A little help if you would? Music and novel?

Question

I am toying around with the idea of writing a novel about a fictional new kind of music sweeping America. It has always struck me as interesting how and why new music is created, and its social origins (Hip Hop coming from R & B for example). However, I am pretty stuck on how to research it. Any suggestions

Answer 1

I would start by going into the library and doing a hard search for news magazine articles dealing with music genres around the time the music starts becoming wide spread.

Example:
Do a search for "Rap" in the early 80's.
Do a search for "Disco" in the early 70's.

See what kind of articles news analysts wrote about the music at that time. You can then project those articles against what actually happened to the music in the long run.

There are a number of musicians out there that have created entire album based on where they thought music would be in the future. David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, is about a sexless, ageless, rock star that was supposed to be the perfect rock idol.
Pete Townshend's Psychoderelict, and Lifehouse (along with a lot of the rest of his work) talked about "The Grid" where people can communicate and exchange data instanteously across the world. (Sound familiar - The Internet) He began writing songs about that in the late 60's. His idea was to have a free, live worldwide rock concert that would unify the entire world.

Answer 2

new music isn't realy created anymore, it just sort of evolves out of other music. I suggest listening to a lot of music from different eras and trying to identify the generational pattern that links one to the other.