103Z Summer 2026 A Brief History of Rock and Roll

It's mostly forgotten now but those of a certain age can remember when rock music represented, nearly equal to the bomb, an imminent threat to civilized American society. The cultural river that constitutes rock music flows from roots in the blues as everyone knows, but also gospel (particularly Pentecostal music), folk, hillbilly, country, and a whole lot more, all with underclass, outsider audiences quite outside the mainstream. We'll explore this tangy history and its surprising rise to the surface of American music. From Robert Johnson to Bob Dylan, and from Ma Rainey to Tina Turner, the renegade cultural river flows on. 

Tom Manteuffel has led classes at OLLI on a broad variety of topics, most recently The Brain and the Body, A Brief History of Language and Shakespeare's The Tempest. He holds graduate degrees in Philosophy and Computer Science and is a retired cybersecurity specialist for the intel community.