What Do They Get From Rock ’n’ Roll? “We might ask ourselves, therefore, just why is it that with the onset of puberty, Americans embrace rock ’n’ roll? What exactly does it do for them?”

Brother went through ego death before writing this:

When the listener submits himself to the beat, he loosens his mind from its moorings in space and time; no longer does he feel a separation between himself and his surroundings. The difficult world of external objects is blurred and unreal; only the inner pulse is real, the beat its outer projection. Earthly worries are submerged in a tide of rising exaltation. Dream and dreamer merge, object and feeling jell: the whole universe is compressed into the medium of the beat, where all things unite and pound forward, rhythmic, regular, not to be denied.

Rock ’n’ roll is the only form in modern music which deliberately seeks these effects and no others. They are also obtainable through jazz, but the soul of jazz is its continual improvisation, which draws on a wide range of moods and which demands the keenest attention. In contrast, rock ’n’ roll dulls the capacity for attention; the steady beat creates instead a kind of hypnotic monotony. Seen in this light, RnR is only the latest in a series of rituals which have existed in many societies for the purpose of inducing mystic ecstasy, usually in connection with religion. One might think not only of African or American Indian drumbeating frenzies but also of the cults of frenzied dancing and shaking which periodically rose up from the main body of European Christianity. In the United States, Negro “gospel music” often creates ecstasy through repeated phrases of enormous energy, and has been more than casually influential in the formation of rock ’n’ roll. Through gospel music, RnR draws directly on both Christian and African cults of rhythmic ecstasy. It should not surprise us then that so many RnR songs celebrate the all-pervasiveness of God.