Rock music. Encyclopedia Foreign rock encyclopedia
Before you are selected articles from the Rock-Encyclopedia, semi-mythical even in Siberia, mainly from its volumes "Brit-Rock" and "Prog-Rock".
In Moscow and St. Petersburg, this encyclopedia was simply called Siberian. Now we can proudly name its author. This is Nikolai Methodievich Slynko, who still wanted to remain anonymous.
Since the end of the sixties, numerous attempts have been made at Novosibirsk University to collect and systematize the disparate information about modern music that reaches Siberia with great difficulty. With much greater success, Komsomol activists collected information about those who at NSU were fond of collecting records of ideologically hostile music. Any attempts to disseminate such music and information about it were suppressed in the most decisive way. Therefore, many, very many, who began to engage in such a deed that was contrary to the authorities, were forced, sooner or later, to give in to the problems and difficulties that came from nowhere at work and in life. But not the legendary Nikolai Slynko.
And, despite all the obstacles created by the authorities, twenty years ago, the first volumes of this difficult publication began to appear on the thin paper of samizdat. It is currently impossible to give an exact number. Various articles about music and musicians wandered through different volumes for a long time, and so far this process has no end in sight.
In 1984, when Anatoly Korotin first brought typewritten copies of Prog-Rock and Jazz-Rock volumes to Moscow, their conditionally total number was assumed to be 12, when placing " The Beatles"in two volumes. The kit separately included a special volume - a surprisingly complete for that time, even by Western standards, a collection of compositions and discographies of various jazz and rock groups, created by Tatyana Voronova.
Computer typing had already begun for an underground printing house that printed Solzhenitsyn and other forbidden literature, but the arrests of couriers that soon followed forced this work to be curtailed for many years.
But both on tissue paper and in photocopies, this encyclopedia was distributed among students. She not only carried the necessary information. She reliably covered up the true essence and meaning of the activities of short-lived student music clubs. The secret agents of the KGB, with great difficulty, took out separate copies literally read to holes, or even just leaflets with separate articles, and after a thorough study, the competent authorities did not find anything criminal in the information obtained.
Because the work of musical circles was carried out in two circles. The first one was public. There, students themselves listened to music and lectured on the basis of articles from this encyclopedia. On the second round, specially selected students from the first round of training were explained how to effectively hear and understand music, and the musicians who create it. These lectures will gradually be placed on our website.
And now, when many different Russian-language books and CDs with information about music and musicians have already been released, this titanic work is not only of historical interest. Although many articles have been partially revised and supplemented, you have a great opportunity to look at Music through the eyes of an eyewitness through two decades.
IN short story rock music clearly traces two stages: the period of rock and roll (1954-1962) and the period of rock (from 1962 to the present). Rock 'n' roll (an expression found in many rural blues and probably has a sexual connotation, as in the line "Rock me, rock me all night") gained popularity in the mid-1950s. There are three interconnected sources at the heart of rock and roll. Firstly, the music of the black rhythm and blues ensembles of the southwestern states of the USA is an analogue of the softer and more refined swing jazz bands of the eastern states. The name rhythm and blues literally describes the type of music that these bands performed: the basis of the melodies is 12-bar forms of rural blues, based on tonic, subdominant and dominant chords; the rhythms are sharply syncopated and strongly accented, the most typical background beat is the emphasis on the second and fourth beats of the 4/4 time signature. The vocalists of such groups had to shout to cover the loud sound of the ensemble; subsequently, this style of "shouted out" blues became the accepted manner of rock and roll singers. Secondly, an important role in the formation of rock and roll was played by church music Negro vocal groups who borrowed the singing style and harmonies from the tradition of the so-called. black gospel (religious hymn). The main feature of the gospel style is the “question-answer” formula: the soloist (and in the church - the preacher) pronounces a verse, and the choir answers him. Q&A is a staple not only of the gospel style, but also of African folk music. Thirdly, the music of Elvis Presley, who, along with other performers like Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and the Everly brothers, spontaneously combined elements of the musical styles of white country and western, black rural blues and rhythm and blues. hound dog (hound dog), Don't be cruel (Don't Be Cruel), (Heartbreak Hotel) and a number of other early Presley pieces are blues or based on blues structures, and his vocal style combined the typical "nasal" in country music with the assertiveness and sensuality characteristic of Negro music.
