Until the nineteenth century , folk music was the most common musical style In Britain. Stories were introduced in folk songs, which reflected to the region and hometown of the author. But during the early 1800s the tradition declined in Britain, as people moved from countryside to the towns. Music-making started to be popular practice in the home, a lot of community brass bands developed.
brass bands – zespoły grające na instrumentach dętych
Victorian era – 1837-1901
When the Victorian cities grew in size, a great amount of music halls were built, professional songwriting became one of the most profitable activity, popular entertainments and music-making were established commercial practices.
During the early 1920s, traditional jazz and ‘ragtime’ music began to arrive from USA. The dances became more informal and easier to learn than the complicated traditional European ones. Music styles started to mix.
After the Second World War demand was strong for cosy, comforting music which brought a sense of well-being and romance to a generation still recovering from the shock of war. There were slow and sentimental ballads. This popular style of singing was known as “crooning” /kru:nin/.
Blackboard Jungle
Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils, led by student Gregory Miller (Sidney Poitier), frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils.
Bill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock". When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared behind the opening credits of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle with Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of boundary between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it. When the film came to Britain, its effect was electrifying. The youthful audience rose from their cinema seats to jump and dance. The title-music was released as a single, and for five months it was the most popular record in the country.
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll. Although his success lasted only a year and a half before his death in an airplane crash, Holly is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll."
Although the explosive, driving rhythms of rock’n’roll were easy to compose, they were difficult to imitate, as electric instruments and amplification (wzmocnienie; natężenie) were still scarce in Britain. Around 1953 an acoustic type of music known as ‘skiffle’ emerged in and around the clubs of London’s Soho.
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