The Influence of Race on Rock and Roll

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Rock-n-roll

In the 1950s rock-n-roll established its own marks in history. It spread throughout the decade in a thrilling, substantial, and even livid to those Americans trying to get rid of all sorts of conflicts and challenges that occurred during this time period. As exciting as this music was, the novel “All Shook Up” portrays how rock-n-roll brought many changes to the American culture and later to the sixties. It expresses many concerns such as race relations, moral decays, and communism, but in ways that are partially true.

Not only did race relations play a big factor in the 1950s, it was a start to a lot of controversy in the beginning between African Americans and whites. Before they connected with each other because of the style of the music. This type of music deeply emphasized integration for African Americans and also during this time they were trying to gain civil rights. “At the center of that struggle, rock-n-roll unsettled a nation that had been “living in an ‘age of anxiety’” since 1945 (All Shook Up, 7). Most artists were criticized and punished for not supporting their own races and staying in their boundaries. For example, in Norfolk,
Maybe in some ways it did influence teenagers to rebel against their parents but was more provoked by their surrounding peers rather than anything else. Adults would blame the music for their children 's behavior instead of blaming themselves or the kids. Rock ‘n’ roll was blamed for all the problems and juvenile delinquency when the reason was not music. The reason was that they were going against what their parents would say and parents could not control their kids. Music was meant to bring people together not make it believe that it was causing all these young adults to act up and disobey the people around them. Humans themselves choose whether they want to do something or not it was not all based off of the music they were listening

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