The Godmother of Rock and Roll

February 20, 2013 PBS Wisconsin Leave a Comment

Watch American Masters “Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll” at 11 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22 on Wisconsin Public Television.

Gospel by day, rock and roll by night; not exactly a combination you would expect to find in most artists during the mid-90s. To be fair, this was a time when most genres were still being defined and new musical styles were being developed all over the world.

What are we left with now? There are more musical genres than you can count and rather than being individually defined, most have started to blend together and borrow from other styles. There’s been so much change in the musical world over the past few years; I can barely imagine what a ‘country’ song will sound like 10 years from now. Might be kind of nice to see some of the micro-genres start to die off and move artists under a broader umbrella.

It has already gotten to the point where it doesn’t make much sense to define an artist as rock, country, pop, rap or any other singular musical styling. They all borrow from each other, whether it’s beats, instruments or post-recording sweetening on computers. I mean if you really think about it, when was the last time you heard a new song on the radio that you could confidently assign to one specific genre?

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