The Rock Beat Effect - Some Interesting Research Regarding the Roots of Rock and Roll

The rock beat has been the focus of different forms of research over the years since we first heard the term rock-n-roll. This is a look at some interesting things about that origins of this musical drum beat that has had a powerful and broad impact on many genres of music. The roots of rock and roll have seemed to go back to the 1940s and 1050s when the term "rock-and-roll" was first used on American radio, but there is evidence that rock-and-roll's roots go back to other cultures and originally came into the United States through New Orleans.

A famous rock drummer from the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, he has written several books. One book, with an alluring title, "Drumming at the Edge of Magic, A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion," is full of facts from his research and study. Mickey put in a great amount of study, research, and experimentation regarding drumming and the rock beat. He found a number of ancient sources. He wrote that he became very aware that he is living on a planet alive with odd and powerful instruments, many of them in his own tradition as a percussionist.

Mickey found many different kinds of drums and many different drumming traditions - Tibetan, African, Indian, and more. One example source of drumming he found was with Tibetan Buddhist Teachers, called Lamas. They use a drum called the damaru for spiritual purposes. He went into too much detail about drumming to put in a short article like this. Another example is a drum called the Beam. He said it comes from a mathematical Pythagorean monochord and connects the divine with sound. It brings us the music of the cosmos. He says that drumming sends shock waves through the body and the back beat (which is a term for the rock beat) is one kind of drum groove, the essential one for rock-and-roll. As he studied and observed (traveling around the world) he found that rock style drumming always affects a person in ways beyond just sound and music.

One interesting thing he found in Africa was there are drum beats and rhythms that produce fantastic, loud, orgiastic rituals. This rock style drumming was not used in European melodic music. One music scientist, in the 1920s, said that African rhythms were syncopated past comprehension. Also found was the producing of throbbing and pulsing, creating a kind of bodily tension in listeners that is best released by dancing. There is an enormous amount of information, so much that it cannot be significantly shared here. You can conclude that the rock beat drumming has deep roots from key cultures beyond our rock-and-roll music and that the rock beat has a powerful effect that goes beyond the surface of just enjoying the music.