Yothu Yindi
Yothu Yindi were an Australian musical group with Aboriginal and balanda members, formed in 1986 as a merger of two bands formed in 1985 – a White rock group called the Swamp Jockeys and an unnamed Aboriginal folk group. The Aboriginal members came from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land. Founding members included Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar, Cal Williams on lead guitar, Andrew Belletty, Witiyana Marika on manikay and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu on keyboards and percussion, leader Mandawuy Yunupingu on vocals and guitar; the band combined aspects of both musical cultures. Their sound varied from traditional Aboriginal songs to modern pop and rock songs, where they blended the typical instruments associated with pop/rock bands, such as guitars and drums, with the traditional yidaki and bilma, they adapted traditional Yolngu dance performances to accompany their music. More broadly, they promoted mutual respect and understanding in the coming together of different cultures.
Yothu Yindi's most known song, "Treaty", peaked at No. 11 on the ARIA singles charts in 1991 and the related album Tribal Voice peaked at No. 4 on the ARIA albums charts. The second single from Tribal Voice was "Djäpana", which peaked at No. 13 in 1992. Their debut album was Homeland Movement in 1988 on Mushroom Records; the group helped established the Yothu Yindi Foundation in 1990 to promote Yolngu cultural development, including from 1999 producing the annual Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures and from May 2007 running the Dilthan Yolngunha. Chairman of the foundation is Galarrwuy Yunupingu, he is Mandawuy's older brother, a Yolgnu clan leader and sometimes a member of Yothu Yindi on bilma and guitar. Galarrwuy had been named Australian of the Year in 1978 for his work for Aboriginal communities and Mandawuy was Australian of the Year for 1992 for his work with Yothu Yindi. In December 2012, the Australian Recording Industry Association inducted the band into the ARIA Hall of Fame, as part of the ARIA Music Awards of 2012.
Swamp Jockeys were formed in 1985 by balanda Andrew Belletty on drums, Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar and Cal Williams on lead guitar. On their tour of Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, they were supported by a Yolngu band composed of Witiyana Marika on manikay and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki, Gurrumul'The Guru' Yunupingu on keyboards and percussion, Bakamana Yunupingu on vocals and guitar, they united to form Yothu Yindi, yothu yindi is a Yolngu matha kinship term for "child and mother". The band combines aspects of both musical cultures, their sound varies from traditional Aboriginal songs to modern pop and rock songs in which they blend the typical instruments of pop/rock bands, such as guitars and drums, with the traditional yidaki and bilma. They have adapted traditional Yolngu dance performances to accompany their music. More broadly they promote mutual understanding of different cultures. Bakamana Yunupingu was a tertiary student studying to become a teacher, he became principal at his own Yirrkala Community School, touring by Yothu Yindi was restricted to school holidays in the band's early years.
In August 1988 they performed in Queensland, at the South Pacific Festival of Arts. The next month they represented Australia in South Korea at the Cultural Olympics. Bart Willoughby joined on drums in late 1988 and Yothu Yindi toured USA and Canada as support act to Midnight Oil. Upon their return to Australia, they were signed to Mushroom Records, with Leszek Karski producing, recorded their debut single "Mainstream", released in March 1989, it was followed by debut album Homeland Movement in May. Neither their singles nor album had any major chart success. Yothu Yindi toured with Neil Young in Australia head-lined in Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong. In 1990 they toured New Zealand with Tracy Chapman, performed in festivals in the UK. In 1990 five clans of the Yolngu formed the Yothu Yindi Foundation to promote Yulngu cultural development. Chairman of the foundation is Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Mandawuy's older brother, a Yolngu clan leader and sometimes a member of Yothu Yindi on bilma and guitar.
Galarrwuy had been named Australian of the Year in 1978 for his work for Aboriginal communities. Around this time, a relative of Bakamana's who bore the same name died, he therefore changed his first name to Mandawuy in line with Yolngu tradition. In 1988, as part of Bicentennial celebrations, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke visited the Northern Territory for the Barunga festival where he was presented with a statement of Aboriginal political objectives by Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja. Hawke responded to the Barunga Statement with a promise that a treaty would be concluded with Indigenous Australians by 1990. By 1991, Yothu Yindi were Hughie Benjamin on drums, Sophie Garrkali and Julie Gungunbuy as dancers, Marika, Gurrumul Yunupingu, Makuma Yunupingu on yidaki, bilma, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Mangatjay Yunupingu as a dancer. Mandawuy, with his older brother Galarrwuy, wanted a song to highlight the lack of progress on the treaty between Aboriginal peoples and the federal government.
