<P> Many early rock and roll songs dealt with issues of cars, school, dating, and clothing . The lyrics of rock and roll songs described events and conflicts that most listeners could relate to through personal experience . Topics such as sex that had generally been considered taboo began to appear in rock and roll lyrics . This new music tried to break boundaries and express emotions that people were actually feeling but had not talked about . An awakening began to take place in American youth culture . </P> <P> In the crossover of African American "race music" to a growing white youth audience, the popularization of rock and roll involved both black performers reaching a white audience and white musicians performing African American music . Rock and roll appeared at a time when racial tensions in the United States were entering a new phase, with the beginnings of the civil rights movement for desegregation, leading to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that abolished the policy of "separate but equal" in 1954, but leaving a policy which would be extremely difficult to enforce in parts of the United States . The coming together of white youth audiences and black music in rock and roll inevitably provoked strong white racist reactions within the US, with many whites condemning its breaking down of barriers based on color . Many observers saw rock and roll as heralding the way for desegregation, in creating a new form of music that encouraged racial cooperation and shared experience . Many authors have argued that early rock and roll was instrumental in the way both white and black teenagers identified themselves . </P> <P> Several rock historians have claimed that rock and roll was one of the first music genres to define an age group . It gave teenagers a sense of belonging, even when they were alone . Rock and roll is often identified with the emergence of teen culture among the first baby boomer generation, who had both greater relative affluence, leisure and who adopted rock and roll as part of a distinct sub-culture . This involved not just music, absorbed via radio, record buying, jukeboxes and TV programs like American Bandstand, but it also extended to film, clothes, hair, cars and motorbikes, and distinctive language . The contrast between parental and youth culture exemplified by rock and roll was a recurring source of concern for older generations, who worried about juvenile delinquency and social rebellion, particularly as to a large extent rock and roll culture was shared by different racial and social groups . </P> <P> In America, that concern was conveyed even in youth cultural artifacts such as comic books . In "There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" from True Life Romance (1956), a defiant teen dates a rock and roll - loving boy but drops him for one who likes traditional adult music--to her parents' relief . In Britain, where post-war prosperity was more limited, rock and roll culture became attached to the pre-existing Teddy Boy movement, largely working class in origins, and eventually to the longer lasting rockers . Rock and roll has been seen as reorienting popular music towards a teen market, often celebrating teen fashions, as in Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" (1956) or Dion and the Belmonts' "A Teenager in Love" (1960). </P>

When did pop music and rock and roll first begin