or.
In consequence of the immense popularity of rock plus the breadth of its impact plus inherent complexity—not least in terms of artists, diversity of sound, plus marketing—is the hardest to define. To answer the question, What is rock?, one first has to understand where it came from plus what made it possible. And to understand rock’s cultural significance, one has to understand how it works socially as well as musically.
What is rock?
The difficulty of definition
Dictionary definitions of rock are problematic, not least because the term has different resonance in its British plus American usages (the latter is broader in compass). There is basic agreement that rock “is a form of music with a strong beat,” but it is difficult to be much more explicit. The Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, based on a vast database of British usage, suggests that “rock is a kind of music with simple tunes plus a very strong beat that is played plus sung, usually loudly, by a small kelompok of people with electric guitars plus drums,” but there are so many exceptions to this description that it is practically useless.
Legislators seeking to define rock for regulatory purposes have not done much better. The Canadian government defined “rock plus rock-oriented music” as “characterized by a strong beat, the use of blues forms plus the presence of rock instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric organ or electric piano.” This assumes that rock can be marked off from other sorts of music formally, according to its sounds. In practice, though, the distinctions that matter for rock penggemar plus musicians have been ideological. Rock was developed as a term to distinguish certain music-making plus listening practices from those associated with pop; what was at issue was less a sound than an attitude. In 1990 British legislators defined pop music as “all kinds of music characterized by a strong rhythmic element plus a reliance on electronic amplification for their performance.” This led to strong objections from the music industry that such a definition failed to appreciate the clear sociological difference between pop (“instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers”) plus rock (“album-based music for adults”). In pursuit of definitional clarity, the lawmakers misunderstood what made rock music matter.