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  3. It is difficult to say exactly how the music we call "rock" or "rock and roll" began. Its roots go back to many different countr

It is difficult to say exactly how the music we call "rock" or "rock and roll" began. Its roots go back to many different countr

admin2011-03-01  29
问题    It is difficult to say exactly how the music we call "rock" or "rock and roll" began. Its roots go back to many different countries and many different kinds of music and musicians.
   Rock music developed mainly from the interaction of black African and white European music. The Europeans and the African slaves who came to America during the seventeenth century each had their own different kinds of music. Black Africans used heavy drumbeats, a rough singing voice, and the calling of a melody and answer of a chorus. The white Europeans, mostly English and Scots, used a stronger melody, a less heavy beat, and instruments such as guitars, horns, and fiddles. The history of rock and roll is the history of how rock evolved from these two traditions.
   From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, musicians in the southern United States developed two new forms of music: the blues, usually played by blacks, and country music, played by whites. Black musicians sang the blues accompanied by a guitar. This music was similar to work songs: stories of troubles and pain, with lines that were repeated several times. The words "rock and roll" probably came from the black churches in the South, where people sang spiritual music and danced to the strong rhythms, which they called "rocking and reeling". At the same time, whites were playing country music, which was mostly traditional dancing music and slow songs that told sad stories. The singers were accompanied by string instruments such as fiddles and guitars.    During this time blues and country musicians had some influence on each other, but the influence grew stronger after phonograph records became popular in the late nineteenth century. The birth of the electric guitar changed country and blues music in the 1940s. The sound of the electric guitar would become the sound of rock and roll. No one thinks of early rock and roll without thinking of Elvis Presley, the "King of Rock and Roll". Elvis was an ordinary boy. He grew up poor, learned to sing in church, and became a truck driver when he graduated from high school.
   No one thought that this young man with the guitar would change popular culture. But after he recorded two blues songs in Memphis, everything changed. He sang throughout the South, and teenagers went crazy over his amazing voice and his attractive performances. His music was an exciting mixture of white country and black blues. With his long hair and tight parts, he became a teenage idol In two years, he was a national phenomenon.
   Elvis’s career then went downhill, He went into the army, then stopped performing and made a series of bad movies. He continued to record, but his music rarely had the life of his early songs. He remained the symbol of rock and roll, however, not only in the United States but also around the world. He died in 1977,at the age of 42,but his music did not die with him. Rock music continues to develop and change, but the heart and soul of rock is the same heart and soul that Elvis expressed.
The passage is mainly about ______.
选项 A、the life of Elvis Presley
B、the history of American music
C、the development of rock and roll
D、the development of black African and the white European music
答案C
解析 主旨题。文章第一句即指出很难准确地说出摇滚乐是如何出现的，引入话题。然后文章主要介绍了摇滚乐的发展过程，因此主旨就是[C] 。
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