CLEVELAND, Ohio – There’s a common thread that comes with the headlines announcing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2021.
You could probably pick and choose elements from that definition that benefit whatever side of the argument you sit on.
The origins of rock and roll date back to the late 1940s.
From its inception, rock and roll was an expansive genre that pushed boundaries, defied classification and influenced various aspects of popular culture, from fashion to politics to language.
The rock and roll pioneers of the 1950s took elements of other genres, especially blues, to create something refreshing and edgier, but still a lot of fun.
Fats Domino, Pete Johnson, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and other artists had just as much to say about the genre’s formation as Berry.
If you can’t draw line from blues – an art form whose origins date back to the 16th-century slave trade – to the music of Tupac Shakur, Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, you’re not looking hard enough.
If rock and roll is the trunk of the tree and genres like blues, jazz, gospel and country the roots, hip hop rightfully takes its place in the branches alongside genres like heavy metal, punk, new wave, alternative and progressive.
Rock and roll was built around the downbeat as something you could dance to.
For all the criticism it gets, the beauty of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is that it’s remained true to the origins of rock and roll even if some of the fans got lost along the way.
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