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Файл:About Music at the Lessons of English. Хрестоматия по чтению на английском языке для студентов очного и заочного отделений специальностей 070100 «Музы.pdf
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”) and
rock (“album-based music for adults”). In pursuit of definitional clarity, the
lawmakers misunderstood what made rock music matter.
Notes:
1. to refer to smth. – ссылаться на что-то;
2. to encompass – осуществлять, окружать;
3. legislator – законодатель;
4. grunge – грандж – направление в хард-роке 90-х, синтезировавшее
элементы металлического рока и эстетику панк-рока; наиболее яр-
кий представитель – группа Nirvana;
5. rock and roll – рок-н-ролл – легкий танцевальный музыкальный
стиль, гармонически идущий от
блюза; с характерным энергичным
ритмом и довольно простыми мелодиями; букв. «раскачивайся и
крутись», появился в США в середине 1950-х как «белый» вариант
афро-американского стиля ритм-энд-блюз;
6. rhythm and blues – ритм и блюз – сочетание блюза с негритянской
народной музыкой – музыкальный стиль, популярный, главным
образом, среди афро-американцев в период между 1940-ми
и 1960ми гг. Отличается от блюза тем, что в его исполнении участвует
большой ансамбль.
CRUCIAL ROCK MUSICIANS
If it is difficult to define what rock is, it makes more sense to approach
the definition of rock historically, with examples. The following musicians
were crucial to rock's history. What do they have in common?
Elvis Presley,
from Memphis, Tennessee, personified a new form of
American popular music in the mid-1950s. Rock and roll was a guitar-based
sound with a strong (if loose) beat that drew equally on African-American and
white traditions from the southern United States, on blues, church music, and
country
music. Presley's rapid rise to national stardom revealed the new cul-
tural and economic power of both teenagers and teen-aimed media – records,
radio, television, and motion pictures.
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The Beatles, from Liverpool, England, personified a new form of British
popular music in the 1960s. Merseybeat was a British take on the black and
white musical mix of rock and roll: a basic lineup of lead guitar, rhythm gui-
tar, bass guitar, and drums (with shared vocals) provided local live versions of
American hit records of all sorts. The Beatles added to this an artistic self-
consciousness, soon writing their own songs and using the recording studio to
develop their own – rather than a commercial producer's – musical ideas. The
group's unprecedented success in the United States ensured that rock would be
an Anglo-American phenomenon.
Bob Dylan
, from Hibbing, Minnesota, personified a new form of
American music in the mid-1960s. Dylan brought together the amplified beat
of rock and roll, the star imagery of pop, the historical and political sensibility
of folk, and – through the wit, ambition, and obscurity of his lyrics – the arro-
gance of urban bohemia. He gave the emerging rock scene artistic weight and
a new account of youth as an ideological rather than a demographic category.
Jimi Hendrix, from Seattle, Washington, personified the emergence of
rock as a specific musical genre in the late 1960s. Learning his trade as a gui-
tarist in rhythm-and-blues bands and possessing a jazzman's commitment to
collective improvisation, he came to fame leading a trio in London and explor-
ing the possibilities of the amplifier as a musical instrument in the recording
studio and on the concert stage. Hendrix established versatility and technical
skill as a norm for rock musicianship and gave shape to a new kind of event:
the outdoor festival and stadium concert, in which the noise of the audience
became part of the logic of the music.
Bob Marley, from Kingston
, Jamaica, personified a new kind of global
popular music in the 1970s. Marley and his group, the Wailers, combined
sweet soul vocals with rock guitar, a reggae
Marley's commercial success established Jamaica
beat, and Rastafarian mysticism.
as a major source of interna-
tional talent, leaving a reggae imprint not just on Western rock but also on lo-
cal music makers in Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Madonna
, from suburban Detroit, Michigan, personified a new sort of
global teen idol in the 1980s. She combined the sounds and technical devices
of the new York City disco-club scene with the new sales and image-making
opportunities offered by video promotion – primarily by Music Television
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(MTV), the music-based cable television service. As a star Madonna had it
both ways: she was at once a knowing American feminist artist and a global
sales icon for the likes of Pepsi-Cola.
