Rock n roll has never been just music. Heavy metal, rhythm and blues, art rock, new wave and the rest may be main styles or genres, but as subcategories of rock or rockin roll, they do not add up cumulatively at all. Rock n' Roll is a movement, a lifestyle, in many ways a belief system and everything that Rock n' Roll is today it owes to history: two years, no more of three when the fabric of American popular culture was torn and rewoven, and a new era explosively began. Rock n roll started with slavery. To understand, we must understand what slavery was and where it left the sons and daughters of Africans who knew nothing of the European stems of American culture. Every society has its indigenous music, which serves as entertainment, story-telling, and accompaniment to rituals and ceremonies. It is not enough to identify the black musical heritage of slave labor songs through Rag Time, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, R&B, etc., and simply extrapolate the line to encompass the Rock n Roll. Rock n Roll builds on these foundations, but it adds more, and what it mainly adds is white America, both in the music and in the audience. White America slowly discovered an endearing and inspiring musical heritage that had become central to the lives of African Americans, and, establishing a tradition that is protected today, began to imitate and adapt black music. So these stripped down hub forms came along at one time or another, Rock n Roll incorporated musical elements of Country and Western, Swing, Classical, Big Band, Folk and even Tin Pan Alley, just as it incorporated Blues, R&B. It would therefore be wrong to claim that Rock n Roll is an intrinsically “black” music, although clearly without the presence of African music..