Rock music - style or substance?

With rock music, it is always eternal brinkmanship between style and substance.

Perhaps we should expect no less, because rock music is no longer (and in some ways, has never been since the beginning) JUST a 'music' genre. It is (and always has been) a socio-economic-cultural and sometimes even political phenomenon. The terms 'rock'n'roll' or 'rock' are hardly ever understood to refer only to the musical content of rock, such as it is; they are almost always much more wide-ranging than that. Rock music was never ever only about the music, as could be said for other genres like classical music or even jazz and blues.

Rock music's obsession with itself, its inherent narcissism, was always bound to be in a music where the performer always has to be on the verge of eclipsing the performance itself. For rock to be rock, the performer necessarily needs to make it out to be all about himself, in a way that it never is, can be, or needs to be, in other musical idioms.

The 'music' in rock music

So, now here we get into "so what exactly IS rock music?", a question that I wisely must not attempt to answer within the scope of this piece of writing. Which might lead one to wonder, can we really find out what the 'musical content' of rock music is? To that question, at least, I can readily answer, yes. The musical content of rock music can indeed be isolated from its packaged whole. The 'musical' founding fathers can indeed be identified.

Ingredients

Rock's 'musical content' history goes back, primarily, to the great folk music forms - country music, blues and folk music itself, gospel music included, from either side of the Atlantic. So, rock music is a 'folk' form, not an 'art' form (to speak thus is banal and didactic but I do so only for the development of explanation). Left to myself (and not entirely uninformed) I would trace the 'germ of the idea' back to two categories of components - one, the development of the 'blue note' and the rhythmic nature of blues, and the other, the story-telling tradition in country music, folk music and blues. When I say 'story-telling' I do not necessarily mean only in a lyrical or poetic sense, but also in a musical sense. In a purely lyrical or poetic sense, for a story, poem or ballad to reinforce and amplify its central theme, there needs to be a sense of rhythm, of repetition and reiteration which sometimes closes the loop on the rhythm and at other times sets off open-ended rhyme, inviting counterpoint. Similarly, for a melody or a sequence of chords (or riffs) to close loops or open up new ones, there needs to be a sense of rhythm.



Now rhythm has always been part of the nerve and sinew of rock and one of its founding fathers. It is no less important than musical values (and here I am speaking rather compartmentally as if rock's "musical content" is in all cases a self-contained product always exclusively differentiable from its "rhythm". In the best of rock music, such thinking is a myth and an antithesis; but I speak so here just for perspective.) It is equally possible for a three-chord rock song to be in the best traditions of rock music as it is for it to be a very bad advertisement for the limited and restricted musical scope of rock music; what makes it one or the other is a sense of rocking rhythm and the depth and space that the interpreter (artist) creates. In simple, classic rock'n'roll, 3-chord songs can be infectiously rhythmic and also leave space for mystery and depth; at the other end of the spectrum, in heavier forms (like heavy metal), in the same 3 chords, 'unsubtlety' and an un-swinging, leaden wall of sound become patently apparent.

None of this may quite be traceable or apparent when we listen to the end-product in most rock music; but ah, we must remember that we are only yet tracing out its musical content and origins. We have not yet considered the socio-economic-cultural elements that went into this particular soup!

The blue note

A little bit about the 'blue note'. Traditionally understood, it is a note 'in the cracks', which cannot be played on a musical instrument except by slatting two notes in rhythm (on a piano) or pulling a note to the next (on a guitar). To get absolutely technical about it, the third or the fifth notes in a scale are usually subjected to this treatment to obtain the blue note. The blue note can only be sung, because the vocal chords are able to bring out this subtlety and mystery whereas musical instruments, due to their precise, pin-pointed mechanical structure and organisation, cannot.

The synthesis of ingredients

The basic rock'n'roll riff can be constructed from 3 chords played in a rhythm derived from the blues (or, to be absolutely precise, from rhythm'n'blues), with movement from one to the other involving blue notes. In so far as this movement can be inflected with country music drawls and chord structures, country music is also a factor in the mix; and in so far as traditional, 'unamplified' instruments are used and the song structure is influenced by folk music, folk music is involved. So there you have it - the synthesis of the 'music' in rock music.



