Jazzrock (US, 70s): Miles Davis, Weather Report, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra
Rock
Jazzrock (US, 70s): Miles Davis, Weather Report, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra
Although it never achieved the same popularity as progressive rock and the hard rock/heavy metal genre, jazz-rock, which sprouted from the experiments of Miles Davis, exerted at least as significant an influence on the rock music of the seventies. The hybrid genre—simplifying slightly—brought from rock the electric instruments, guitars, synthesizers, easily followable rhythms, dynamics, and volume, while jazz contributed the improvisational segments, the richness of orchestration, the more complex harmonies, and instrumental virtuosity. In the next lecture of the Rock and Roll University, besides the jazz-rock triumvirate—Weather Report, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra—there will be talk of the promises (such as Flock, Back Door, Soft Machine), and of course, about Frank Zappa, who, after his satirical avant-garde period, produced a multitude of great albums in this style as well. Lecture with Béla Szilárd Jávorszky's rock music guided tour.
Rock history lecture series from blues through Elvis to the seventies. An ongoing program initiated in 2022 on a monthly basis at the MZH Multimedia Library and Club under the title Rock and Roll University. The Rock and Roll University presents the most important processes and performers in international pop history. After all, rock and roll, slightly simplified, is the result of a unique cultural-historical marriage: when the musical traditions of black slaves imported from Africa (blues) and white settlers emigrating from Europe (country) met and continuously mixed with each other on a third continent, America. Moreover, all this took place in a radically transforming society following technological development and related industrialization and urbanization. In the ninth season of this series (spring 2026), we will scrutinize the social, cultural, and musical events unfolding in the United States at the turn of the sixties and seventies.
Rock and roll is, somewhat simplistically, the result of a particular cultural-historical fusion: that of when the musical traditions of Black slaves brought over from Africa met those of white settlers who had emigrated from Europe to the new world, the Americas. Moreover, all this took place in a radically transforming society, following technological progress and its associated industrialisation and urbanisation. In the second season of this series, we look at the social, cultural and musical events of the period from Elvis to the twilight of the rock and roll era in the Fifties.
Rock Troubadours (US, 70s): CSNY, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Roy Harper
