BTEC Music (Performing) Unit 30 Pop Music in Practice

Summer Task: The Main Genres of Popular Music since the 1950s

Genre Descriptions: Guidance and Exemplar

Common Problems:

  • Insufficient detail: this is usually a result of getting to the 15th genre and having had enough! Just go for a walk, come back and focus……..
  • Too much detail: this is not an under graduate level written piece: we need a brief overview of each genre. They shouldn’t ever need to be much longer than in the exemplar material below
  • Going outside the era: many of the genres listed continue into future eras or originated in earlier eras. You must try to restrict your descriptions to the era in question. For example, country music is still very popular today but for this task you are only asked to describe country music as it was in the 1950s. Google searches for something like “country music in the 1950s” might be beneficial
  • Over stating and not qualifying statements: Words like “generally”, “usually” and “often” will help you to avoid this.

Look at the exemplar material below: notice that just about all statements are qualified eg “Rhythm and Blues in the 1950s was predominately music played by and for African-Americans”. If the word “predominately” was left out, the statement would be incorrect as there are a few examples of white non-Americans playing rhythm and blues in the 1950s eg Alexis Korner in the UK.

Genre / Description
Country / Country music in the 1950s was a generally simple genre based mostly on white American folk music. It tended to make use of simple song structures and chords and lyrically was generally about universal issues like love, alcohol and cheating.
Rhythm and blues / Rhythm and blues in the ‘50s was music predominately played by and for African-Americans. It was primarily based around a 12-bar blues format and made much use of improvised instrumental and vocal lines
Rock n Roll / Rock n Roll is generally considered to be the most popular and revolutionary music of the 1950s. It was often simple and made much use of the 12-bar blues format with improvised solos on guitar, piano or saxophone. Lyrically it was aimed very much at teenagers with many songs about love, dancing and cars.