Why Does Rockabilly Music Move You?
If you’re like me, whenever you hear a good rockabilly song, you have to smile. There’s something about rockabilly that makes you feel good in a way that no other musical genre does. What is it about this early form of rock and roll that has such an effect on fans all over the world?
Maybe it’s the raw energy of brash young musicians who were inventing a completely new musical style as they were going along. Rockabilly music represented an almost complete break from the structural norms of music up to that time. It was wild and loud and it’s no wonder the adults were shocked by what they saw and heard. The young men were wailing and gyrating on the stages and the young girls were screaming and swooning. In general, everyone involved was acting in a very ungentlemanly or unladylike way. To the adults, it was dangerous–the devil’s music. “Amplified heathen discord” I remember reading on an old newspaper or magazine article of the time.
Despite all the fuss from the grown ups, the music has an innocence to it when you hear it these days. Even with the knowledge that these cats were the punks of their day and they were certainly not a group of choirboys, there’s no meanness to the music. Just pure energy, youthful exuberance, and fun. That’s what the music was all about from the start. And that’s what rockabilly’s still about today.
Rockabilly music taught the kids how to move in completely new ways. It taught them how to enjoy music that they could finally call their own. Maybe that’s why the kids latched onto it. Finally, here was music that they owned–made for kids by kids. And it only made it better that the adults couldn’t relate to it. The country music of the time was great, but it belonged to the adults. The blues of the time was wonderful, but it was “race” music at a time when blacks in the USA were simply not accepted in “white” society and many radio stations simply wouldn’t play music by black artists. But rockabilly…this was music for the great mass of white kids that were thirsty for something to call theirs. And they didn’t merely accept the music; they drank it in and soaked it up. They broke out of their musical shell like the atom bomb that made its appearance in many songs of the time and they devoured the new rock and roll like the starving music fans they’d become.
And somehow, this music–this beautiful, simple, and powerful force–has as much impact on millions of fans today as it did back in the 1950s. It has not only endured, but has thrived. Certainly it’s seen its ups and downs. It has waxed and waned and waxed again as older fans introduce the genre to younger fans who, it turns out, are just as thirsty for something different than the tripe that the top 40 pop stations would like to force feed them these days. So maybe it’s as simple as that. Perhaps the reasons rockabilly moves us today are the same as the reasons they moved our parents and grandparents 60 years ago. It’s simple, powerful, brash, exciting…and somehow it’s still fresh. After all these years, rockabilly music is still fresh!