How Useful Is Peterson’s Production Of Culture Perspective In Understanding The Birth Of Rock and Roll?

According to Peterson, the six factors that shaped the emergence of rock and roll music in the 1950s range from the copyright law passed in 1909, the invention of vinyl records in the late 1940s through to the transistor radio and its effects on the American Youth.

Peterson explains how the transistor gave the American Youth the chance to listen to their own music away from their parents for the first time. He also explains how radio presenters began to transform into DJs trying to sell the station by making their own unique personalities. However Peterson fails to mention Rock music itself. How simple guitar rifts made it easy for budding musicians to play, unlike R&B and Jazz. He also fails to mention how the instruments had changed so dramatically in a short space of time, giving Rock its own unique sound, constituting the reader to question other factors in the birth of Rock and Roll.   

What Is Popular Music?

The term 'popular' has changed its meaning throughout the centuries. In the 16th Century it was used as a term meaning, 'low or base, vulgar, of the common people.' During the 18th Century it became a meaning for 'widely favoured', and theorist Anahid Kassabian classes 'popular' as 'the art and culture of the people.' 

With these terms in mind it becomes hard to classify what popular music is. It doesn't have to mean one genre of music, such as Pop music or a certain type of band for example, girl and boy bands. Popular music in my opinion signifies the music that is liked by a group of people, how ever large that group may be. As Ray Shuker suggests, 'all popular music consists of a hybrid of musical traditions, styles and influences, and is also an economic product which is invested with ideological significance by many of its consumers.'