by Charles Crane

Created on: April 05, 2009

The duty of popular music has always been to act as a mirror reflecting its audience. Nowhere was this more evident than in the 1960s, when the Baby Boomers came of age and gave rise to an explosion of youth-oriented music that reflected their dissatisfaction with cultural norms. This musical revolution led to the creation of a counter-culture, but also affected mainstream culture by highlighting an opposing viewpoint on such issues as civil rights and the Vietnam War. The major genres in this movement were rock, folk, R&B, and soul.

To a large extent, rock music in the 1960s started with The Beatles' first visit to America in February 1964. Arriving less than 3 months after JFK's assassination, the Beatles' popularity can be partially explained as a relief to the tension after a great national tragedy, but their charisma and energy also brought back the joy of 1950s rock and roll music (which was lost after Buddy Holly's death and Elvis Presley's enlistment in the Army). Their long hair, at first considered a novelty, was imitated so much that it represented a dramatic shift from the cultural norm of crew-cuts. Furthermore, they wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, essentially creating the modern image of a rock band and inspiring a wave of American garage bands and opening the floodgates for more British rock bands (such as The Rolling Stones) to find success in America. This army of rock bands had a largely anti-authoritarian viewpoint, challenging its audience to question the powers that be. As the sixties progressed, many bands also began experimenting with drugs openly; this development coincided with the advent of the hippie movement and indicated that rock music and underground culture were developing symbiotically. In 1968, as the turbulence of culture reached a boiling point, rock began taking on a more explicitly political tone; even traditionally apolitical groups like the Beatles and the Stones began exploring ideas about rioting and revolt in singles like "Revolution" and "Street Fighting Man". By the end of the sixties, however, the dark side of the countercultural lifestyle that rock music inspired was revealed with the Beatles-inspired Manson killings and the Stones' concert with a body count at Altamont. The Beatles' breakup in 1970 marked a fitting epitaph to the idealism of sixties youth culture.

Folk music had a markedly older, typically college-educated audience, and its politics were much more evident from the start.

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