Week 2~ What are the strengths and weaknesses of Peterson's Culture Perspective in understanding the birth of Rock and Roll?

One of the most important strengths to Peterson’s belief is that it gives a wide variety as to the explanation of how Rock and Roll became popular, at the same time however one of its biggest weaknesses is that it doesn’t address why Rock and Roll became so popular, we get a great deal of history on the matter but no explanation as to just why Rock and Roll became so popular when it did and not before or after. There is no personal insight into the debate which takes away from his belief as it doesn’t feel right. Another issue is the stereotyping of occupational careers, while some people may have fallen into the categories listed such as “Craftsmen” or “Showmen” there will have been people in the industry who didn’t fit these categories and were their own exception. The best strength to his argument is to dispel the common belief that the baby boom helped spark the Rock and Roll introduction when in fact “market demand had been growing for over a decade by 1955 but the
decision makers within the culture industry failed to notice it until
certain structural changes in their arrangements forced this
realisation”

What is Popular Music?

Popular music is everything and yet nothing at the same time. A typical response to this question is that popular music is dependant on everyones own interpretation, I may have a different idea of what is considered popular music than someone else such as commercial music that is constantly in the charts or artists that are given more air time than other bands. This theory however is a misinformed identification with the genre of "pop" rather than the actual term popular music. The actual term popular music is relevant to any artist or band that appeal to an audience (no matter what that audience is), that sell their product for profit and use technology to create their music via instruments or other technological advances. Ironically this definition of popular music applys to nearly all music in the world which therefore implys that all music is popular rather than someones own opinion.