It is thanks to Presley's irresistible rock and roll appeal that since the song Hotel where hearts break(1956) became a national phenomenon. However, other performers in a new manner gained popularity even before Presley. From 1954, Bill Haley and the Comets released a series of hits that were rehashings of the rhythm and blues repertoire of black ensembles. Chuck Berry's music grew out of the tradition of urban blues, a gruff, electric-clattering offspring of rural blues that flourished in Memphis, Chicago, and Detroit after World War II. Sam Cooke and the Coasters, Drifters, and Flamingoes continued the gospel tradition, and this musical style with minor changes later transformed into what came to be called soul music.
Early rock and roll was dominated by a clear rhythmic pulsation (beat), electric guitar, piercing tenor saxophone and hysterically frenzied vocals. The theme of the songs revolved around Everyday life teenagers: school, parents, cars and especially youthful love. Indirectly, and often directly, this music challenged social norms. The new music had an extraordinary appeal to teenagers, and its novelty seemed even more attractive when compared with the popular music of the 1940s and early 1950s, marked by dull cliches in the spirit of the sentimental and artificial style of "Tin-Pan-Alli", which reflected completely a world alien to American youth. That is why the youth embraced rock and roll with such enthusiasm. It was precisely the fact that adults did not understand this new music and clearly expressed their rejection that appealed to the young rock and roll audience. However, despite the growing popularity of Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and other famous artists, around 1959 rock and roll entered a period of decline. The fact is that the leaders of the largest record companies, realizing the huge commercial potential of rock and roll and trying to expand the audience, brought to the stage pretty, but by and large untalented performers. Gradually, the aggressiveness, sensuality, and above all, the incendiary rhythms of rock and roll faded, and they were replaced by "nice" fakes of rock and roll, like teen angel (Teen Angel) And Tell Laura I love her (Tell Laura I Love Her).
Influence of the Beatles.
So, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, rock and roll seemed to be on its deathbed, but in 1962 it came back to life thanks to the rise of the Beatles, who gained phenomenal popularity. The quartet from the English city of Liverpool, followed by other British groups, and above all the Rolling Stones, breathed new life into the fundamental canons of rock and roll. The explosive success of these bands in the United States brought back to mind the energetic beat - they made "rock", as they now began to call this style, even louder and more aggressive. At first, the Beatles drew inspiration from early examples of rock and roll, while the Rolling Stones owed more to urban bluesmen like Muddy Waters, from whose song rolling stone (Rolling stone) they borrowed their name from.
It is already clear by now how secondary and boring the first recordings of the Beatles are. The hypnotic impact of the Beatles on the mass audience was explained, firstly, by the energetic rhythm of their music in comparison with their contemporary popular performers, and secondly, and most importantly, by their personal charm. They were cute-daring, long-haired, modestly, although unusually dressed guys, and each "Beatle" had a very specific stage appearance. Against the background of the Rolling Stones - arrogant, rude and defiantly sexy guys - they seemed to be "glorious tomboys."
During the decline of rock and roll, for some time, white folk music, which existed mainly in the Appalachian states (in the east of the USA), was revived and immediately put on stream. The musical stereotypes of the folk style belonged to another era and soon lost their appeal, but the lyrics of these songs, especially marked by the spirit of social engagement and naive poetry, proved to be more durable. Bob Dylan began his career as a folk singer during this renaissance. The artless lyrics of Dylan's early protest songs, like Only the wind knows (Blowin' in the Wind), Times - they change (The Times They Are A-Changin") in his later work enriched the features of modern high poetry. He used such poetic devices as free association, synesthesia (a combination of heterogeneous sensations, for example, visual and auditory; for example, in Dylan: “shadows in sounds”), extended metaphor and deliberate ambiguity of meaning. Some rock poets picked up on this trend, but it wasn't until Dylan performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, accompanied by a rock band, with electric instruments that replaced his usual acoustic guitar and harmonica. Rock purists considered Dylan's transformation a betrayal, but many folk artists, including Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley, Lovin' Spoonful, adopted rock instruments in whole or in part, and many rock musicians were inspired by the semantic richness of the song Dylan demonstrated. lyrics.