Public Enemy, from New York City, personified a new sort of African-
American music in the late 1980s.
Rap, the competitive use of rhyming lines
spoken over an ever-more-challenging rhythmic base, had a long history in
African-American culture; however, it came to musical prominence as part of
the hip-hop
movement. Public Enemy used new digital technology to sample
and recast the urban soundscape from the perspective of African-American
youth. This was music that was at once sharply attuned to local political con-
ditions and resonant internationally. By the mid-1990s rap had become an ex-
pressive medium for minority social groups around the world.
What does this version of rock's history – from Presley to Public
Enemy – reveal? First, that rock is so broad a musical category that in practice
people organize their tastes around more focused genre labels: the young
Presley was a rockabilly, the Beatles a pop group, Dylan a folkie, Madonna a
disco diva, Marley and the Wailers a reggae act, and Public Enemy rappers.
Even Hendrix, the most straightforward rock star on this list, also has a place
in the histories of rhythm and blues and jazz. In short, while all these musi-
cians played a significant part in the development of rock, they did so by using
different musical instruments and textures, different melodic and rhythmic
principles, different approaches to song words and performing conventions.
Notes:
1. crucial – решающий, критический;
2. to personify – олицетворять, символизировать;
3. obscurity of his lyrics – зд. сложность (неясность) его стихов;
4. the arrogance of urban bohemia – высокомерность городской
богемы;
5. reggae – регги – стиль городской танцевальной музыки, возникшей
на Ямайке в середине 1960-
х. Соединяет черты североамериканской развлекательной и традиционной афро-ямайской
музыки.
6. rap – рэп – популярный музыкальный стиль афро-американского
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происхождения, возникший в Нью-Йорке в 1970-х и получивший
широкое распространение в 1980-х. Представляет собой произносимые скороговоркой импровизированные рифмованные фразы
под аккомпанемент компьютерной ритм-группы или музыки многих других стилей. Непременными элементами стиля являются
танец и характерные жесты.
MUSICAL ELEMENTS
The central musical instrument in most kinds of rock music is the elec-
tric guitar. Important figures in the history of this instrument include jazz mu-
sician Charlie Christian, who in the late 1930s was one of the first to play the
amplified guitar as a solo instrument; Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker, the
first blues musician to record with an amplified guitar (1942); Leo Fender,
who in 1948 introduced the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar; and
Les Paul, who popularized the instrument in the early 1950s with a series of
technologically innovative recordings. Rock-and-roll guitarist Chuck Berry
established a style of playing in the late 1950s that remains a great influence
on rock music. Beginning in the late 1960s a new generation of rock guitarists,
including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Carlos Santana, experimented with
amplification, feedback (a type of electronic sound distortion), and various
electronic devices, extending the musical potential of the instrument.
Other instruments commonly used in rock music include the electric
bass guitar (introduced by Fender in 1951); keyboard instruments such as the
electric piano, organ, and synthesizer; and the drum set, an African American
innovation that came into rock music from jazz and R&B music. Instruments
that play important roles in certain rock-music genres include the saxophone –
prominent in jazz-rock and soul music – and a wide assortment of traditional
instruments used in worldbeat music. The microphone also functions as a mu-
sical instrument for many rock singers, who rely upon the amplification and
various effects (such as echo) obtainable through electronic means.