Mandawuy recalls: Bob Hawke visited the Territory
Métis in Canada
The Métis in Canada are groups of peoples in Canada who trace their descent to First Nations peoples and European settlers French in the early decades. They are recognized as one of Canada's aboriginal peoples under the Constitution Act of 1982, along with First Nations and Inuit peoples; as of 2016, they number over 587,545. Canadian Métis represent the majority of people that identify as Métis, although there are a number of Métis in the United States. While the Métis developed as the mixed-race descendants of early unions between First Nations and colonial-era European settlers, within generations, a distinct Métis culture developed; the women in the unions in eastern Canada were Wabanaki and Menominee. Their unions with European men engaged in the fur trade in the Old Northwest were of the type known as Marriage à la façon du pays. After New France was ceded to Great Britain's control in 1763, there was an important distinction between French Métis born of francophone voyageur fathers, the Anglo-Métis descended from English or Scottish fathers.
Today these two cultures have coalesced into location-specific Métis traditions. This does not preclude a range of other Métis cultural expressions across North America; such polyethnic people were referred to by other terms, many of which are now considered to be offensive, such as Mixed-bloods, Half-breeds, Bois-Brûlés, Black Scots, Jackatars. The contemporary Métis in Canada are a specific Indigenous people. While people of Métis culture or heritage are found across Canada, the traditional Métis "homeland" includes much of the Canadian Prairies; the most known group are the "Red River Métis", centring on southern and central parts of Manitoba along the Red River of the North. Related are the Métis in the United States those in border areas such as northern Michigan, the Red River Valley, eastern Montana; these were areas in which there was considerable Aboriginal and European mixing due to the 19th-century fur trade. But they do not have a federally recognized status in the United States, except as enrolled members of federally recognized tribes.
Although Métis existed further west than today's Manitoba, much less is known about the Métis of Northern Canada. In 2016, 587,545 people in Canada self-identified as Métis, they represented 1.5 % of the total Canadian population. Most Métis people today are descendants of unions between generations of Métis individuals and live in Canadian society with people of other ethnicities; the exception are the Métis in rural and northern parts, who still live in close proximity to First Nations communities. Over the past century, countless Métis have assimilated into the general European Canadian populations. Métis heritage is more common than is realized. Geneticists estimate that 50 percent of today's population in Western Canada has some Aboriginal ancestry. Most people with more distant ancestry are not part of culture. Unlike among First Nations peoples, there is no distinction between Treaty status and non-Treaty status; the Métis did not sign treaties with Canada, with the exception of an adhesion to Treaty 3 in Northwest Ontario.
This adherence was never implemented by the federal government. The legal definition is not yet developed. Section Thirty-five of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes the rights of Indian, Métis and Inuit people. In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada defined a Métis as someone who self-identifies as Métis, has an ancestral connection to the historic Métis community, is accepted by the modern community with continuity to the historic Métis community; the most well-known and documented mixed-ancestry population in Canadian history are the groups who developed during the fur trade in south-eastern Rupert's Land in the Red River Settlement and the Southbranch Settlements. In the late nineteenth century, they organized politically and had confrontations with the Canadian government in an effort to assert their independence; this was not the only place where métissage between Indigenous people occurred. It was part of the history of colonization from the earliest days of settlements on the Atlantic Coast throughout the Americas.
But the strong sense of ethnic national identity among the French- and Michif-speaking Métis along the Red River, demonstrated during the Riel Rebellions, resulted in wider use of the term "Métis" as the main word used by Canadians for all mixed Euro-Native groups. Continued organizing and political activity resulted in "the Métis" gaining official recognition from the national government as one of the recognized Aboriginal groups in S.35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which states: 35. The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal People of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. In this Act, "Aboriginal Peoples of Canada" includes the Indian, Métis Peoples of Canada.... Section-35 does not define criteria for an individual, Métis
Mandawuy Yunupingu
Mandawuy Djarrtjuntjun Yunupingu, was an Aboriginal Australian musician and educator. From 1986, he was the front man of the Aboriginal rock group Yothu Yindi as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. In 1989, he became assistant principal of the Yirrkala Community School – his former school – and was principal for the following two years, he helped establish the Yolngu Action Group and introduced the Both Ways system, which recognised traditional Aboriginal teaching alongside Western methods. Yothu Yindi released six albums, Homeland Movement, Tribal Voice, Birrkuta - Wild Honey, One Blood, Garma; the group's top 20 ARIA Singles Chart appearances were "Treaty" and "Djäpana". He was appointed Australian of the Year for 1992 by the National Australia Day Council. In April 1998 he was awarded an honourary doctorate by the Queensland University of Technology. In December 2012, Yothu Yindi were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was diagnosed with advanced renal failure and died in 2013, aged 56.
