ABSTRACT
Motti Regev, a sociologist at the Open University of Israel, instead emphasizes the way in which an international “rock aesthetic” has emerged, granting its participants a certain symbolic freedom. In the following excerpt from Regev’s article, he outlines three different ways in which the “rock aesthetic” is articulated in the local field: Anglo-American pop/rock as such, “imitation,” and hybridity. While some of the hybrids embody early influences of Western music, dating back to the 19th century, most of them took a turn into rock aesthetic during the 1970s—or indeed came into their own being in the wake of rock’s presence in their countries. The uses and appropriations of rock by musicians and audiences around the world are far from homogeneous. The sameness of meaning is basically one: rock music is used to declare a ‘new’—modern, contemporary, young, and often critical-oppositional—sense of local identity, as opposed to older, traditional, conservative forms of that identity.
