Trent Hill

Parents and other authority figures found several reasons to fear rock and roll in its early years. These opponents to rock music believed that the beat and lyrics encouraged premarital and extramarital intercourse; censorship of "off—color" songs became commonplace. Trent Hill asserts that many white middleclass Americans were threatened by the influence of African American music on white musicians and teenagers and also believed that rock and roll concerts encouraged teen violence. Hill is a musician and former professor of English at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.

ROCK & ROLL MUSIC ESTABLISHED SOCIAL CONtexts in which subterranean social forces could assert themselves, find an outlet for expression, and resolve their various antagonisms (or, perhaps, reinforce these antagonisms). Just as all of these forces were not "progressive," neither were all of these resolutions. But that...