I Was So Much Older Then Folk Revival into Rock ’n’ Roll

• Published in: Right to the Juke Joint p. 116
• Main Author: Mullen, Patrick B
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of Illinois Press 04.05.2018
• Subjects: African Americans; American minorities; Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Artists; Arts; Behavioral sciences; Country music; Cultural anthropology; Economic disciplines; Economics; Employment; Ethnic groups; Ethnology; Folk art; Folk culture; Folk music; Folk revivals; Folkloristics; Folksongs; Labor economics; Music; Music genres; Musicians; Occupations; Performing arts; Political activism; Political processes; Political protests; Political science; Politics; Popular music; Popular songs; Protest songs; Rock music; Singers
• ISBN: 9780252041648; 025204164X

The emergence of the folk music revival and the invention of rock ’n’ roll overlapped in the late forties and early fifties, and both had elements of revival because of the need for a new identity among American teenagers rebelling against everything their parents’ generation stood for. Identifying with folk and rock music was a way of rejecting middle-class white values and romanticizing white and black working-class folk. Although I liked the folk songs I heard in the late 1940s and early 1960s, I was too young for them to have any effect on my identity; that came later with