AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Rock music

Music genre
NameRock music
Stylistic originsRock and roll, electric blues, folk music, country, blues, rhythm and blues, soul music
Cultural origins1950s and 1960s, United Kingdom and United States
Typical instrumentsVocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, synthesizer, keyboards
Mainstream popularityExtremely high worldwide, since 1950s
Derivative formsNew Age musicSynthpop
SubgenresAlternative rockArt rockBaroque popBeat musicBritpopEmoExperimental rockGarage rockGlam rockGrindcoreGroup SoundsGrungeHard rockHeartland rockHeavy metalInstrumental rockIndie rockJangle popKrautrock � Madchester � Post-BritpopPower popProgressive rock � Protopunk � PsychedeliaPunk rockRock noirSoft rockSouthern rockSurfSymphonic rock
Subgenre listList of rock genres
Fusion genresAboriginal rock � Afro-rock � Anatolian rock � Bhangra rock � Blues rock � Country rock � Flamenco-rock � Folk rockFunk rockGlam punk � Indo-rock � Industrial rockJazz fusionPop rock � Punta rock � Raga rock � Raï rock � Rap rockRockabilly � Rockoson � Samba-rock � Space rockStoner rockSufi rock
Regional scenesArgentina � Armenia � Australia � Belarus � Belgium � Bosnia and Herzegovina � Brazil � Canada � Chile � China � Colombia � Cuba � Croatia � Denmark � Dominican Republic � Ecuador � Estonia � Finland � France � GreeceGermany � Hungary � Iceland � IndiaIndonesia � Ireland � Israel � Italy � Japan � Spanish-speaking world � Latvia � Lithuania � Malaysia � Mexico � Nepal � New Zealand � Norway � Pakistan � Peru � Philippines � Poland � Portugal � Russia � Serbia � Slovenia � Spain � Sweden � Switzerland � Tatar � Thailand � Turkey � Ukraine � United Kingdom � United States � Uruguay � SFR Yugoslavia � Zambia
Other topicsBackbeat � Rock operaRock band � Hall of Fame � Social impact � List of rock music terms

     Home | Music Genre | Rock music





Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.

Musically, rock has centred around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.

By the late 1960s a number of distinct rock music sub-genres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, and jazz-rock fusion, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. New genres that emerged from this scene included progressive rock, which extended the artistic elements; glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style, and the diverse and enduring major sub-genre of heavy metal, which emphasized volume, power and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by overt political and social critiques. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of other sub-genres, including New Wave, post-punk and eventually the alternative rock movement. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion sub-genres have since emerged, including pop punk, rap rock, and rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival at the beginning of the new millennium.

Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major sub-cultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the "hippie" counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Rock/music?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Rock/music?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260