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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
other genre's, funk, ska, reggae, eetc, while sharing instrumentation with rock and cohabitating with rock, are not about the riff.
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They are. They're just played mainly on bass rather than guitar. And if you're saying it's all about the guitar riff, then what about Jerry Lee or Little Richard? There may be formal differences in how those riffs are played but a reliance on them definitely isn't what separates RnR from funk, or reggae, or ska. For all their differences, it's their emphasis on simple repetitive riffs that, if anything,
unites them.
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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
rock n roll was started by african americans.
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I always thought RnR was a product of an African-American tradition coming together with a hillbilly/country one that had its roots in European folk - going back to stuff like shanties. The argument that people like Elvis simply stole 'black music' for a white audience is true in some ways (mainly in terms of marketing) but ignores the musical history of European settlers in America, and the different conditions that informed their culture. A song like It's Alright Mama isn't just a simple continuation of the Blues tradition, even though there are obviously key elements of it in there. And many of its other influences (yodeling, shanties, etc) predate the blues/jazz tradition.