The international relevance of rock n roll
The international relevance of rock n roll
“Golly, Gee!
What have you done to me,
Well I guess it doesn’t matter anymore”
Fragment from a song by Buddy Holly & The Crickets
During the Second World War, when the world, as it was known up to that point, was crumbling all around, to keep spirits up became a top priority everywhere. Popular music and song have always been major flag bearers of public sentiment. The music of WW2 had a hectic gaiety to go with the times, and a smaltzy air, rhyming “moon” with “June” without embarrassment. With everything all around under threat, unabashed sentimentality was indeed a soothing anodyne.The American popular music business establishment jettisoned its prejudices against “black” music, inappropriate, when thousands of coloured folk were dying for the “free world”, shoulder to shoulder with white people in unsegregated circumstances, and it was undeniable that the blood that ran in their veins was not purple, but red.
The music of this cataclysmic plight which was WW2, cross-fertilised the black beat with the white ditty, and rock n roll was born. The new music grew rapidly in acceptance and took the world by storm. Back in the US, it was the baby boomer 50’s, as all the surviving enlisted men came back to their wives and sweethearts. Everything was big, brash, and impossibly romantic, from the chromium-plated cars with voluptuous lines, to the bouffant hairdos, tight sweaters, and stretch tights. To galvanise the imagination, rocking to Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Winifred Atwell, Buddy Holly et al, a supremo was born. He was a handsome King, blue eyes, dyed black ducktail, a winsome pout, a restless hip, and a voice as tender as the night. Elvis the King was the gorgeous white face of the hybrid rock n roll, which has stormed on for the next half century, showing no signs of age or decrepitude, or a reduction in popularity.
Rock n roll has evolved and spawned many top-flight practitioners, but as another great, Eric Clapton, sang, it has more to do with “a rock n roll heart”, than hard-core innovation. Its salience lies in the eternity of hope that washes over each succeeding generation, linking them, with one part enthusiasm and one part nostalgia. For the older rocker, comes the realisation, to put it in the words of the Mussoorie writer and poet, Ruskin Bond,”It’s not time that is passing/ It’s you and I”. For the younger new entrant to the rock n roll party, it’s the blending of cultures and technology, married to a robust and reliable beat, that draws him and her in. Ask Bhappi Lahiri.
International television has given imagery and style to the whole world, alongside the music itself, and the dream has grown. There is a badge of youth all over the world that is readily identifiable, and just as committed to the arcana of the genre, as his Shammi uncle, Mithun bhaiya, Javed mian, Gita mummy, or Kishore daddy, before him. The blood rhythm of the medium is attractive in any language and has gathered influences ranging from reggae from the Caribbean, to Bhangra from India. Arabic plainitiveness might be blended with Spanish excitement, but always underpinned with the simple messages of love and loss that dominate the rock n roll heart.
The real time message of rock n roll which underscores its relevance, was eerily defined by John Lennon, in his corny but beautiful one world anthem, “Imagine”. He lays out an unabashed if naive dream, and ends the song with, “You may say that I’m a dreamer/ but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us/ and the world will live as one”. That’s rock n roll style assertion for you, and what I want to know now, ‘afore I go is, will a sip of water alone, dissolve that lump in your throat?
(665 words)
By Gautam Mukerji
September 24, 1996
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996www.dailypioneer.com as "Brash yet incurably romantic" on Thursday October 17, 1996 on the OP-Ed page
During the Second World War, when the world, as it was known up to that point, was crumbling all around, to keep spirits up became a top priority everywhere. Popular music and song have always been major flag bearers of public sentiment. The music of WW2 had a hectic gaiety to go with the times, and a smaltzy air, rhyming “moon” with “June” without embarrassment. With everything all around under threat, unabashed sentimentality was indeed a soothing anodyne.The American popular music business establishment jettisoned its prejudices against “black” music, inappropriate, when thousands of coloured folk were dying for the “free world”, shoulder to shoulder with white people in unsegregated circumstances, and it was undeniable that the blood that ran in their veins was not purple, but red.
The music of this cataclysmic plight which was WW2, cross-fertilised the black beat with the white ditty, and rock n roll was born. The new music grew rapidly in acceptance and took the world by storm. Back in the US, it was the baby boomer 50’s, as all the surviving enlisted men came back to their wives and sweethearts. Everything was big, brash, and impossibly romantic, from the chromium-plated cars with voluptuous lines, to the bouffant hairdos, tight sweaters, and stretch tights. To galvanise the imagination, rocking to Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Winifred Atwell, Buddy Holly et al, a supremo was born. He was a handsome King, blue eyes, dyed black ducktail, a winsome pout, a restless hip, and a voice as tender as the night. Elvis the King was the gorgeous white face of the hybrid rock n roll, which has stormed on for the next half century, showing no signs of age or decrepitude, or a reduction in popularity.
Rock n roll has evolved and spawned many top-flight practitioners, but as another great, Eric Clapton, sang, it has more to do with “a rock n roll heart”, than hard-core innovation. Its salience lies in the eternity of hope that washes over each succeeding generation, linking them, with one part enthusiasm and one part nostalgia. For the older rocker, comes the realisation, to put it in the words of the Mussoorie writer and poet, Ruskin Bond,”It’s not time that is passing/ It’s you and I”. For the younger new entrant to the rock n roll party, it’s the blending of cultures and technology, married to a robust and reliable beat, that draws him and her in. Ask Bhappi Lahiri.
International television has given imagery and style to the whole world, alongside the music itself, and the dream has grown. There is a badge of youth all over the world that is readily identifiable, and just as committed to the arcana of the genre, as his Shammi uncle, Mithun bhaiya, Javed mian, Gita mummy, or Kishore daddy, before him. The blood rhythm of the medium is attractive in any language and has gathered influences ranging from reggae from the Caribbean, to Bhangra from India. Arabic plainitiveness might be blended with Spanish excitement, but always underpinned with the simple messages of love and loss that dominate the rock n roll heart.
The real time message of rock n roll which underscores its relevance, was eerily defined by John Lennon, in his corny but beautiful one world anthem, “Imagine”. He lays out an unabashed if naive dream, and ends the song with, “You may say that I’m a dreamer/ but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us/ and the world will live as one”. That’s rock n roll style assertion for you, and what I want to know now, ‘afore I go is, will a sip of water alone, dissolve that lump in your throat?
(665 words)
By Gautam Mukerji
September 24, 1996
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996www.dailypioneer.com as "Brash yet incurably romantic" on Thursday October 17, 1996 on the OP-Ed page
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