Yunupingu was born as Tom Djambayang Bakamana Yunupingu on 17 September 1956 in Yirrkala in Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal reserve in the northeastern part of the Northern Territory. He was a member of one of sixteen groups of the Yolngu people, his skin name was Gudjuk, but his name was changed to Mandawuy in 1990 when a family member with the same name died, in line with Yolngu custom. He described his names as "Mandawuy" means'from clay'. I am Gudjuk the fire kite", his father was a Gumatj clan leader and artist. His mother, Makurrngu – one of Munggurrawuy's 12 wives – was a member of the Galpu clan, his oldest sister, Gulumbu Yunupingu, was an artist and healer. His other sisters are Nyapanyapa and Barrupu, who are artists, his older brother, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, is a senior elder of Arnhem Land, Australian of the Year in 1978, was an indigenous land rights campaigner. Yunupingu attended Yirrkala Community School. In 1983, Yunupingu published "Outstation Schools at Yirrkala" in Aboriginal Child at School, where he described the advantages to indigenous people by " their own way of living, they manage budgeting through Isolated Children's Allowance, staffing their schools, developing curriculum, teacher training".
In March 1987 he contributed to the book, Educational needs of the Homelands Centres of the L̲aynhapuy Region, North East Arnhem Land: report of the Balanga ̲na Project: a Schools Commission Project of national significance. He was the first Aboriginal person from Arnhem Land to gain a university degree, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in education from Deakin University in 1988. In 1989 he became assistant principal of the Yirrkala Community School, he helped establish the Yolngu Action Group and introduced the Both Ways system at his school, which recognised traditional Aboriginal teaching alongside Western methods. In 1990 he took over as principal of Yirrkala Community School; that year he authored "Language and power: the Yolngu rise to power at Yirrkala School", detailing his work with Yolngu Action Group. He remained principal until late 1991. By 1985 with Yunupingu on vocals and guitar, he formed a Yolngu band including Witiyana Marika on manikay and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki, Gurrumul Yunupingu – his nephew – on keyboards and percussion.
The following year the Yolngu group combined with a balanda group, Swamp Jockeys, which had Andrew Belletty on drums, Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar and Cal Williams on lead guitar. The new collective, Yothu Yindi, performed Aboriginal rock which fused traditional indigenous music and dance with Western popular music. Yothu yindi refers to the kinship of north-east Arnhem Land. In the group's early years their performing was restricted to holidays as Yunupingu completed his tertiary studies and started work as a teacher. By 1988 Yothu Yindi had North America supporting Midnight Oil. Late that year they recorded their debut studio album, Homeland Movement, which appeared in March the following year. Australian musicologist, Ed Nimmervoll, described it "ne side comprised Midnight Oil-like politicized rock; the other side of the album concentrated on traditionally based songs like'Djapana', written by former teacher Mandawuy Yunupingu". He was credited on the album as Mandawuy Bakamana Yunupingu and provided vocals and bilma.