Among the latter were the Beatles. Although the early compositions contained some musical innovations, the lyrics of their songs mostly consisted of trite babble. I Wanna Hold Your Hand (I wanna hold your hand), make me happy (Please Please Me), I want to be your boyfriend (I wanna be your man) are typical examples. Still an epic album. rubber soul (rubber soul, 1965) was distinguished by both the semantic depth of the verses and the amazing variety of musical finds. George Harrison in song Norwegian furniture (norwegian wood) plays the Indian sitar, and the string accompaniment in the ballad Michelle (Michelle) sounds in the spirit of classical music.
By this point, in the mid-1960s, when many musicians saw the artistic possibilities of rock, hundreds of rock bands had sprung up. Their music was a logical continuation of early rock and roll, but it was also a reaction and a response to current events in social and political life. For example, "Country Joe and the Fish, a group from Berkeley, denounced the Vietnam War and social inequality in American society in their songs. More original were Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, both of which were closely associated with the emerging "drug culture". They attempted to recreate the sensory experience of LSD ingestion, combining long floating guitar solos with shrill howls that were often distorted by various amp settings and feedback, with the heartbreaking itch produced by placing an electric instrument close to the amp. The lyrics also reflected drug addiction. In composition Eight miles above ground (Eight Mile High) of the Byrds group, surrealistic images in the spirit of Dylan only hint at a drug experience, but direct reference to drugs was quite common in acid rock. In an effort to turn rock music into a total sensual-emotional experience, the musicians achieved an unpleasant, and often unbearable sound volume for an unaccustomed ear.
The Beatles continued to experiment. In 1967 they released an album called Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band). Following the inspiring example of the Beach Ensemble album Favorite sounds (Pet Sounds, 1966), the Beatles did Sergeant Pepper the first rock album, which was a whole work, and not a collection of individual songs. After the appearance Sergeant Pepper many rock artists followed the example of the Beatles. The songs have gone beyond the traditional three-minute format adopted by mediumwave radio stations, and now entire blocks have found an internal unity in music albums. Thus, the impressively complex and artistically (though not commercially) successful album of the group "Jefferson Airplane" After bathing at Baxter's (After Bathing at Baxter's) consists of four long "suites", each of which has several cross-cutting themes.
After other artists have internalized the eclectic originality Sergeant Pepper, rock has been influenced by many related musical styles. The groups Blood, Sweat and Tears, Lighthouse, Chicago began to use brass instruments not only for acting out and purely rhythmic accompaniment, characteristic of soul music or rhythm and blues, but also for orchestral and solo numbers, marked by sophisticated harmonies and a more flexible rhythmic pattern, characteristic of contemporary jazz. Some bands, such as the defunct Cream, placed great emphasis on sustained instrumental improvisations in the vein of contemporary jazz artists, while retaining the typical rock rhythms and vocals. Frank Zappa, leader of the short-lived Mothers of Invention, gifted composer and virtuoso electronic music, borrowed musical means from the arsenal of the classics of the 20th century. – Edgar Varese, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Rock exploited other classical forms as well: two British bands, The Who and the Kinks, composed and recorded rock operas - Tommy (Tommy) And Arthur (Arthur), in each of which the plot determines the musical structure, there are cross-cutting themes, and individual songs-arias are performed by different characters.
