The Paradox of Re-Colonization: The British Invasion of American Music and the Birth of Modern Rock

The music today referred as “rock” was born in the transatlantic circulation of African-American forms of popular music from America to Europe and back again to America. This movement, which I call “the paradox of recolonization,” involved the adoption in Europe, circa 1955, of American blues and rock ‘n roll, and their “indigenation,” through processes of adaptation and transformation which we today label under the shorthand of the British Invasion of American popular music. This paper traces the origins and peculiar forms of that adaptation, by focusing of the indebtedness of the Invasion’s key artists to African-American music.