The band achieved national recognition for their single, "Treaty", the remixed version was released in June 1991, which reached No. 11 on the ARIA Singles Chart and stayed in the top 50 for 20 weeks. Mandawuy and Galarrwuy had wanted a song to highlight the lack of progress on a treaty between Aboriginal peoples and the federal government; the song contains words in Yunupingu's variety of Yolngu matha. It was written by Australian musician, Paul Kelly, with Yothu Yindi members Yunupingu, Williams, Gurrumul and Marika; the associated album, Tribal Voice appeared in October 1991, which peaked at No. 4 on the ARIA Albums Chart. A re-recorded version of "Djäpana" was reached No. 13. Yunupingu's work on
My Island Home
"My Island Home" is a pop song written by Neil Murray and performed by the Warumpi Band. The song references lead singer's home up at Elcho Island off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, it was recorded in 1986 and released as a single from their second album, Go Bush, in 1987. "My Island Home" won'Song of the Year' at the 1995 Australasian Performing Right Association Awards for Anu's reworked version of the song. It was listed in the APRA Top 30 Australian songs of all time in 2001, it was covered by Christine Anu in 1995. Neil Murray, lead vocalist and guitarist for Warumpi Band, recalls writing the song: My Island Home came to me on a bus one night in June 1985 I had been living in the deserts of Central Australia for some six years I had spent a week with our singer, George, at his home at Galiwinku in Arnhem Land. We camped on a remote part of the island with his family and had been living like kings on bush tucker and seafood caught by ourselves I had to leave and make trips to Melbourne and Sydney in mid-winter to promote the band I suffered an exceptional longing to be back in a boat on a tropical sea.
The words came to me. I held on to the tune till I got to Sydney and pulled my guitar out of the luggage to find the chords, it was first recorded in 1986 and released on the Warumpi Band's second album Go Bush by Parole Records in 1987. Rrurrumbu would record a version of it in the Gumatj language for his debut solo album Nerbu Message. In January 1995, Christine Anu released a version of the song as the second single from her debut studio album, Stylin' Up. Anu, a Torres Strait Islander, changed some lyrics to reflect her circumstances. E.g.: Rather than moving to the desert, she compares island life to the city life, from the point of view of a woman. In the music video, it intercedes between her singing, an Aboriginal man deciding to drop his job as a janitor, start running through the city, the desert, to the ocean; when he gets there, he swims to waves at his kid and wife. At the 1995 APRA Awards, "My Island Home" won Song of the Year. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1995, "Island Home" was nominated for ARIA Award for Song of the Year, but lost to "Chains" by Tina Arena.
It was voted at number 47 in the Triple J Hottest 100, 1995. Anu performed the song at the closing ceremony for the 2000 Summer Olympics; the song was listed in APRA Top 30 Australian songs of all time in 2001. Anu re-recorded the song for her second album Come My Way in 2001, subtitled "Earth Beat", which removed the echoed effects during the choruses, but added subtle synth effects and more prominent guitar during the song, making it sound more rhythmic and polished, whereas the original was driven more with a drum beat. In 2016, Anu's rendition was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia. Aboriginal band Tiddas has recorded a version of the song for the Radiance soundtrack
Rock music in Australia
Australian rock called Oz rock, is rock music from Australia. The nation has a rich history of rock music and an appreciation of the roots of various rock genres originating in the United States or Britain, but continental Europe, more the musical styles of Africa. Australian rock has contributed to the development of some of these genres, as well as having its own unique Australiana sound with pub rock and its indigenous music. From 1955 to 1975 three distinct "waves" of Australian rock occurred; the first wave was from 1955 to 1963 and was influenced by American and British styles with local variants provided by artists such as Johnny O'Keefe, who had a hit with "Wild One", which appeared in July 1958. Late in that stage, clean-cut acts, which featured on TV's Bandstand and toured as the "Bandstand family", were representing local music on the record charts; the second wave from 1964 to 1969 was directly influenced by The Beatles and their tour of the country in June 1964. Two major acts from that era are The Easybeats and Bee Gees.
A weekly magazine, Go-Set, published from 1966 to 1974, aimed at teenagers and twenty-year-olds became the most influential and popular music-related publication of the period. The third wave from 1970 to 1975, with the advent of pub rock, was typified by early exponents, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs and Buffalo. Internationally, AC/DC, which had started as a pub rock group in November 1973 has come to be the most well-known Australian rock band, with more than 71 million sales in the US alone by 2014. Beginning in that era was Countdown, a popular music TV program on national broadcaster, ABC, ran from November 1974 until July 1987. After 1975 Australian rock began to diversify including local contributors to punk and indie rock styles. By the 1980s baby boomer acts were prominent, which included John Farnham, whose album, Whispering Jack peaked at number one on the Australian charts for 25 weeks and was certified 24x platinum indicating shipment of over 1.68 million copies – the highest by any Australian artist.
