Rock & roll will never die...

jude111 wrote: CPicard wrote: ...and having in mind the Touareg Blues/Rock acts such as Tinariwen or Tanakrift, one can bet that Rock music will find its way on a new international audience - only flavoured with local "perfumes". The music I've heard by Tinariwen, I'm not sure I'd classify that as rock. Dimi Mint Abba and Ali Farka Toure added electric instrumentation that might appeal to rock audiences, as did Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck, but I'm not sure it's music that one would classify as rock... maybe I'm wrong though...

Etran Finatawa is adds a blues/rock to traditional Wodaabe and Tuareg music, from what I've heard (one album), it's classifiable as rock.

jude111 wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well. Some places are bastions of certain kinds of music. There will always ('always' in this case being a relative term) be classical music in Vienna and Salzburg; Chicago will always have the blues, New Orleans will have jazz, Nashville will have country, and St Louis will have a bit of blues and jazz and r&r. In the article that Dean posted, the author writes that "the performance of particular genres of music that are more popular in some larger markets, such as the US and Japan, will also be reflected on a global level because of the high share of retail sales in those markets." Music bought in much of the world remains pirated, so the true share of the global population that listens to r&r is, I suspect, much smaller than on the graph. (In China, it's all pirated. However, Chinese love pop and they love rock, so I think if it gets sorted, rock may be secure for quite a while...) I don't know about India... Is the music mainly pirated there? India's the second most populated country in the world, yet their music isn't really reflected in the polls...? I'm willing to bet that not a lot of people in Africa listen to r&r - whether it's the north African Arabic countries, the music hotbeds of Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, etc. or South America, much of Asia, India...

It's not just St Louis, though; I used it as an example because that's where I live and I can name bands in the local music scene.  You find rock bands in any city, though.  The point being that every city has plenty of people who love rock music, and plenty of rock bands, and that the fact that this music isn't in the mainstream doesn't mean it's dead; similarly to prog, which is no longer a mainstream genre like it was in the early 70's (although there are still popular prog bands like Radiohead and DT) but, if anything, is thriving artistically more than ever.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well.

Edited by jude111 - May 22 2013 at 13:17

Rock is anything but dead.  As Dean's graph pointed out, it's still popular in the mainstream, and even though it has become stale in its most popular form, there are still myriads of great rock bands that haven't made it big.  Young musicians (and old musicians!) are still forming bands, making creative and unique music, performing, and putting albums up on bandcamp.  You just have to be willing to dig a little deeper.  Just come to St. Louis to witness our thriving local music scene, complete with all genres of music, rock coexisting with classical, jazz, indie, and electronic acts.  Rock and roll might have to share it's spotlight with other genres, but it's still very much alive and well.

^^^  I think with a melodic (but rather annoying imo) artist like Bruno Mars topping the charts (or Adele), we can see that pop is 'back'.  But this seems to be more about reaching a point of stagnation and with no particularly gripping new developments on the mainstream, the industry is falling back on the tried and tested genres of rock and pop.  I think the game is now about listening to 'genres' and the most typical, stereotyped sound of that genre rather than artists per se.  

Dean wrote: Rap isn't a popular genre nor is it a big selling genre and it has been in decline since the 1990s, though not seperated out from Rock in the following chart, in album sales even Metal out-sells Rap.

Edited by jude111 - May 22 2013 at 10:38

jude111 wrote: darkshade wrote:   **Also, not to go off track in this thread, I've always thought that when rock n' roll could go no further, in comes heavy metal, and that is the genre (and all it's sub-genres) that carries the 'rock' through the 21st century. Metal is something that came directly out of rock and became its own entity. What a ghastly thought. I for one don't want to blame Dylan, Lennon, or Peter Gabriel - or Elvis for that matter - for the existence of extreme death grindcore tech speed metal.

No maybe not directly, but speaking of Lennon, The Beatles had "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" which is like a precursor to metal, and with Peter Gabriel, I hear a lot of Genesis influence in Iron Maiden (who were influenced by Genesis, Camel, etc.).

A lot of 70s metal, and even some early thrash, had basic rock/blues arrangements of I-IV-V, or just I-IV. Sometimes, were just sped up rock tunes, with more distortion and palm muting. Obviously, the more modern extreme acts evolved from older metal bands, and rock musicians probably didn't influence them as much.


Edited by darkshade - May 22 2013 at 08:21

What is this "rock and roll" that you speak of?

darkshade wrote:   **Also, not to go off track in this thread, I've always thought that when rock n' roll could go no further, in comes heavy metal, and that is the genre (and all it's sub-genres) that carries the 'rock' through the 21st century. Metal is something that came directly out of rock and became its own entity.

Edited by jude111 - May 22 2013 at 01:12