Roots rock

Roots rock is a genre of rock music that looks back to rock's origins in folk, blues, and country music. First emerging in the late 1960s, it is seen as a response to the perceived excesses of the then dominant psychedelic and the developing progressive rock. Because roots music (Americana) is often used to mean folk and world musical forms, roots rock is sometimes used in a broad sense to describe any rock music that incorporates elements of this music.

The 2000s saw a new interest in "roots" music. One proof of that is the specific Grammy Award given since 2015, notably to Jon Batiste in 2022. According to the Grammy website, "This category recognizes excellence in Americana, bluegrass, blues or folk recordings in modern and/or traditional vocal and instrumental styles, as well as original material by artists who use traditional and/or modern roots elements, sounds and instrumental techniques as the basis for their recordings."

History

In 1966, as many rock artists moved towards expansive and experimental psychedelia, Bob Dylan spearheaded the back-to-basics roots revival when he went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde, using notable local musicians like Charlie McCoy. This, and the subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline (1969), have been seen as creating the genre of country folk, a route pursued by a number of, largely acoustic, folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back to basics trend in different ways were the Canadian/American group The Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival, both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country, and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. At the same time the Grateful Dead, a band previously associated with the San Francisco sound and known for ferocious psychedelic improvisation, followed in the footsteps of Crosby, Stills & Nash to focus on Americana-styled songwriting for their 1970 albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, and Lowell George.