Rock music also shares more complex technical aspects. Most rock mu-
sic is based on the same harmonies as Western music, especially the chords
known as tonic, subdominant, and dominant. The chord progression (series of
chords) known as the 12-bar blues is based on these chords and has figured
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prominently in certain styles, especially rock and roll, soul music, and south-
ern rock. Other common harmonic devices include the use of a drone, or pedal
point (a single pitch sustained through a progression of chords), and the paral-
lel movement of chords, derived from a technique on the electric guitar known
as bar-chording. Many elements of African American music have been a con-
tinuing source of influence on rock music. These characteristics include riffs
(repeated patterns), backbeats (emphasizing the second and fourth beats of
each measure), call-and-response patterns, blue notes (the use of certain bent-
sounding pitches, especially those related to the third and fifth degrees of a
musical scale), and dense buzzy-sounding timbres, or tone colors.
The musical form of rock music varies. Rock and roll of the late 1950s
relied heavily upon 12-bar blues and 32-bar song forms. Some rock bands of
the late 1960s experimented with more flexible, open-ended forms, and some
rock bands of the 1970s developed suite forms derived from classical music.
Another important formal development in rock music has been the so-called
concept album, a succession of musical pieces tied together by a loose narra-
tive theme.
Much rock music is performed at high volume levels, so the music has
been closely tied to developments in electronic technology. Rock musicians
have pioneered new studio recording techniques, such as multi-tracking – a
process of recording different song segments at different times and layering
them on top of one another – and digital sampling, the reproduction by a com-
puter of the patterns of a particular sound. Rock concerts, typically huge
events involving thousands of audience members, often feature high-tech the-
atrical stage effects, including synchronized lighting.
Notes:
1. a drone – гудение, гул, жужжание, шум;
2. riff – небольшая ритмическая фигура, часто служащая сопровож-
дением к сольной импровизации (в джазе);
3. flexible – гибкий;
narrative theme – повествовательная тема;
4.
5. burry-sounding timber – жужжащий тембр.
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ROCK AND YOUTH CULTURE
One way rock marked itself off from other popular musical forms so
it was in its constant pursuit of new sounds and new sound devices.
This pursuit of the new can be linked to rock's central sociological char-
acteristic, its association with youth. In the 1950s and early 1960s this was a
simple market equation: rock and roll was played by young musicians for
young audiences and addressed young people's interests. It was therefore dis-
missed by many in the music industry as a passing novelty, “bubblegum”, akin
to the yo-yo or the hula hoop. But by the mid-1960s youth had become an
ideological category that referred to a particular kind of hedonism, individual-
ism, and modernism. Whereas youth once referred to high-school students, it
came to include college students. Moreover, rock became multifunctional –
dance and party music on the one hand, a matter of serious attention and inti-
mate expression on the other. As rock spread globally this had different impli-
cations in different countries, but in general it allowed rock to continue to de-
fine itself as youthful even as its performers and listeners grew up and settled
down.
Notes:
1. pursuit – поиск, стремление;
2. hedonism – филос. гедонизм; жизнелюбие, жажда наслаждений,
удовольствие;
3. multifunctional – многофункциональный.
ROCK AND ROLL
The first type of rock music, rock and roll, originated in the United
States in the 1950s, and was largely derived from music of the American
South. Rock and roll was a combination of the R&B style, the gospel-
influenced vocal-group style, the piano-blues style known as boogie-woogie,
and the country-music style known as honky tonk.
During the 1950s the term rock and roll was actually a synonym for
black R&B music. Rock and roll was first released by small, independent re-
96
cord companies and promoted by radio disc jockeys (DJs) like Alan Freed,
who used the term rock 'n' roll to help attract white audiences unfamiliar with
black R&B. Indeed, the appeal of rock and roll to white middle-class teenag-
ers was immediate and caught the major record companies by surprise. As
these companies moved to capitalize on the popularity of the style, the market
was fueled by cover versions (performances of previously recorded songs) of
R&B songs that were edited for suggestive lyrics and expressions and per-
formed in the singing style known as crooning, by white vocalists. The most
successful rock-and-roll artists wrote and performed songs about love, sexual-
ity, identity crises, personal freedom, and other issues that were of particular
interest to teenagers.
