NOWOJORSKA TOŻSAMOŚĆ ROCKOWA
NEW YORK’S ROCK IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: The author strives to present the essence of the artistic phenomenon which — through analogy to the term “New York School” used in cultural studies discourse in regard to painting and poetry — he has decided to call the “New York School of Rock”. It is presented in a broader context of what is known as popular music, in the variety associated with New York and encompassing a panoply of styles and performers: from the folk rock Bob Dylan to the hard rock Blue Oyster Cult, and with a special emphasis on the music proposed by The Velvet Underground, The Fugs and The Godz. They constituted the core of the trend described here — and it was also from them in a way that the new-wave punk of Patti Smith or Television derived. In the context thus laid out, the article endeavours to grasp the essence of the New York rock identity in a dialectic perspective: from the disheartening vision of the metropolis on the Hudson River and The Velvet Underground, drawing inspiration from minimalism and “noise music”, through its antithesis in the form of Billy Joel’s radiant pop-rock image of that big city, to a kind of synthesis in the early works of David Byrne and his group, Talking Heads.

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