1970–1980s.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, blues, white folk music, and jazz—the cornerstones of rock—continued to inspire rock artists, and rock, in turn, influenced its musical forerunners. A number of conductors symphony orchestras, in particular Zubin Mehta (Los Angeles philharmonic orchestra) and Leonard Bernstein (New York Philharmonic Orchestra), participated in concerts where attempts were made to synthesize rock and classical music.
While these experiments continued, the rock of the early 1970s again declined, as it did in the early 1960s. The Beatles broke up, and the musicians began to work alone. Dylan released a number of albums that horrified critics. Other major artists - Jimi Hendrix, who revolutionized the role of lead guitar, rhythm and blues singer Janis Joplin and lead singer of the Doors Jim Morrison - died tragically, barely starting their creative career. The rock audience was divided into fans of different directions, which multiplied. One of them was country rock - a style that adopted traditional instruments like the ukulele and returning again to the rhythm and blues of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly.
At the same time, musicians emerged from the folk tradition of the early 1960s. Acoustic guitarists Caroly King, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon sang about personal relationships and old-fashioned romantic problems in a sophisticated and graceful manner of lyrical confession.
Progressive rock emerged in the UK, represented by bands such as Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, who used classical arrangements to enrich the sound of their sophisticated compositions. Such emphatically melodic music with dense orchestration relied heavily on the capabilities of the newly appeared electronic synthesizer, capable of imitating the sound of almost any instrument, including brass and strings.
The audience for heavy metal was growing, a genre characterized by deafening volume and a repetitive melodic pattern. A number of representatives of this trend, including "Led Zeppelin", "AC / DC", "Black Sabbath", became the most popular, although rejected in circles music critics superstars of the decade.
Glam and glitter rock, represented by English artists like David Bowie, Roxy Music and T. Rex" and the American group "New York Dolls", brought unbridled, transgender theatricality. Bowie released a concept album in 1972 The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), where the plot traces the rapid rise to fame and the collapse of the decadent-futuristic rock idol. This thing contrasted sharply with the soft, pleasant demeanor of late 1960s rock artists. Pushing the boundaries of rock was Bowie, who, with his deliberately androgynous image, challenged sexual and social norms.
By the mid-1970s, dozens of genres had merged in rock music. Alice Cooper and Kiss, shamelessly borrowing elements of heavy metal and pop music, took the outer side of their stage image from glam rock, using make-up and cartoon character wardrobe in their performances. Steely Dan, a band rooted in folk tradition and soul, offered a strange hybrid - intellectual rock, which combined pleasant melodies with rather cynical verses. Hall & Oates created "blue-eyed soul" by borrowing the R&B sound of Philadelphia soul music from the late 1960s. Art rock combined elements of glam and progressive rock. Bands like Genesis, led by Peter Gabriel, offered eccentric music enhanced by theatrics. Bruce Springsteen, singer and composer from New Jersey, reminded listeners of young Bob Dylan with the power and appeal of stage performances and social orientation of lyrics; Springsteen record Born to run (Born to Run) was named best album of the decade.
George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic, a rhythm and blues band from Detroit, are another kind of hybrid rock. The space theme of the compositions and the alien costumes of the ensemble members contributed to the popularization of funk rock.
In 1974, CBGB, a small music club on New York's South East Side, became the cradle of the next rock genre. Local rock bands - the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, singer Patti Smith - cultivated rough, bare, three-chord music that was later dubbed punk. Primitive, hard, often dissonant, but full of passion and devoid of any of the musical frills that distinguished 1970s rock, punk was the wildest variety of rock music. The features of the future punk were guessed as early as 1970 in the work of the Michigan group MS-5 and Iggy Pop (real name James Osterberg) and his group Stooges. But it wasn't until 1975 when Patti Smith released her debut album. Horses(Horses), punk went into orbit. Patti Smith's whiny shamanic vocals and slurred, in the spirit of Arthur Rimbaud's lyrics, verses against the backdrop of a minimalist dissonant melody immediately gained fans among the rock avant-garde.
English entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren, impressed by what he heard in New York, seized on a new musical style. The Sex Pistols, recruited by McLaren from a motley crowd of young slackers, became the leader of punk rock. The political and economic atmosphere of the UK was ripe for such an openly aggressive apocalyptic genre, and punk flourished in the work of "angry" youth groups like the Pistols (their first record was called Anarchy in the UK) and "Clash". An equally wildly popular genre during this period was disco, a hybrid of funk, rhythm and blues and rock that celebrated the sexual freedom and enjoyment of life that defined pop culture in the 1970s.
As the popularity of punk rock grew, gradually changing, it turned into a "new wave". Elements of skiffle (jazz-like pop music) and ska (Jamaican dance music) were mixed in light, fast songs performed by ethnically diverse bands like the Specials and the English Beat. Elvis Costello popularized masterfully crafted hits, sustained in a feverishly ragged rhythm. Devo from Akron, Ohio, performed on stage in light plastic overalls and masks, hinting at their belonging to extraterrestrial civilizations. And bands like Husker Du, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag turned punk into a torrent of uncontrollable aggression.
Video clip revolution.
On August 1, 1981, the first revolution since the Beatles took place in rock music: the era of Musical Television (MTV) began - a round-the-clock broadcast of music videos in which rock songs received a visible embodiment using special effects, fantastic images and editing frames, synchronized with musical phrases. Becoming a goldmine for inventive performers" new wave like "Police", "Depeche Mode", "B-52s" and "Go Gos", MTV also spurred the release of more and more one-night-stand video-engineering marvels.
If the punk movement of the late 1970s brought rock music back to the bare essentials, the 1980s turned rock into a theatrical act. Performers such as Madonna, Prince and especially Michael Jackson, soared to fame only under a strict all-seeing video eye. Offering viewers their exquisitely crafted, ever-changing images and melodies based on catchy, unpretentious rhythms that did not detract from the central emotional video theme, these performers reflected the “more is better” philosophy characteristic of the 1980s.
While music television became the delight of a predominantly white middle class, hip-hop, or rap, was fabricated in poor urban areas from improvised means. Disc jockeys, who used several "turntables" at once in the studio, spun old records in parts, dissected melodies and superimposed fragments on new rhythms. Over this musical background, the "rapper" could sing impromptu rhythmic verses whose favorite themes were sex, drugs, and African American culture. The early promoters of rap - Afrika Bambaataa and Curtis Blow - based their compositions on old rhythm and blues records by James Brown and other artists. Then bands like Run DMC tried to get their audiences into rap by basing their songs on rock melodies - in particular Walk this way (Walk This Way) of the Aerosmith group. With the success of the Beastie Boys and other white rappers in the late 1980s, rap became mainstream. musical genre, forcing its more socially active representatives to adopt a gloomy aggressive manner. Gangsta rap performed by NWA, Geto Boys and Snoop Doggy Dogg offered verses so aggressive, misogynistic and hooligan in content that voices were heard in society, if not calling for censorship repression, then at least requiring self-control by the performers.
Few of the rock supergroups that emerged in the 1980s proved viable. The exceptions were those ensembles that stood out for both musical talent and a memorable image - REM, a quartet from Athens, Georgia, and the Irish U2, a group whose compositions in the spirit of religious hymns led the audience into ecstasy.
New Forms in the 1990s–2000s.
Grunge, a genre that rose to stardom in the early 1990s, was strongly reminiscent of punk. He combined the avant-garde aspirations of bands like Sonic Youth, with the frenetic and screeching guitar of Neil Young, who began his career in the mid-1960s as part of the early country rock band Buffalo Springfield. Thanks to bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, grunge's fame has spread far beyond its American homeland.