The group Bill Haley and the Comets had the first big rock-and-roll hit
with the song “Rock Around the Clock” (1955).
The golden age of rock and roll, which lasted only five years, from 1955
to 1959, is exemplified by the recordings of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little
Richard, and Buddy Holly. By the early 1960s, the popular music industry was
assembling professional songwriters, hired studio musicians, and teenage
crooners to mass-produce songs that imitated late-1950s rock and roll. In the
early 1960s professional songwriters in Manhattan and New York produced
numerous hit songs, many of which were recorded by female ensembles
known as girl groups. Also during this period, the role of the record producer
was expanded by Phil Spector, a producer who created hits by using elaborate
studio techniques in a dense orchestral approach.
Notes:
1. crooning style – зд. стиль «тихое пение»; тихо и проникновенно (с
чувством) исполнять популярные песни перед микрофоном;
2. crooner – эстрадный певец, шансонье;
3. disc jockey – диск-жокей, ди-джей – ведущий
музыкальных про-
грамм по радио, телевидению или в дискотеке;
4. boogie-woogie – буги-вуги – фортепьянный стиль джаза. Для него
характерен неизменный ритм на басах и вариации на музыкальную
тему на высоких тонах. Приобрел популярность в 1930-е годы.
97
The 1960s
In 1964 the Beatles traveled to New York City to appear on a television
broadcast and launched the so-called British Invasion. Influenced by American recordings, British pop bands of the period invigorated the popular music
mainstream and confirmed the international stature of rock music. Soon, several British groups had developed individual distinctive styles: the Beatles
combined the guitar-based rock and roll of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly
with the artistry of the Tin Pan Alley style; the Rolling Stones joined aspects
of Chicago blues to their intense, forceful music.
As with early rock and roll, the major American record companies did
not take the British bands seriously at first – the Beatles' first hit singles in the
United States were released through small, independent record companies.
Soon, however, the success of the British bands became too difficult to ignore,
and some American musicians reacted by developing their own styles. In 1965
Bob Dylan performed live and in-studio with a band that played electric instruments. The short-lived group Buffalo Springfield, formed in 1966, blended
aspects of rock and country-and-western music to create country rock.
During the late 1960s, rock music diversified further into new styles
while consolidating its position in the mainstream of American popular music.
The Beatles' 1967 album, the first rock concept album, established new standards for studio recording and helped to establish the notion of the rock musician as a creative artist. Once again, American musicians responded to the
British musical stimulus by experimenting with new forms, technologies, and
stylistic influences.
In the late 1960s hard rock emerged, focusing on thick layers of sound,
loud volume levels, and virtuoso guitar solos. In London, American Jimi
Hendrix developed a highly influential electric-guitar style. His fiery technique gained exposure at the first large-scale rock festivals in the United
States, Monterey Pop (1967) and Woodstock (1969).
Notes:
1. intense – сильный, интенсивный;
2. forceful music – сильная, убедительная музыка;
3. Woodstock music festival – "Вудсток", Вудстокский фестиваль Фес-
тиваль рок-музыки, состоявшийся
15-17 августа 1969 на ферме не-
далеко от городка Бетел, шт. Нью-Йорк (первоначально планиро-
вался в поселке Вудсток). Стал кульминационным событием эпохи
контркультуры. В нем приняли участие самые знаменитые рок-
группы и исполнители того времени, в том числе Дж. Хендрикс, К.
Сантана. Фестиваль стал актом протеста против войны во Вьетна-
ме
и истеблишмента страны. На поляне, где проходил фестиваль,
палаточный городок разбили около 450 тыс. человек, преимущественно молодых людей [flower people]. Фестиваль проходил под
98
проливным дождем; отсутствие какой-либо серьезной организации
привело к пробкам на дорогах, антисанитарии и к дефициту продуктов питания в окрестных магазинах. В 1994 был проведен фестиваль "Вудсток-94", собравший многих известных музыкантов, но
он носил уже явно коммерческий характер.
