Nowadays, the United States has the world’s largest music market and the songs are known worldwide. Moreover, the music originating in the United States is some of the most internationally illustrious musical styles such as jazz, hip-hop, pop, rock and roll, etc., which reflect the country’s multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles.
History of American music emphasizes several main themes, including the importance of African-American culture in the origins and development of rock music. The blues, originating in the work songs of American slaves who adapted their African musical heritage to the American environment, were provided the foundation for rock-and-roll. Africans, who were voices glided between the lines of the more rigid European musical scale to create a distinctive new sound, that they clapped, danced, and slapped their bodies in several different rhythms, retained continuity with their past through music.
Such African-inspired church music became the basis for the blues, which applied the music to secular themes. So it continued to create new styles that reflected the African American struggle for equality.
Furthermore, rock-and-roll was reflected and influenced major social changes. So, the popularity of a maniac, teen-oriented rock-and-roll can be attributed to a number of social changes that occurred during the 1950s, which television made radio space available to more recording artists. And after World War II, television became more popular and affordable. Besides, 300 television stations in the United States broadcast to more than 27 million television sets. By absorbing the network radio shows, which created airtime for a greater variety of records, include discs by African-American artist.
Rock-and-Roll’s super promoter was Alan Freed, who was a student of trombone and music theory. He began his broadcasting career in New Castle. In 1951, he began to play R&B records on his program. Moreover, Freed continuously marketed the new music.
By late 1954, the successful Freed landed a key nighttime spot on New York station WINS. So, Freed also managed several R&B acts and appeared in movies such as Don’t Knock the Rock, Rock, and the now-famous Rock Around the Clock, which caused riots in the United States and Europe and further familiarized white youths with R&B, And now being called rock-and-roll by Freed.
Especially, young teens listened to disc jockeys such as Freed on new gadgetry, the portable transistor radio that it developed in 1947 at the Bell Laboratory in New Jersey and it was bought more than 12 million. It offered teens on the move an inexpensive means of experiencing the exciting new music called rock-and-roll.
Marketed initially in the 1950s, was the car radio that served the same purpose as the portable transistor modal and it became standard equipment within a few years. The car radio, introducing rock-and-roll to many teens that used the automobile, helped deliver rock-and-roll to a mobile, young, car-crazy generation.
As the civil rights struggle began to foster an awareness and acceptance of African-American culture, rock-and-roll became accessible to white teenagers, including the African-American-based rock-and-roll. By the mid 1950s, about 5.6 million teenagers attended American high schools. Ten years later, the number of teens increased to 6.8 million. Observers called it the “war time baby boom”, which had became an army of youngsters that they latched onto the new rock-and-roll and idolizing a young.
Many of these teens had money in their pockets to spend on records that living during prosperous times. So, they were favorite artist. In a 1960 survey of 4,500 teenage girls conducted by seventeen magazines, the average teen had “a weekly income of $9.53 and listens to the radio two hour a day. Moreover, more than 70 percent of the girls bought records with their allowances. Along with other factors, an increasingly affluent society paved the way for the mass consumption of rock-and-roll.
Americans of the 1980s became obsessed with a video technology that had first been introduced to the mass market, which was first mass marketed in 1976 by the Victor Co. of Japan (JUC), with the television set. In 1981, Americans spent $9.2 billion on video products. Four years later, they purchased more than $15 billion in video hardware and accessories. By the end of the decade, most American consumers had become part of the expanding video culture.
During the 1980s, they accustomed to the television screen at home and at school, became entranced by video games. By 1981, the TV generation dropped more than 25 billion quarters into video game machines at local arcades. Furthermore, the Atari Corporation, owned by Warner Communications, grossed about $1.3 billion in home video game console and cartridge sales. By that year, more than 8 percent of all households owned home video games in 1982.