What the video falls to realize however, is that rock 'n' roll wasn't America's first "rebel" music. Not even close. That would be jazz. Check out these quotes from a 2000 PBS article on a then-upcoming Jazz broadcast.
When the new sound of jazz first spread across America in the early twentieth-century, it left delight and controversy in its wake. The more popular it became, the more the liberating and sensuous music was criticized by everyone and everything from carmaker Henry Ford to publications like the Ladies Home Journal and The New York Times. Yet jazz survived.And ...
Jazz was different because it broke the rules -- musical and social. It featured improvisation over traditional structure, performer over composer, and black American experience over conventional white sensibilities.Perhaps what we are seeing with EDM - especially if it grows into the mainstream - is the opposite of jazz. Not so much in race, as EDM is more white than black, or in structure - as EDM can be very much improv - but in the performer versus composer battle. EDM is more about the composition than the performance. Sure, some concerts have lights and smoke and other gimmicks, but the eyes are not on the performer as much as the environment. While Jazz turned the bandleader into the center of attention, who stared at Mozart while the orchestra was playing? Interestingly, I recently saw this Disney cartoon from 1935 depicting a contemporary for the time Jazz vs Classical battle. While the Simpsons recently re-made it, I wonder how it would go if remade by Rolling Stone Italy.
