Rock, pop and global youth culture
Recorded music becomes the medium through which generations define themselves.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 20 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Rock and roll emerges in the mid-1950s from blues and country, and Elvis, then the Beatles from 1962, create a genuinely transnational youth culture carried by cheap records, radio and television. Hip hop begins in the Bronx in 1973 and becomes the dominant global popular form by the 2010s. Recorded music makes it possible for a sound made in one place to be shared identically by hundreds of millions.