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Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in 195 0s America and developed into

a range of different styles in the 1960s and later , particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States.[1][2][3] It has its roots in 1940s' and 1950s' rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm an d blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other ge nres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical an d other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a ro ck group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has beco me extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide varie ty of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The domi nance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors s haping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasi s on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop mu sic. By the late 1960s, referred to as the "golden age"[1] or "classic rock"[2] perio d, a number of distinct rock music sub-genres had emerged, including hybrids lik e blues rock, folk rock, country rock, and jazz-rock fusion, many of which contr ibuted to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. New genres that emerged from this scene included progressive rock, which extended the artistic elements; glam rock, which highlighted showma nship and visual style; and the diverse and enduring major sub-genre of heavy me tal, which emphasized volume, power and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by overt political and social critiq ues. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of other sub-genres, including New Wave, post-punk and eventually the alternative rock m ovement. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Furt her fusion sub-genres have since emerged, including pop punk, rap rock, and rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the ga rage rock/post-punk and synthpop revivals at the beginning of the new millennium . Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social m ovements, leading to major sub-cultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1 960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and em o subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt ag ainst adult consumerism and conformity.

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