By 1676, the governor of Cape Town owned his own slave orchestra. Soon Africans who could play an instrument fetched premium prices on the open market. Africa's music had varied and evolved in uncounted strains and permutations for thousands of years, but this first published account in English is a benchmark, for what is rock and roll but African music as understood and controlled by white people? The intensity of African vocal technique, loud and harsh and keening by European standards, was frequently noted in the numerous reports to come, as was, needless to say, the "multitude of drums in various sizes." Less remarked were the underlying melodic similarities between African song and Scotch-Irish folk music, which would help Brits get into this exotic stuff. Is "In the fires of hell, Rome, you've chosen to dwell" close enough to Metallica for you? 1623: THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL RHYTHM "There is without doubt, no people on the earth more naturally affected to the sound of musicke than these people which the principall persons do hold as an ornament of their state, so as when wee come to see them, their musicke will seldome be wanting," claimed Captain Richard Jobson, describing a visit he made to Gambia starting in 1620, the year after a Dutch man-of-war sold North America's first black slaves to British colonists in Jamestown.
So as our symbolic rock and roller we'll select Guilhem Figueira, an embattled hero of the movement's decline who "was not the man to frequent barons and respectable folk, but he was much at home with ribalds, whores, and tavern-haunters"-or so says his vida, an unauthorized bio that was as accurate as a press release. Considered blasphemous by the religiopolitical powers that were, troubadourism was pretty much wiped out in the Albigensian crusade of the 13th century. Troubadours lived in castles-court poets in an era when "lyric" poetry was still sung to musical accompaniment, they were the highbrows of the secular world, upwardly mobile if not nobility themselves. Jongleurs played marketplaces, fairs, the hostelries that catered to pilgrims and such, and, when they could get in, castles. The itinerant singer-songwriters of the Middle Ages were called jongleurs-all-round entertainers whose etymology honors another of their skills, juggling. They were neither effete aesthetes-this was a rough world were all men were warriors and rape was one of the commonplaces that the myth of courtly love glossed over-nor the lute-strumming adventurers you dimly imagine. Robert Christgau, “B.E.: A Dozen Moments in the Prehistory of Rock and Roll,” Details, 1992 1227: MOON-JUNE-SPOON MEETS DEATH-METAL Simply by inventing (or-here we go-cribbing from the Moors) not love but l'amour, love as a concept, the troubadours of Provence laid one of the foundations of rock and roll, which whatever its socially significant pretensions has always had a thing for male-and-female.
by Allan Moore ( Cambridge University Press, Dave Headlam, “Appropriations of blues and gospel in popular music,” in The CambridgeĬompanion to Blues and Gospel Music, ed. Cliff White, “Louis Jordan,” The History of Rock, 1982, pp. Peter Guralnick, “Blues in History: A Quick Sketch,” in Feel Like Going Home: Portraits inīlues and Rock ‘N’ Roll (NY: Hachette, 2012 originally 1976), pp. Cliff White, “… Howlin’ for the Wolf,” New Musical Express, 24 January 1976, pp. Fred Dellar, “HANK WILLIAMS,” MOJO, December 1998, pp. Sylvie Simmons, “THE CARTER FAMILY: INTO THE VALLEY,’ MOJO, NovemberĤ. Kyle Crichton, “Thar’s Gold in Them Hillbillies,” Collier’s, Vol. Robert Christgau, “B.E.: A Dozen Moments in the Prehistory of Rock and Roll,” Details, 1992, pp. The 1960s: Psychedelia & Anti-Psychedelia, Birth of Metalġ970 & Beyond: Singer-songwriters, Prog & Glam Rockīefore the Flood: Percursors of Rock’n’Rollġ. The 1960s: Soul, Girl Groups, Motown, R&B
The 1950s: Rock’n’Roll Begins, Doo-Wop, & the Rock business
Before the Flood: Precursors of Rock and Roll