It’s been a long time coming. From 1960’s British invasion, to 1970’s flower power, to hair metal in the 80’s, grunge in the 90’s, and onward, rock and roll has been a constant as longstanding as the microwave.
But where is rock and roll today? Aside from a dominating group from fringe Alt-rock ensembles (think Modest Mouse, the Black Keys, Tame Impala) the classic drums, bass, guitar setup seems to be missing from mainstream music culture. To replace it is a new wave of artists consisting of DJ’s and an endless list of rappers.
Technology may be partially to blame for the loss of a once beloved genre. With laptops, sound mixing software, and digital music files readily available to a large portion of the population, taking up DJing as a hobby is normal, where forming a band with friends served as an artistic outlet before the technological boom. Across the country, independent DJ’s as well as small DJ companies seem to have taken over the band scene entirely. Where in the past, many bars would have a house band, one that would play weekly or biweekly, Electronic Dance Music, or EDM has taken over, and a ‘house DJ’ has become a trend in concert venues across the country. Just look at Webster Hall in Greenwich Village. The music hall, once a rock and roll hotbed, now features a revolving door of weekly DJ’s, with occasional concerts featuring C-list bands. This shift from drum sets to mixing boards is also evident in the world of formal events. The longstanding tradition of wedding bands is long forgotten (sorry, Adam Sandler), and instead wedding couples, 13-year-old Jews, and sweet sixteen girls alike opt for a DJ as their entertainment of choice.
While the influx of DJ’s in the past decade may be the result of greater accessibility of technology, racial implications behind musical genres may explain the recent replacement of rock and roll for hip-hop as the most popular music genre. Historically and even in modern times, rock and roll has been a genre dominated by white people, particularly, white men. While jazz, hip-hop, and R & B are all black-pioneered genres, they have kept a low profile in the music history. Until now. In the past decade, we’ve seen an influx of black rappers to the mainstream, with artists like Drake, Kanye West, and Lil Yachty topping the charts, and with their popularity, pushing the once dominating rock and roll bands to the sidelines.
So what does this all mean?
Despite being 90’s-grunge-loving-rock enthusiast, I find this shift in music culture to be well-needed, and refreshing.
Music is a generational phenomena, something that unites people to even their most geographical and socially distant contemporaries. The Gen X-ers have R.E.M, Motley Crue, and the Talking Heads, and before that, the Beatles, Black Sabbath, and Pink Floyd connected music lovers around the world. Music is the voice of the progressive, the voice of the young people. That aspect of music remains the same, for the millennials and the older edge of Generation Z, but the voice has been updated.
Today, our unifying voice may not be the wailing guitar and hunky vocals of our parents, but rather something new and different; music characterized by synthetic beats and heavily expletive, music that gives a voice to an entirely different community of musicians.
Sure, it’s sad to see rock and roll go. The rock survivors, though equally as talented as their historical counterpart may never achieve the same fame as when rock and roll was the ‘it’ genre. Our parents may hate our rap music and our EDM, their parents hated their rock and roll, but music is meant to misunderstood by older generations: music is made for the generation of today.
