ROCK

How did Elvis become the “King of Rock’n’Roll” instead of, for example, Chuck Berry? Who are LaVern Baker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Etta James and what do they have to do with rock and roll? Why and how did “rock and roll” become “rock”? What are the relationships among rock, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk? What do classical music composers such as J.S. Bach, Modest Mussorgsky, and Philip Glass have to do with rock? How many times has rock “died”? What is rock music’s relevance both historically and today? This course will introduce you to popular music studies, a field of inquiry that draws scholars from a number of different disciplines, including musicology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology and literature. Examining rock music in an interdisciplinary way has opened the genre to increasing attention beyond musicological methodologies and assumptions. First, however, we must ask some fundamental questions: for instance, what, exactly, is popular music as well as, importantly, what differentiates rock music from other genres? Our definitions will reveal some of the assumptions we bring to any discussion of popular music. Throughout this semester, we will question our assumptions about rock music culture through an investigation into a series of keywords. Each keyword will focus our attention on various aspects of rock music in order to think through the complexities of what might, on the surface, seem self-evident. Terms such as “genre” or “the everyday” will be examined to help us gain critical analytical tools with which to assess various rock music productions, artists, and processes.