Both the 1970s and the early 1990s saw a fragmentation of styles. Many new artists were labeled "alternative" even on the occasional occasion when their music was quickly assimilated by a mass audience. "PJ Harvey" and others women's groups voiced militant riot girl rock in a "heavy metal" style. Garth Brooks heralded the return of country rock traditions. An explosion of rave music followed in England, marked by hypnotic melodies and extremely fast tempos. In the US, the adherent of "industrial rock" group "Ministry" combined hard-aggressive and dance music into one whole. Thanks to the growing influence of the MTV channel, Icelandic performer Björk and the Japanese band Pizzicato Five have achieved international fame.
The music and aesthetics of grunge in the early 1990s largely determined the development of rock throughout the following decade. The key concept of this period was the concept of "alternative" (alternative). Initially, it meant opposing the new uncompromising music to the endless and faceless stream of pop-hard rock that dominated the music market of the eighties. Those who did not want to accept the serial and soulless production of bands like W.A.S.P., or Poison had an alternative - garage and club bands that created their own, "unkempt" sound and sang not about the beaches of Malibu, beauties and limousines, but about what makes up the life of most normal people: about the complexity of human relationships, alienation, depression, dreams and hopes.
The city of Seattle became the center of "alternative" music, in which young groups gathered around the small firm "Sub Pop" developed the direction of grunge: "Alice In Chains" (Alice In Chains), "Melvins" (Melvins), "Screaming Trees" ( Screaming Trees), Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam.
Grunge was a really fresh and timely direction. However, the popularity that this direction gained in one or two years led to the fact that music industry began to exploit the so-called. "alternative" sound. What until recently was considered marginal, non-commercial and was the repertoire of small independent record companies, in a matter of months turned into gold mine big show business.
Trying to deal with this situation in their own way, the main groups of the "Seattle wave" release albums with a deliberately dirty, raw sound: "Nirvana" In the womb (In Utero) and "Pearl Jam" life science (Vitalogy), and Alice In Chains turned to a semi-acoustic sound, but these albums instantly go platinum (i.e. sold over a million copies). Since then, the concept of "alternative music", in general, has lost its uniqueness, because much of what used to be a genuine alternative to big show business is becoming part of this show business. However, the independent (indie, from independent), non-commercial scene continues to exist, and groups like Sonic Yus (Sonic Youth), Melvins (Melvins) or Pavement are quite calm, without mass hysteria and multi-million dollar contracts play their own music.
Since 1993, after the release of the album Siamese dreams, draws attention to the phenomenon of the Smashing Pumpkins group, which became perhaps the most popular American group in the mid-1990s. Their work is an example of a rare combination of creativity and commercial success. Critics have called this music post-grunge, which sounds very formal, but at least reflects the hard and heavy grunge basis of the Smashing Pumpkins music.
Also since the mid-1990s. melodic punk-core (punk-core) groups are gaining popularity, primarily Green Day ( green day) and "Offspring" (Offspring). They perform very hard and fast music with spectacular melodies and ironic lyrics. Green Day released an album in 1994 Fool(Dookie) that made them millionaires. However, subsequent discs were not as successful. The career of "Offspring" was much more successful: after a wonderful disc Smash (Smash, 1994) they find the strength to create another international bestseller americana (Americana, 1998) and have maintained a very high level of popularity ever since.
With the release of the 1991 album BloodSugarSexMagic (BloodSugarSexMagic) the Los Angeles group "Red Hot Chili Pepperz" (Red Hot Chili Peppers) has become one of the most famous rock bands in the world. Their music is a mixture of funk, hard rock, hip hop and many other styles. Releasing an album about once every three years, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have not lost their "superstar" status for more than a decade.
The next international wave in rock music after grunge was the so-called Brit-pop. This means that the British again for a while seized leadership in rock music. Parallels with the "British invasion" of the mid-60s suggest themselves. In addition, the "boom" of Britpop was accompanied by a great campaign to revive the mass interest in the Beatles (Beatles), the publication of anthologies, the release of films, etc. Britpop also had its own pair of most popular and rival groups, modeled on the Beatles-Rolling Stones tandem: Oasis and Blur. In 1994, the Oaces albums were released. It can definitely be (Definitely Maybe) and the Blair group park life (park life) and from that moment begins the era of Britpop. Many other Britons have achieved world fame in this direction: Pulp, Radiohead, Ride, and others. In English music of the late 1980s. there was quite interesting direction, as the "Manchester wave" with its cult performers: Happy Mondays (Happy Mondays), Stone Roses (Stone Roses), Charlatanes UK (Charlatanes UK), which in many ways prepared the Britpop boom. And the first Blair album called Leisure (Leisure, 1991) appeared during the triumph of this movement.
