, influenced by rock and roll, skiffle, R&B, and traditional pop music, that developed in and around Liverpool in the early 1960s, before expanding to the rest of the UK and the United States by 1964. The beat style had a significant impact on popular music and youth culture, from 1960s movements such as garage rock, folk rock and psychedelic music to 1970s punk rock and 1990s Britpop.
British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by the Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the world.
A folk club is a regular event, permanent venue, or section of a venue devoted to folk music and traditional music. Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Great Britain and Ireland, and vital to the second British folk revival, but continue today there and elsewhere. In America, as part of the American folk music revival, they played a key role not only in acoustic music, but in launching the careers of groups that later became rock and roll acts.
Trad jazz, short for "traditional jazz", was a form of jazz in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, played by musicians such as Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer and Monty Sunshine, based on a revival of New Orleans Dixieland jazz, on trumpet, trombone, clarinet, banjo, double bass, and drums, with a populist repertoire which also included jazz versions of pop songs and nursery rhymes.
British folk rock is a form of folk rock which developed in the United Kingdom from the mid 1960s, and was at its most significant in the 1970s. Though the merging of folk and rock music came from several sources, it is widely regarded that the success of "The House of the Rising Sun" by British band the Animals in 1964 was a catalyst, prompting Bob Dylan to "go electric", in which, like the Animals, he brought folk and rock music together, from which other musicians followed. In the same year, the Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, most noticeably on their Beatles for Sale album. The Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the American band the Byrds, who released their recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in April 1965, setting off the mid-1960s American folk rock movement. A number of British groups, usually those associated with the British folk revival, moved into folk rock in the mid-1960s, including the Strawbs, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention.
Progressive folk was originally a type of American folk music that pursued a progressive political agenda. More recently, the term has also been applied to a style of contemporary folk that draws from post-Bob Dylan folk music and adds new layers of musical and lyrical complexity, often incorporating various ethnic influences.
Charles James McDevitt is a Scottish musician, one of the leading lights of the skiffle genre which was highly influential and popular in the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1950s.
The British folk revival incorporates a number of movements for the collection, preservation and performance of folk music in the United Kingdom and related territories and countries, which had origins as early as the 18th century. It is particularly associated with two movements, usually referred to as the first and second revivals, respectively in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and the mid-20th century. The first included increased interest in and study of traditional folk music, the second was a part of the birth of contemporary folk music. These had a profound impact on the development of British classical music and in the creation of a "national" or "pastoral" school and led to the creation of a sub-culture of folk clubs and folk festivals as well as influential subgenres including progressive folk music and British folk rock.
British rock and roll, or sometimes British rock 'n' roll, is a style of popular music based on American rock and roll, which emerged in the late 1950s and was popular until the arrival of beat music in 1962. It has generally been considered inferior to the American version of the genre, and made little international or lasting impact. However, it was important in establishing British youth and popular music culture and was a key factor in subsequent developments that led to the British Invasion of the mid-1960s. Since the 1960s, some stars of the genre, most notably Cliff Richard, have managed to sustain successful careers and there have been periodic revivals of this form of music.
British rhythm and blues was a musical movement that developed in the United Kingdom between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, and reached a peak in the mid-1960s. It overlapped with, but was distinct from, the broader British beat and more purist British blues scenes, attempting to emulate the music of American blues and rock and roll pioneers, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. It often placed greater emphasis on guitars and was often played with greater energy.
Music of the United Kingdom developed in the 1960s into one of the leading forms of popular music in the modern world. By the early 1960s the British had developed a viable national music industry and began to produce adapted forms of American music in Beat music and British blues which would be re-exported to America by bands such as The Beatles, The Animals and the Rolling Stones. This helped to make the dominant forms of popular music something of a shared Anglo-American creation, and led to the growing distinction between pop and rock music, which began to develop into diverse and creative subgenres that would characterise the form throughout the rest of the twentieth century.
