as much American as African (I can’t help but recall that Lenin saw “American electrification” as one of the elements of the future society). The synthesis that emerged is part of what country-rocker Webb Wilder insightfully called “Afro-Celtic” culture. The formulation needs both expansion and narrowing. On the one hand, what Wilder is after is the synthesis of the storytelling traditions and tunefulness of the British Isles (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales) with the story-telling traditions and rhythms of African and African American peoples. On the other hand, the influence of the Isles has been rewoven and distilled by its transplantation to a particular swath of the American South, namely Appalachia. So, perhaps we should speak of both rock music and many other distinctively American contributions to culture as having its basis in “Afro-Appalachian” culture. It turns out that what emerged from this cultural cauldron has been remarkably and improbably generous and synthetic—out of this mixture has emerged the first true “world music.”
In rock music from Chuck Berry to now, from roots rock to world music, the bass and drums have provided an anchor. In much rock music, this occurs in a somewhat formulaic way: the bass is there to “lay down the bottom,” while the drums are there to “keep the beat.” Perhaps another way of coming at this is that rock music begins as dance music. “If its got a backbeat you can’t lose it”; but what if it doesn’t have a backbeat? Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, we can still take this moment to mark out three distinct differences between rock and roll and progressive rock; setting these differences out will help us see the developments that unfolded between the fifties and the late sixties. First, in progressive rock, the bass and drums are often not playing the traditional roles. In particular, progressive rock is generally not “dance music,” and the “rhythm section” is often just as much in the forefront as any of the other instruments. Second, the electric guitar is no longer at the center of things; it continues to play an important role (except, of course, in those bands that do not use the instrument), but this is in a situation of relative parity with keyboards, wind instruments, violins, and what have you—including the occasional sackbut or crumhorn (Gryphon) or space whisper (Gong)—as well as acoustic steel-string and classical guitars. Third, there is a shifting of the cultural balance back toward Europe, as well as an expansion outwards toward Asia and (to a lesser extent until more recent years) Latin America. At any rate, it can certainly be argued that progressive rock is less “Black” than most of the rest of rock music (with the possible exception of heavy metal).
Whether this necessarily makes it more “white,” however, is a question I will leave for further exploration. What I will insist on, regardless of the answer to this question, is that the development of rock music up through progressive rock, and not merely around it, is what gives us the rich possibilities of rock music today. (Leave aside, for the moment, the commercial and technological forces that presently stand in the way of these possibilities.) In the fifties, composer and educator Gunther Schuller (president for many years of the New England Conservatory of Music) theorized the possibility of “Third Stream” music, which he saw as emanating especially from a synthesis of European classical music and jazz. In some sense, this Third Stream was already fully present in works such as George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha, and Duke Ellington’s various “suites” and other large-scale, symphonic works (e.g., Black, Brown, and Beige from the 1943 Carnegie Hall Concert). As full-blown synthesis, however, I would argue that we do not see the real emergence of the Third Stream until the development of progressive rock—because it was at this point that rock emerged as the first true “world music.” And this is why, in more recent years, we have seen the development of the genre that is called by this name.
Indeed, if Third Stream music represents the synthesis of European harmony and counterpoint with non-Western rhythms, timbres, and tonalities, then perhaps experimental and progressive rock brings us to the “fourth stream” by incorporating the electric and electronic timbres and recording possibilities of the post-WWII period.
What might be the essence of, shall we say, “protoprogressive rock,” that is, the trend that led to the emergence of progressive rock in the late sixties? I would identify two elements in particular.
First, there is a continuation, or perhaps a continual restatement, of what might be considered to be the “underground” element in rock music. This might be contrasted to the “pop” element, even if both aspects are sometimes found in one and the same song. A very good example of this combination is Little Richard’s brilliant “Tutti-Frutti” (1956). Obviously there is a pop side to this song, which was isolated to sickeningly sweet perfection in Pat Boone’s lily-white version. In a “pop” world, our ears become accustomed to hearing only this bleached and starched aspect of the song, even when we are listening to Little Richard. Turn your head a little bit, however, and this song becomes quite weird and even a little scary. As with many of Little Richard’s creations (and indeed his whole persona),7 “Tutti-Frutti” drips with both the charismatic Black church (especially as a Southern institution) and a raw, polymorphous eroticism. My thinking on this question, incidentally, is rather at odds with Professor James F. Harris’s in Philosophy at 33 1/3 rpm. Harris uses “Tutti-Frutti,” and in particular the memorable “word,” “Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom,” as examples of a period in rock music when, “[f]or the most part, the lyrics were irrelevant.”
These memorable lines are memorable just because they are so completely insignificant. The lyrics are, at best, superficial and shallow, and, at worst, silly and meaningless. It is the beat which is important, and you can substitute almost any words or sounds for the original lyrics without losing very much. (pp. 3–4)
Harris is interested in the “themes of classic rock music,” as he puts it, mainly from the sixties. His notion of a “theme” has exclusively to do with the lyrics, whereas I am more interested in understanding the intermotivations of sounds and lyrics. With its manic religious eroticism, “Tutti-Frutti” may push the envelope of meaning, of “sense,” but this “nonsense” is hardly insignificant.
The most important thing is that Little Richard has chosen to speak a “secret language” here. In order to get a glimmer of the significance of this language, we have to place “Tutti-Frutti” in at least three overlapping contexts: those of race, sexuality, and spirituality. I will not presume, here, to give an ordering to the relative importance of each of these contexts; however, in each case there is something like a language of resistance at work. It perhaps goes without saying that a Black person who finds him- or herself in the midst of an “American century” where everything the least bit weird is suspect8 and where the attack on rock music is openly conducted as an attack on “race-mixing” (and where the specter of miscegenation is continually invoked), might be interested in speaking a language that is both unknown to the dominant white culture and in fact quite unsettling to it.9 Indeed, everything that still unsettles defenders of the King’s English (never mind for the moment that most of these defenders would be hard put to speak it themselves), that is, attackers of the various forms of Black English, is present in “Tutti-Frutti”—and not just in its “words,” but in its raucous tone and manic beat. In like fashion, the song conjures images of unchained, polymorphous sexuality. There is a fluid, to say nothing of completely queer, set of identities at work here, the sort of thing that drives those with a fascist and racist cast of mind completely nuts—this is what Judith Butler calls “gender trouble.” The “authoritarian personality” (as Adorno put it) demands stability of identity (and, if your identity is not stable, you’d better at least pretend that it is). The worst danger is that of “mongrelization,” the contaminating element that disrupts racial and sexual “hygiene” (the Nazi term). The suspicion is that “Tutti-Frutti” is rubbing mongrelization right in the faces of those who fear identity disruption—and getting some of the youngsters, white and Black, to dance along with it.
Perhaps it goes without saying that there is also a playful rebelliousness to lyrics