Although the peak of Britpop's popularity has now passed, many groups still lead a successful existence, regularly releasing albums. However, if the Oaces stubbornly continue to follow their monotonous rock and roll line, Blair leader Damon Albarn shows himself to be a more flexible and inventive musician, participating in one of the most mysterious projects of the early 21st century. "Gorillaz" (Gorillaz). Members of this group hide under fictitious names and cartoon images. At concerts, they play behind a curtain, on which images of their cartoon counterparts and other images are projected.
In the 1990s there is widespread experimentation on the combination of electronic and live guitar music, live instruments and digital technologies, such as albums by David Bowie (Davi Bowie) 1 outside (1 Outside, 1995), earthling (Earthling, 1997) or any discs of Garbage, Republica, etc.
One of the most interesting experimental musicians is the American Beck Hansen, better known as simply Beck. Each of his albums, starting with the first Ripe gold (Mellow Gold, 1993), this is a new stage in the development of his unusual musical talent. Beck combines sophisticated electronics with the most traditional acoustic instruments.
Almost simultaneously with Britpop, another British-born trend called trip-hop captured the world's attention. Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, and later Morcheeba are the most famous trip-hop artists. Created by thoughtful hip-hop DJs and electronic experimenters, trip-hop groups prefer slow hypnotic tempos, gloomy or melancholic sound, unusual samples (samples, samples - fragments of the sound of a composition or instrument used to create new compositions).
Significant influence on music in the 1990s provided a fashion for the culture of previous decades. In the early 1990s there was a fashion for the "hippie era" of the 1960s, and then the 1970s came into fashion, mainly funk, disco and glam rock. This was accompanied by the reunion of many legendary bands of past decades: Jefferson Airplane (Jefferson Airplane), Fleetwood Mac (Fleetwood Mac), Deep Purple ( deep purple), Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath), Eagles (Eagles) and others. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, members of Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin) release a joint album in 1994 No mercy (No quarter), which presents new joint songs and old hits of the group in unusual oriental arrangements.
By 2001, fashion had reached the 1980s: electro-pop, pink jackets and perhydrol. Even those who everyone forgot about have surfaced, namely the instigators of 1980s glam: groups like Poison (Poison) and Warrant (Warrant).
Late 1990s marked by renewed interest in "heavy" music. Such american bands like Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, P.O.D. (P.O.D.), "Linkin Park" ( Linkin Park) play music, which for some time now has been called nu- or nu-metal (nu-metal). It clearly shows the influences of previous generation bands: Rage Against The Machine, Helmet, « Nirvana » (Nirvana), Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots. One of key concepts in music in the early 21st century. - multiculturalism. Interest in folk music Latin America, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, Africa, Far East and other regions of the world outgrows the usual fashion for the exotic. Elements of different cultures become material for creativity. A wonderful example of this approach is the Spanish-born Frenchman Manu Chao, who mixed Latin American, Caribbean, North African, and European traditions in his music. Thus, eclecticism and stylistic diversity are characteristic features of the music of the early 21st century.
Having become one of the pillars of popular culture, rock music has taken its place in art as an independent field worthy of special study; and indeed, the curriculum of many universities now includes courses in the study of rock music. In 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was created. Faithful to her historical roots, rock music remains a bone of contention: if opponents are shocked by the fact that connoisseurs of it are accepted by “serious” music, then loyal supporters are confused precisely by gaining “legitimacy”, because of which, they assure, rock loses its inherent power and immediacy.
