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POPULAR MUSIC
What Is It? In general, it is music which is written and produced especially for the purpose of selling records. It is modern music, usually written the same year as the record is released - this excludes classical music. We shall be looking only at English-speaking "Pop" music with particular emphasis on American and British music. And if I can find a knowledgable guest speaker we will learn about the New Zealand and Australian music scene. This then will eliminate Latin music, polkas, Far Eastern sounds which are popular in different areas of the world, but not ours. Music can be discussed in terms of two reference points: 1) the melody, beat, rhythm and, 2) the lyrics or words. We are going to look at the "Rock 'n Roll" era of popular music from 1955-1970. To begin to answer the question "What is Popular music?" I have made a statistical study of the number one songs for the above years using BillBoard Magazine's Hot 100 charts. I assume that these songs are an indication of what the public thought were popular. I have divided the songs into groups according to the beat, rhythm, melody, tempo with the following results:
The results show that over 15 years Rock 'n Roll is the most popular and thus we get the term: "Rock 'n Roll Era". [Play sample of each type] © Copyright 1975 JNM Productions |