Since its creation, music …show more content…
Rather, the genre was considered the “music of the people.” The rural white colonists of the pre-United States era treasured their music and shared the songs with the next generation. Before the settlers found refuge in the New World, homes in Britain and other European countries were filled with the sounds of country music. Once the music came to America, the songs of the South made their way from town to town through wandering musicians and medicine shows and gave settlers the opportunity to host barn dances. For the first two decades of the twentieth century, few civilians in Northern states knew about country music, but advances in communication in the 1920s allowed the genre to be played on radios and records throughout the country. Since the “race” recordings of jazz proved successful, record executives made plans to sell the Southern white man’s music to the remaining white population of the South. Unfortunately, though, during this time, few Southerners thought to make music a profession, so the singers were amateur at best. However, the music was fueled by the rural lifestyle, which gave the recordings the greatest sales potential. By the beginning of the 1930s, country music was in full swing and was played on the booming radio medium, and the music was given a distinctive name – hillbilly. Oddly enough, this …show more content…
The genre that was once a threat to the established social order did not scare anybody anymore. Furthermore, rock and roll did not necessarily have a center. Icons like The Beatles were separating; other icons like Bob Dylan produced records that did not have the effect the artists’ previous albums had. Rock and roll was no longer a lifestyle; it was simply a form of entertainment. As a result, rock music lost its unified effect and diffused into copious subgenres. Elton John was for the fans wanting poppy music. Led Zeppelin was for the hard rockers. David Bowie held his place in the glam-rock corner. At this time, disco and punk made their ways onto the music scene. Disco emerged from the urban dance clubs. This genre was never meant for the radio but for a club audience; regardless, with hits like Hues Corporation’s “Rock the Boat”, disco became the mainstream phenomena it never had intentions of becoming. Emerging around the same time, the punks were a group of outsiders trying to make mainstream obsolete. The genre’s main goal was to show the world that anybody could play music, and the corporations and producers would have no say in the music scene. Of course, record industries ignored the punks for a while until they found ways to sell the artists’ music. For example, Columbia Records tried to market the genre with the line “The Man can’t bust our music.” Through all these changes to