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As be-bop had been a reaction to swing, the development of rock ''n'' roll from African-American blues and southern hillbilly traditions was a reaction against the ballads, dance numbers, and novelty tunes of the early 1950s. With the coining of the term by Cleveland radio announcer Alan Freed in 1954, rock ''n'' roll was young people''s music, a rebellion against the standards of parents, schools, and authority in general. Ballads and speeded-up versions of the twelve-bar blues often contained vague sexual references, and performers like Elvis Presley became immensely popular as much for their audience appeal as the quality of their music. Throughout its history, rock has been attacked for its presumed contributions to juvenile delinquency, protest, and drug use, but it has remained an enduring and constantly developing aspect of American and international musical culture. By the mid-1960s, rock music, along with ballads and talkin'' blues pieces from America''s folk traditions, had become an important part of the civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, and feminist movements. Starting with the early social commentary of Bob Dylan and Barry McGuire, performers as diverse as folk singers Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and Pete Seeger and rock and soul musicians Country Joe MacDonald and James Brown used popular music to articulate a message of protest. By the end of the decade, rock music, whether or not it carried a specific protest message, was part of the counterculture. Rock musicians, influenced by blues, jazz, and Indian music and philosophy, created eclectic works that were inappropriate because of their length and textual content for AM radio, where young people were accustomed to finding the latest music. A 1966 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission fcc opened large blocks of FM airtime to programmers who played music that was too long or too sexually or politically explicit for the AM radio band. Thus FM "alternative" radio became the medium through which new popular music reached its audience. Because it provides better reception, much classical music was also broadcast on FM. The avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s continued to search for new varieties of musical expression. Composers experimented with nontraditional instruments, such as the prepared piano used by John Cage, new instruments, such as those used by Harry Partch, and electronic sound, such as that generated at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York.
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