The 1970s
In the early 1970s the popular mainstream was dominated by superstar
rock groups, such as the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and by individual superstars, such as Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Each of these groups and individual artists produced multiple albums, each of which sold millions of copies,
pushing the industry to operate at a new scale.
At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, the heavy-metal style was
pioneered by bands Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and
Deep Purple, all of
which featured aggressive guitar solos. Art rock, represented by bands such as
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, combined influences from classical music and
displays of technical skill with spectacular stage shows. Glitter rock, or glam
rock, cultivated a decadent image complete with such musicians as David
Bowie and Marc Bolan wearing heavy makeup and sequined costumes and
presenting themselves as sexually androgynous. The 1970s also saw the development of funk, a variant of soul music that was influenced by rock.
About 1976 punk rock originated in New York City and London as a
reaction against the commercialism of mainstream rock. As a movement of
disaffected youth of the late 1970s, manifesting itself in fashions and music
designed to shock or intimidate. Punk-rock music was raw, aggressive, and
fast often within a three-chord, three-minute format as exemplified by British
punk group the Sex Pistols. The punk movement also brought more women
into rock and was generally antiracist and antiestablishment.
Also in the mid-1970s, reggae music – developed by musicians in the
shantytowns of Kingston, Jamaica – began to attract attention among youth in
Great Britain and the United States. The style, associated with political protest
and the Rastafarian religion, combined elements of Jamaican folk music with
American R&B influences. The superstar of the style was Bob Marley, who
by the time of his death in 1981 had become one of the most popular musicians in the world.
Notes:
1. heavy make-up – «тяжелый» (яркий) макияж;
2. androgynous – женоподобный (о мужчине), двуполый;
3. glitter rock – глиттер-рок – рок-музыка в исполнении мужчин, пе-
реодетых в женскую одежду;
99
4. funk – фанк – сильно ритмизованный, чувственный музыкальный
стиль, идущий от блюза – первоначально в джазе, а затем в поп-
музыке, где из него возник в 70-х танцевальный "диско".
The 1980s
Other mainstream rock hits of the 1980s came from a group of charismatic artists, each of whom attracted mass-audience followings extending
across traditional social boundaries. During the 1980s the audience for heavy
metal expanded from its original white-male, working-class core to include
more middle-class fans, both male and female. By the end of the decade,
heavy-metal bands, such as AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica, accounted
for as much as 40 percent of all sound recordings sold in the United States.
Another genre of rock music, labeled alternative rock, rejected the
heavy marketing and video-driven culture of the 1980s. In general, alternative
rock bands recorded for independent labels, played in small clubs, and maintained a defiant stance toward the conformity and commercialism of the music
industry.
Perhaps the most significant rock-music development of the 1980s was
the rise of rap, a genre in which vocalists perform rhythmic speech, usually
accompanied by music snippets, or samples, from prerecorded material or
from music created by synthesizers. Rap originated in the mid-1970s in the
South Bronx community of New York City and was initially associated with a
cultural movement called hip-hop, which included acrobatic dancing (known
as break dancing) and graffiti art. DJs experimented with innovative turntable
techniques, including switching between multiple discs; back-spinning, or rotating the disc by hand in order to repeat particular phrases; and scratching,
moving the phonograph needle across vinyl record grooves to create rhythmic
sound effects.
The first rap records were made in 1979 by small, independent record
companies. Although rap artists had national hits during the early 1980s, rap
music did not enter the popular music mainstream until 1986, when rappers
Run-DMC and the hard-rock band Aerosmith collaborated on a version of the
song “Walk This Way,” creating a new audience for rap among white, suburban, middle-class rock fans.
Notes:
1. snippet – отрывок, фрагмент;
2. sample – модель, шаблон;
3. multiple discs – многочисленные диски.
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