Where did rock music come from?

Where did rock music come from? There must have been a split between classical and popular music at some point.

Where did rock music come from? There must have been a split between classical and popular music at some point.

Not a split...but an evolution.

Jazz + Blues + Gospel = Rock & Roll.

See Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley...

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well, Robin you beat me to it.. I WAS going to say "cavemen".

Popular music's always been around. There is a theory (by Nelson George) that the term Rock, or more specifically Rock 'n' Roll, was coined as a marketing tool to sell 'black' music to the majority white population of the USA in the 1950s. It was, in effect, a neat way of packaging a whole pleothora of styles from many different places under one genre description that could then be treated as the definitive American style, and crucially, a style that white people would buy into.

"They called it Rockabilly before Rock and roll"

as the saying goes

I would agree with Robin, it was more of an evolution rather than a split.

Rock music came from Afrika.

Um...well. Indirectly, I suppose some aspects of Rock can be attributed to African influence...

Chris is on the correct path, but I think he's forgetting about a necessary link that was made in history, one that I think more completely asks the question of how did the music we have today come about? Obviously rock music is a lot more structured than the music of the African's back in the days of slavery, where they would sing repeated choruses of a few words to pass the time and to share what their owner's could not take away. Even jazz, early jazz, is structured heavily, more like classical music.

The bridge to these gaps, in a lot of ways, was ragtime. Taking the classical approach to harmony and form, and supplanting a then unusual take on rhythm and energy, bridged a gap between this classical formal sense of direction and clarity of language to the shifting rhythms and moods of jazz, which developed into other forms of music. But I believe that without the ragtime of 1890-1920, music would not be the same at all today. Hail Scott Joplin!

I thought it was the other way round. I thought the blues came from the call and response chants from African slaves during the late 19th-early 20thC which evolved into ragtime.

Rock and Roll came from reggae which was influenced by jazz. I'm sure it wasn't directly from ragtime. People like Elvis wanted to develop music which sounded like the music from the Africans and market it towards the White popluation. Everything then just spawns from there.

Rock and Roll came from reggae which was influenced by jazz. I'm sure it wasn't directly from ragtime.

Ragtime, heavy influence on boogie-woogie, an undeniable precursor to rock and roll - dig Fats Domino, or Little Richard...

Also, Chicago blues and soul-jazz led nicely into the early r&b Motown and Stax recordings - engineered to appeal to both black and white audiences...

I don't hear a lot of Reggae influence...especially since Reggae (per se) didn't really develop until the mid-60s (well after Rock had solidified) ...

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Hmm...I must have got reggae mixed up with something else. I agree it doesn't make sense, it's just that I remembered learning that in school somewhere.

I'll take your word for it as you seem to know far more about jazz then I will ever dream of.

But blues did come before ragtime right?

...blues did come before ragtime right?

Not really...the blues form developed around the turn of the century with ragtime (well, I-IV-V-I has been around for centuries); ragtime eventually evolved into early delta blues in the late-20s, along with tradtional New Orleans jazz.

...that, and many, many other contributing factors.

:D

What about European rock, like The Beatles? I hear much more European art music in The Beatles than jazz.

What about European rock, like The Beatles? I hear much more European art music in The Beatles than jazz.

Really? European art music? Perhaps in the Beatles' later stuff (Sgt Pepper, Revolver, White Album) but in the days of early British rock the evolution followed a similar route to the USA, if only slightly behind.

As mentioned in the wiki-article, the trad jazzers (Chris Barber et al) in the 50s (there was a massive trad revival in the UK) brought the jazz/blues influence, while radio-play of American r&b hits incubated the development. Lennon certainly cites Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard as early influences...