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Styles of Popular Music

Music is truly the one universal language. Although all cultures have music, each culture develops its own musical forms and styles. In particular, music varies from culture to culture and from generation to generation. In the past 100 years or so, there has been an explosion of popular music styles in the west. Three of the most successful styles are reggae, punk, and rap. ( The Thesis Statement)

One successful style of popular music is reggae, which was born on the Caribbean island of Jamaica in the 1960s and spread throughout the world in the 1970s. (topic Sentence) Reggae developed from a kind of Afro-Caribbean music called mento, which was sung and played on guitars and drums. Some musicians changed mento into a music style called ska by adding a hesitation beat. A few years later, others musicians changed ska and reggae was born. Reggae’s special sound comes from reversing the roles of the instruments: The guitar plays the rhythm, and the bass plays the melody. An important influence on reggae music was Rastafarian cult. The Rastafarians added unusual sound mixes, extra-slow tempos, strange lyrics, and mystical-political-themes. The best-known reggae musician was the late Bob Marley. Well-known groups are Toots & the Maytals, Burning Spear, and Steel Pulse. Reggae has influenced later styles of popular music, including punk and rap.

A second successful style of popular music is punk.(topic sentence) Punk is a style of rock music that began in the mid-1970s as a reaction against previous forms of rock. Punks felt that rock music no longer represented the counterculture from which it had sprung and had, in fact, sold out to the mainstream culture. With their clothing and hairstyles, punks intended to shock society. The “punk look” included spike hairdos, theatrical makeup, ripped clothing, body piercings, and jewelry made from objects, such as razor blades and safety pins. The onstage behavior was aggressive and provocative. At concerts, fighting and other violent behavior by the fans were common occurrences. Punk music itself is simple (often just three chords), and its songs are short (rarely more than three minutes long). Its songs are anti-government, anti-authority, and anti-conformity. The first bands to popularize punk were the Sex Pistols and Clash in Great Britain and the Ramones in the United States. As with all music styles, punk has evolved into other styles. Groups such as the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag play hardcore punk, which is a faster and louder punk style. The band Fall Out Boy plays emo, a style in which the musicians become so emotional during the performance that they scream and cry.

Pop punk, made popular by the group Green Day, is another punk style.

A third successful style of popular music is rap, which is also called hip-hop.(TS)

Rap is a type of dance music in which the singers-rappers-speak in rhythm and rhyme than sing. The art of rapping originated in Africa and probably travel to the United States via Jamaica, where it is known as toasting. In the United States, rap first appeared in the mid-1970s in the discos of New York City’s black neighborhoods. Disco DJs teamed up with rappers to play songs for dancers at parties.

At first, the role of the rapper was to keep the beat going with the hand claps while the DJ changed records. Soon, rappers added lyrics, slogans, rhymes, and call-and-response exchanges with the audience, and rap was born. Early rap songs were mainly about dancing, partying, and the romantic adventures of the rappers, but politics became

an important theme in rap in the late 1980s and 1090s. Most rappers are young black

males, but there have been female rappers such as Queen Latifah and white rappers

such as the Beastie Boys and Eminem.

To sum up, popular music changes constantly. New styles are born, grow, change, and produce offshoots, which in turn grow, change, and produce offshoots. Some styles enjoy lasting popularity, but others disappear rather quickly. However, all contribute to the Power and excitement of popular music in our time.