American rock there was a Garage rock/post-punk revival. The development of digital technology led to the development of new forms of digital electronic rock. The foundations of American rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; in addition to country and western. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the
Rock and roll backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply "rock music" or "rock". The term "rock and roll" now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The "American Heritage Dictionary" and the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. "Encyclopædia Britannica", on the other hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music". The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but was used by the early twentieth century, both to