Rock is Dead. Long Live Hip Hop?

Through a recommendation, I've been reading a lot of Bob Lefsetz recently. This isn't really related to any of his newsletters, but it's a conglomeration of musical thought that has been running through my brain this past week. Maybe because I've been thinking about music's place and progression as inspired by Mr. Lefsetz all these abstract ideas have been floating around. Who knows if it will actually make sense...

Our community meets weekly for a critical listening session. We talk about rock 'n' roll's history, key artists whose emergence gradually influenced music as it is today, and sometimes about where music is going. I was thinking about how rock has slowly died out and how I wasn't even around for the death rattle. Instead, it is the era of urban music, rap music. My thirteen-year-old brother abhors The Beatles but loves any hip-hop artist he hears.

And this disturbs me on a certain level. Will this generation of a-la-carte music purchases and Guitar Heroes forget rock 'n' roll altogether? Will the next great era of music be shaped by the history of hip hop, or will it fade out like the 80s scene? Will my brother's generation discuss the dichotomy of sampling and remixes instead of guitar riffs and bass lines? As the music dilutes into sub-genre after sub-genre, will it become edgier than ever and rock 'n' roll become analogous to the Lawrence Welk of our grandparents?

I thrive off of rock 'n' roll and to tell you the truth don't know the history of urban music quite as well. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the genre, but would love to dig deeper into its roots. I've looked on the 60s and 70s too long and ignored my current era. Perhaps my children will ask me one day what I was doing when important rap albums dropped or hip hop exploded onto the scene as I question my parents about Woodstock. To not have good answers for these hypothetical offspring daunts me.

Who knows where the industry is going? Hip hop and rap could die out in five years, but I don't think so. On the other extreme, it could go the other direction. A good friend predicted once that he saw urban music spawning its own dialect in another eighty years. It will probably pan out to be somewhere in the middle. At any rate, I hope rock makes another appearance on the scene. It deserves to see another day.