Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

The African-American influence has always had a profound effect on rock music through history. The influence brought about fresh music styles, revolutionary bands, and new, innovative songs. Today, one of the most common African American music influence is hip-hop. Hip-hop is actually a slang term meaning “the popular street culture of big-city and especially inner-city youth, characterized by graffiti art, break dancing, and rap music” (Heritage). The sound is produced by disc jockeys who play beats from records to give it a more rhythmical sound. The style of music hip-hop influences today is rock music. Rock is a style of music that originated in the 1950’s and stemmed from country music. Then it was better known as rock and roll. Rock and roll is defined as “a type of dance music originating in the 1950s; a blend of rhythm-and-blues with country-and-western” (Wordnet). Rock and roll itself is a combination of two different ethnic music forms. It combines the music forms of rhythm and blues and country and uses the combinations of different instruments, such as guitars and drums to create its sound. The sounds created are very well defined between the two genres and the borders between them were never thought to be cr