Truly, the roots of rock ‘n’ roll are associated with slavery. Thus, exposition of Rock ‘n’Roll can only be approached from a historical perspective. This demands an understanding of what slavery was and the imppact it had on the descedants of the Africans who were not conversant with the European foundation of American culture (David et al. 2011).
Slavery provides the most truthful rationale of the distinction of rock ‘n’ roll as a cultural revolution. Since each society has a disctinct music, which serves the role of enhancement to ritual and entertainment, the African American race is not an excpetion. In fact, the strongest root of rock ‘n’ roll is the suffering and endurance of innumerable generations of slaves. During the era of slavery, they learned and adopted the use of music to help man subdue the earthily suffering for awhile. In essence, the history of rock ‘n’ roll genre cites African slaves as main contributors in the form of rhythmns employed in plantation songs that influenced rock ‘n’ roll appreciably. In addition, some elements of jazz and blues provided a core part of musicality in rock ‘n’ roll. Blues were popular for comforting, repetitive communal message and were sang solely to relive the hurt of toil and sadness (David et al. 2011).
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Although, the slaves, African Americans did not sing blues in their native setting the advent of slavery brought about a mandatory cultural integration. Nonetheless, the white Americana perceived the African music invention, solely made of rhythms that they introduced in America; hence a fundamental legacy in the making of an influential genre of music that featured in America prominently and spread the world all over. Unfortunately the music was transformed into the modern culture of rock ‘n’ roll that imitated black music and other elements such as R& B, classical, Western, Big band and Swing hence intefering with its African distinctiveness. The whites took to African music because it was extesnsively enjoyable and this formed the first ever profound cross-cultural art in America.
The cultural-integration had a substantial connotation in relation toRock ‘n’ Roll and its advancement and appreciation. Given that white America is where riches and power lay, it was natural that the economic evolution of black music had to acquire white favor. Thus, the African Americans hardly had a chance to feature in the music industry given the poverty they were into due to their meagre income earned from the colonial plantations. The intercultual integration product that came about as polished product of black music an white america elements dominanted the american culture in the 1920s and made it to recording in studios during the 1950s when technology revoutionalized the music industry. Great white American artists such as Bill Halley recorded songs that were considered hit songs in the 1950s courtesy of Rock ‘n’ Roll glamorous culture. For instance, the song “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Halley become the first rock ‘n’ roll song to top famous music charts (Frederick et al. “developmet of Rock ‘N’ Roll Music”).
Consequently, white artists became the face of Rock ‘n’ Roll hence clouded its image and technically denounced its African American roots immensely. This is an absolute denial of the contribution made by black people in the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll genre of music. In reality, Rock ‘n’ Roll is black music apart form the elements adpated from blues and jazz musicality (Hellen et al. 2002).