History of Rock!

Here I written what i learnt and researched about the history of rock, the sub genres and the characteristics that define rock music.

Rock Genre

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its roots come from rock and roll during the 1940s and 1950s. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.
Musically, rock has centred on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. The lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
By the late 1960s a number of distinct rock music sub-genres had emerged, including like folk rock, country rock and others, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. Glam rock also degenerated from the original rock genre, which highlighted showmanship and visual style, and the diverse and enduring major sub-genre of heavy metal, which emphasized volume, power and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by political and social theory. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of further sub-genres, including new wave, post-punk and eventually the alternative rock movement which is still present and popular today. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion sub-genres have since emerged, including pop punk, rap rock, and rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival at the beginning of the new millennium.
Rock music has also embodied and helps create cultural and social movements including mods and rockers in the UK and the "hippie" culture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive Goth and Emo cultures. Rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

Characteristics of Rock
The sound of rock is traditionally centred on the electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularization of rock and roll. The sound of the electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by the electric bass guitar pioneered in jazz music during the same era. Percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals also accompanies the guitar and bass. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of others, particularly keyboards such as the piano and synthesizers. A group of musicians performing rock music is referred to as a rock band or rock group and typically consists of between two and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer and occasionally that of keyboard player or other instrumentalist.
Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition."
Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes in addition to romantic love: including sex, rebellion against the establishment, social concerns and life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm and blues. The predominance of white, male and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted and rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young, white and large male audience. As a result it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics.
Since the term rock began to be used in preference to rock and roll from the mid 1960s, it has often been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith "rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium the term rock has sometimes been used as a blanket term including forms such as pop music, reggae music, soul music, and even hip hop, with which it has been influenced but often contrasted through much of its history.