In that decade, indigenous rock groups, Yothu Yindi and Warumpi Band, achieved wider recognition. In the mid-1950s American rockabilly and rock and roll music was taken up by local rock musicians and it soon caught on with Australian teens, through films and from 1956, television. Although issued in 1954, "Rock Around the Clock", a single by United States group Bill Haley and His Comets, did not chart in Australia until 1956. Considered a novelty song, the track and the related film of the same name: "was like a beginner's guide to rock and roll, inspired legions of local copyists". In July 1956 Frankie Davidson's cover version of another Haley single, "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie", was released and is the first charting example of Australian recorded rock and roll, albeit as a minor hit. Other early recorded examples by Australians include non-charting singles: "Saturday Night Fish Fry" by Les Welch, "Rock Around the Clock" by Vic Sabrino and "Washboard Rock'n' Roll" by the Schneider Sisters. Back in September 1953 US entrepreneur, Lee Gordon, arrived in Sydney and soon established himself nationally by organising a record-breaking tour by US singer Johnnie Ray in August 1954.
Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described Gordon as "the'midwife' of Australian rock'n' roll, cut an imposing figure in his role as label manager, tour promoter and all-round music entrepreneur". From 1954 to 1962 Gordon's Big Show promotions brought to Australia — in many cases for the first or only time — dozens of US jazz and popular stars, including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bill Haley & The Comets, Little Richard, Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, he promoted local talent by using Australian acts as supports on those tours. In 1956 the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers was established to regulate the music industry's releases. United Kingdom's EMI had dominated the Australasian record market since the end of WWII, they made UK music a powerful force in the late 1950s and 1960s with signings like Cliff Richard and The Shadows, The Beatles, The Hollies and Cilla Black. EMI locally distributed Decca as well as the US Capitol label.
During this period, however, a number of local companies in Australia expanded into the growing Australian music market, which grew after the emergence of the first wave of American rock'n' roll. In 1952 merchant bank, Mainguard took over a struggling Sydney engineering firm and relaunched it as Festival Records, its main local competition was ARC, a former radio production and disc transcription service that established the successful Pacific and Coronet labels and competed with Festival as a manufacturer and distributor in New South Wales. Although most of the major labels were Sydney-based, Melbourne's vibrant dance and concert scene powered a local boom in rock'n' roll and pop music and it became Australia's pop capital in the 1960s. During the 1950s luthier Bill May expanded his Maton guitar company, becoming one of the first local manufacturers of the new electric guitars and amplifiers. In 1953 precision engineering company White & Gillespie established a custom recording division, which their company history claims was the first in Australia to press records in the new vinyl microgroove format.
The new division soon included the W&G label and studio, which arguably had its biggest success with the earlier Australian releases of Melbourne band based in London, The Seekers. In 1960 Melbourne consumer electronics company, Astor Elec
Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts
The Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts is a national Australian institution for the culturally sensitive training of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. ACPA relocated to new premises at the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane in January 2017 where improved facilities include purpose-built studios for music and dance; the organisation teaches indigenous and non-indigenous acting and dance. It has won several national awards and is nationally accredited as a registered training organisation. ACPA receives funding from the Queensland and Australian governments, as well as from the private sector, it was founded in 1997 by the Queensland Government as a vehicle for the new National Arts Policy. The Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and the Department of Education and Training. ACPA's education partners include the Brisbane Arts Theatre, the University of Tasmania and Queensland University of Technology.
Its corporate supporters include the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Ausdance Queensland. The current CEO is Dr. Dimitri Kopanakis. Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts
Rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew on the genres of blues and blues, from country music. Rock music drew on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. Musically, rock has centered on the electric guitar as part of a rock group with electric bass and one or more singers. Rock is song-based music with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become diverse. Like pop music, lyrics stress romantic love but address a wide variety of other themes that are social or political. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, jazz-rock, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene.
New genres that emerged included progressive rock. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and alternative rock. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop punk, electronic rock, rap rock, rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk and techno-pop revivals at the beginning of the 2000s. Rock music has embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. 1970s punk culture spawned the goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race and drug use, is seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.
The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists; the sound of an electric guitar in rock music is supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered in jazz music in the same era, percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ, the synthesizer; the basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed as a rock group. Furthermore, it consists of between three and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboard player or other instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four.
Melodies originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s and from the mid 1960s onwards, rock music used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock; because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition." Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, rebellion against "The Establishment", social concerns, life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music, rhythm and blues.
Music journalist Robert Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more noise." The predominance of white and middle class musicians in rock music has been noted, rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young and male audience. As a result, it has been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from wh
