What is Rock n Roll?

[Whaleboy]

What is Rock n Roll?

Is it the music, the style, the ideals, the attitude, the behaviour, the discord, the guitars, a combination of these and others?

What is it??

Just a random thought in my mind, any ideas?

[Zero]

I know it as "if it involves a guitar".

[VetLegion]

I heard it can kill plants

[Whaleboy]

"Rock and Roll is about peace and love"

Lenny Kravitz on The Simpsons.

[St Leo]

Rock and roll has to be loud and have lots of percussion.

[Zkribbler]

The heart of rock and roll,
The heart of rock and roll
Is the beat

[Cyclotron]

It's a lifestyle, man.

[Urban Ranger]

Rock and Roll has to have very strong beats.

When I.M. Pei was asked to design the Museum of Rock and Roll (I think it is located in Chicago), they sent him a whole bunch of songs to figure out what Rock and Roll was. After a while, Pei called the organisers back, saying, "I got it! Rock and Roll is energy!"

[Lorizael]

It's the tool of the devil!

[Urban Ranger]

How big is this tool?

[Lorizael]

Ever read Niven's Inferno?

[St Leo]

I am not reading anything he coauthored with Pournelle. Even a little bit of Pournelle is too much Pournelle in a fictional work.

[Bereta_Eder]

Rock and Roll was a slang expression of the black community of the US to refer to sex.

[SlowwHand]

"The Blues had a baby, and they named it Rock and Roll."

[JohnT]

Encyclopedia Britannica has the following:

Main Entry: rock and roll
Function: noun
Date: 1954
See: 2ROCK

So we go to the second definition of "Rock" and find:

Main Entry: 2rock
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Date: 1823
1 : a rocking movement
2 : popular music usually played on electronically amplified instruments and characterized by a persistent heavily accented beat, much repetition of simple phrases, and often country, folk, and blues elements

If you want my opinion, the defining characteristic that separates r&r from earlier musical forms is the use of electricity to power their instruments, amplify voices, etc. That, and a return to compositional simplicity.

Frankly, I call most post-1954 music "rock and roll", regardless of whether it is "pop", "hard rock", "alternative", etc, but I do so more as a means of linguistic shorthand than out of any definitive knowledge of the strands that tie the variations together.