I speak as if it is all merely musical; in fact, it is hardly so. The synthesis I have described, far from being predictable, conscious or even by will, has happened over years of development, driven in many cases not by musical progress but more by social, cultural and economic circumstances. A number of factors have been thrown into the soup, not all of them entirely musical.

The artist and the 'rock star'

At any given instance, it is the performer or artist (and his influences, 'roots' or origins) who largely determines which factors go into the 'soup'. Due to this, it is possible to have 'rock' music devoid of its musical content (i.e., neither rhythmic nor informed by blues, country or folk, nor in a lyrical tradition), as well as rock music which is merely musical and not at all a socio-economic-cultural phenomenon. Both ends of the spectrum are equally possible, and though the former usually prevails because of commercial considerations, it is the latter which lends rock its credibility.

It would seem that the 'music' in rock music is largely precise, scientific and empirically distinguishable, and that what we see today is the effect of putting the musical content through a 'humaniser' device. This in fact, is true. To the extent that the artist is in touch with musical roots, rock music either has musical content or is devoid of it.

The 'humaniser' is a Pandora's box consisting of many factors. It certainly was the social, cultural and economic environment that prevailed in the fifties and sixties, which formed the sub-stratum for the development of rock music. Since the beginning, many factors have exerted primary influence at various times. Social, cultural and demographic factors were major catalysts in the early years, when the best rock music happened. This included the entire age of baby boomers and their adolescent values, the drawing back of young people into the dance halls by the early rock'n'roll of Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and the earliest rock stars; later, it was the anti-establishment, social comment and folk-protest sentiments sparked off by songwriters like Bob Dylan and carried further out and then into oblivion by the flower-power era. This was indeed rock's age of primary output; it is perfectly accurate to say that the best of rock music had happened by the beginning of the seventies.



The influence of social and cultural factors meant that at some point of time, the artist would be tempted (a temptation not easily overcome) to think of himself as higher than the music; a form of narcissism and self-worship, inviting something akin to almost deification over ritual. So rock music's early cultural heroes emphasised style and personal expression above substance and musical values, and rock music did its wallowing in self-indulgence and its obsessive narcissism. The rock music concert became a ritual played out in stadiums where the performer worshipped himself in the worship of the audience.

Due to the economic clout of the baby boomers, who were rock's earliest audience, financial considerations and the lack of vision took over in the seventies, and rock's age of primary output was over. Rock became history, mostly; the most creative rock was already over. For a far more accurate and better retelling of this story, about how musical and other factors came together to produce rock music, I recommend Donald Clarke's The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music, and Clarke's entry about rock, in his Encyclopaedia of Popular Music - both books sadly out of print.

Whither rock music?

Now because the musical scope of rock music is so restricted (tied to rhythm, blue notes, progressions, riffs and chords), creative progress is that much more difficult. Simply put, it is difficult to find an infinite number of things to do differently within the structure of rock music. However, there are other interesting ingredients in the mix; the best rockers bring their own sense of presence while primarily working off the unchanging musical form, and add their story-telling or interpretive talents to the bedrock. A new twist on an old tale, simply put, is the height of what can be done with rock music post 70s. That's not to say that this does not happen, or to belittle attempts to do this. The singer-songwriter and country-rock genres did it well in the 70s, and country-rock continues to accomplish it today. Even so, the legacy of its historical development means that style is almost always going to quash substance, unless those of us who want the real substance of rock music go out, look for and find it.



So...what?

The basics of looking for good music, rock or otherwise, always are and have been simple. Music that is in touch with its (musical) roots , played on musical instruments by musicians who bring their own creative interpretations and energies to a basic set of musical tools, is good music. Conversely, music that has no discernible roots, not played on actual musical instruments by real musicians, is always to be mistrusted (and no, technology does not generally count). And so it goes for a song as well. Has the song been actually written and constructed or is it just a mash-up? Has the song a coherent point, however slim and flimsy? Has it any charm (the intangible creativity of the artist) whatsoever? Can the song become more interesting if another performer sings it? Simple questions which bring out the intrinsic worth of a song.

These considerations quickly reveal that more than 80 - 90 percent of popular music out there today is just noise, static or of negligible value. A sobering consideration, all things being equal.