Crossover Music
Music flows through musicians, the music they produce is a product of all of the music they love and listened to growing up and the musicians they were influenced by. In that way, music acts as a filter; the aspects of music which are no longer relevant, or have become “old fashioned” are culled out. With this in mind there are subtle variations of certain musical styles that are timeless, the music we listen to now can easily be described as descending from a combination of slave chants and folk music, mixing the two in various quantities gets you anything from rap to rock to folk music.
Robert Johnson was a blues musician in the late 1920’s. Growing up poor he played harmonica and was interested in music, but had no means to take up an instrument with any real conviction (as compared to Miles Davis for instance, who came from an upper middle class family and went to Juilliard). When he was still a young man, in his late teens, he disappeared. He told his family he was going west to learn how to play the guitar. The story goes that he went to a crossroads at midnight and the devil came up behind him and handed him the guitar.
By taking it he sold his soul.
Whatever supposedly happened during his time away, he came back to Mississippi with a powerful command of Blues guitar, and would go on to be as great an influence as future guitarists Hendrix or Clapton (who have cited him as one of their greatest influences). It should be mentioned that he never settled down, many of his songs are haunting stories about his upcoming death and his fleeing the devil, such as Up Jumped the Devil, Hellhound on my Trail, Me & the Devil, and he did die completely insane and howling about the devil coming to get him in a psychiatric ward at the young (and ominous) age of 27.
Johnson was a contemporary of Howlin Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, yet it was he that made the most lasting impression. Hendrix, Clapton, Stones, Led Zeppelin, they all cite Johnson as an influence.
But why?
Robert Johnson, while a consummate bluesman was also a crossover artist, willing to play Jazz, Country and ironically spirituals.
After hundreds of years of traditional classical music, a revolution was started by a Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky was very heavily influenced by ragtime, a precursor to blues (which is a precursor to jazz, which is a precursor to rock and roll and hip hop and arguably techno for that matter) which was known for its complex and upbeat rhythm structure. Perhaps the most well-known piece of ragtime music still being played is “the saints” with its familiar lyrics of “oh when the saints go marching in, lord how I want, to be in that number, oh when the saints go marching in.” Stravinsky was a fan of this sort of big band ragtime music, and applied it, strangely enough to an opera about Russian folk customs (specifically some, shall we say, “graphic” fertility rituals).
When “The Right of Spring” was first played at the Champs-Elysees Theater in Paris it caused a riot.
However, it served to introduce a whole new*, revolutionary, musical style to a generation of European classical musicians, who took it and ran with it.
*An earlier European composer, one Claude Debussy, did have a number of experimental works that arguably influenced jazz musicians, but his work in that area was very one directional, as opposed to Stravinsky who was both influenced by, and had an influence on, ragtime/swing music.
Rock & Roll
Elvis Prestley, in 1954 played a song called “That’s allright (mama)” and invented rock & roll. The song was written by a black musician name Arthur Crudup, sang by Elvis, and the whole genre came into existence on the spot. It’s not that black musicians weren’t playing that type of music before, but they weren’t playing it for mainstream audiences, and it took Elvis to make that crossover.
The next big transition was the Beatles, who were able to take an existing form of music, Rock & Roll, which at the time was fading into obsolescence, in part due to the sad and untimely deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in 1959. Up to that point, they had been some of the few non-manufactured rock & roll musicians (as opposed to Richie Valens, whose image was completely manufactured assembly line style) to be relevant as innovators. So, as the song goes, in 1959 was “The day the music died” but not to fear, in 1960, who should come along but the Beatles.
Beatle-mania “officially” hit the States in 1964, but they were fantastically popular in Britain since 1960. When they came over the united states they brought with them a style of music unheard until then: rock, but more importantly, psychedelic rock. Their innovation in bringing together all of the cultural memes (sitar, references to sex, drug use) was not only popular with the “in” crowd who were already listening to the Yardbirds (featuring Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame, as well as another rock god: Mr. Eric Clapton), and in 65 the Grateful Dead.
The Beatles did not so much create the Rolling Stones as it did make it possible for there to be a Rolling Stones by creating a market hungry for music similar to the Beatles, but a little harder, edgier. Eventually, of course, this led (pun intended) to Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin
Arguably the most important rock group in history, Zeppelin kept rock from becoming obsolete through a constant innovative drive. Influenced by (and influential to!) blues, folk, rock & roll, reggae, soul, funk, Celtic the Zep that ended their career with bluesy hits like No Quarter shows no resemblance to the Zep that made such pop rock hits as “good times bad times” (although even on their first album you could feel the blues influence with “Dazed and Confused”).
And of course, there’s Stairway to Heaven.
That’s all that needs to be said for the Zep: Stairway.
Of course, the Zep is responsible for a divergence in rock music; in the form of their invention (!!) of heavy metal, and of course for their stage antics and big hair, which had the terribly unfortunate side effect of creating 80’s rock (such teeth rotting “artists” as Journey, White Snake, Quiet Riot, Striper, The Scorpions, Motley Crue, and, of course, Van Halen). Thankfully 80’s rock is called that because it briefly thrived in the 80’s then was mercifully put down.
Hip Hop
Rap was born from gospel, spirituals and upbeat choruses. It was originally upbeat and celebrated community and unity but quickly moved to a more accurate representation of inner city struggles with Curtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaata, the latter of which was very heavily influenced by the synthesized and dance sounds of disco. At a time when popular rock was quickly changing from the trashy 80’s hair bands and a new style of music was coming out of Seattle in the form of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, Hip Hip caught on in the mainstream thanks to the musical efforts of aggressive, socially conscious and borderline heavy metal rap groups like Public Enemy (oddly enough, Flavor Flav once stood for something besides bad taste). Driven by instrumental beats, not so very different from a faster passed version of Stravinsky, these musicians were able to cross the border into music that, like rock and jazz, could be enjoyed by everyone; even people who in fact had nothing in common with the musicians.
However, what really made Hip Hop come to the masses were The Beastie Boys, a perfect example of musicians who not only embraced the crossover, but perfected it.
The Beasties were founded in ‘79 as a punk rock group, but only achieved a high level of success after merging punk with the music they were surrounded by in 1980’s New York: Hip Hop.
I think that fundamentally music moves at such a dynamic pace that it becomes difficult for a musician to achieve success/fame/fortune if they only perform within one musical style. One rapper is all rappers, one rock singer is all singers, but combine the two and you get Zach de la Rocha, of the tremendously important Rage Against the Machine. It is the in between singers that can accomplish the most, the ones that get into the music business because they don’t want to be in a “business” but want to perform and innovate.
