Musician, actor and radio disc jockey Steven Van Zandt (aka Little Steven) unveiled his plans for his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation yesterday (Sunday December 2nd 2007), when he appeared on George Stephanopoulos' Sunday morning ABC show.
In the accompanying ABC News on-line blog, Little Steven cites records by the following artists as being essential for a basic, entry-level course in rock & roll: BO DIDDLEY, The Animals, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, The Kinks, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Yardbirds.
The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation is a non-profit, educational organization founded on the belief that rock and roll is among America’s most lasting contributions to world culture. In accordance with this, the Foundation’s mission is to study, preserve and celebrate rock and roll’s place among the arts that have defined the 20th century and continue to shape life in the 21st. Whether as an historical movement that sparked change across the world, a living culture that continues to bring meaning to everyday life, or as a vernacular art form known for giving voice to lives lived at the margins, rock and roll is a music with a unique, community-building capacity. By definition a music that brings diverse traditions together, rock and roll is a lasting emblem of how cultural and social difference can be made to produce not antagonism but art. The most authentically democratic cultural form born of this country, rock and roll is, finally, the means through which America heard its own voice.
As the first major educational initiative of the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, Little Steven’s Rock and Roll High School is a landmark project. Aiming to bring rock and roll history into every high school and middle school in the United States, Little Steven’s Rock and Roll High School will provide free materials, including teacher guidelines, lesson plans, DVDs and CDs, that will allow music teachers, social studies teachers, language arts teachers, and others to bring rock and roll history to life in their classrooms. With a website that will function as a virtual meeting place for educators, students, scholars, and fans alike, the Rock and Roll High School project seeks to forge an alliance with the classroom leaders themselves, in hopes that rock and roll is finally recognized not only as a legitimate object of study but as a crucial object of study. With leading partners Scholastic and The National Association for Music Education, the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation will be mailing its first curriculum in 2008.
In 2002, launching "Little Steven's Underground Garage", his popular weekly syndicated radio show celebrating garage rock music, Little Steven described BO DIDDLEY as being "the spiritual godfather of garage".
In 2004, BO DIDDLEY performed a show-stopping set of rock, blues and rap at Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival, a day-long celebration of garage bands held at Randall's Island, NY.
Voices: Van Zandt Picks His Favorite Albums: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thisweek/2007/12/voices-van-zand.html
Rock and Roll Forever Foundation website: http://rockandrollforever.org/
Little Steven's Underground Garage website: http://www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com/
