It's a truism that BOTH BLACK AND WHITE artists had their place in the history of rock
and roll. Still, as Jack Hamilton, a literary historian, reveals in this article: Rock and Roll and
the Ethnic Imagination, absolutely nothing more is clear or decided about the racial
composition of culture. From Little Richard and Chuck Berry to the Dominoes, Ike Turner, and
Howlin 'Wolf, the founding figures of rock and roll were African American, but "rock" is coded
white as we know and hear it today. The long history of rock from a raucous offshoot of black
party music to a lavishly crafted, esthetically optimistic, and safely white art form "is a story
of the forced marriage of musical and racial ideology" in Hamilton's story.
According to Hamilton, rock ideology is an ideology of legitimacy first and foremost:
it delineates what constitutes "real" rock music, including who is allowed to play the music
and who is authorized to listen to it and speak about it. Playing and experiencing rock music
since the 1960s has provided new ways to be a "real" white person, most often a white man,
and a white American in many quarters. Rather than anything, Rock and roll embraced selfexpression and creativity. Society was traditional and hyper-focused on survival during the
wartime years.
Yet people were encouraged to accept originality and independence, due to rock and
roll. The sort of tv programs they watched, the kind of clothing they began to wear, and even
their type of dance is easily visible in these ideals.
Integration is one of the most positive shifts rock and roll brought to American society.
In its earlier years, while rock and roll were primarily white, it soon enough accepted
individuals of various races. Many individuals will even claim that rock and roll has blues and
jazz origins, styles that in the Black American community became so common. The rock and
roll parallels between those styles may have been the impetus for unification.
Ultimately, both sides found some parallels to each other. A big step in overcoming
racial barriers was to find something to share and appreciate with each other.