ABSTRACT

Music is a sensate or emotional medium. Without words, it is a totally experiential form of communication. Many forms of specialty material such as jazz, folk music and several strains of country music have been subsumed into popular music, thus expanding the preference chart as well as continuing it into the middle twenties and in some cases the early thirties. The popularity of quasi-jazz and folk acts can be partially attributed to the traditional tastes on campus. The universities spawned both the jazz and folk revivals of the 1950s. American folklorists for decades combed the hills of Appalachia in search of old Scotch-Irish Anglo-Saxon ballads, totally ignoring indigenous native material. The record industry is behind a taste movement rather than in front of it. Most of the majors rejected rock and roll in the 1950s; Capitol turned down the Beatles in 1963. Part of the problem is that the industry is removed from "the street” and “the folks out there.".