T'S near midnight at Joe's Pub in the East Village and the movement is in full effect. A roomful of twentyish and thirtyish black folk for whom hip-hop has been like a religion most of their lives are cheering as Mos Def, an esteemed rapper, roars through a set of hard rock songs, singing over the crunch of heavy guitars. He launches into a song called "Ghetto Rock." The chorus goes: "Yes, we are so ghetto! Yes, we are rock 'n' roll!" The song ends, and Mos says, "Y'all want some more rock 'n' roll?" The crowd screams for more. He tells them: "It's a whole movement, like Fela with Afrobeat. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. Noah, too."

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There is indeed a movement under way. Rock has long been one of the sounds hip-hop used in its pastiche, but aside from groups like Outkast and GooDie Mob, who drench themselves in funked-out rock, it has consisted of a sampled riff here and there. Now the hip-hop generation is grabbing guitars and making rock 'n' roll.

"This is the sound of new America," said Martin Luther, a rising rock musician from San Francisco. "I'm coming to kill all the slave masters' memories! Hip-hop gave us that voice that allowed us to create who we were. Black rock 'n' roll is now a next something for those kids who've grown up, who still have that urban energy, but have experienced some pain to where they don't feel embarassed about showing some vulnerability."

This new black rock movement has been around a few years, and its audience is small but growing. Though blacks created the rock 'n' roll and blues music that paved the way for whites to become early rock innovators, blacks have largely shunned rock both as fans and as players for decades. In the 1960's Jimi Hendrix was dismissed by many blacks for playing what they called "white boy music."

Today's black rockers see such obstacles as challenges they gladly accept. They are moved by the sonic aggression of hip-hop, its obsession with rhythm and the way it reflects, reports on and evokes the lifestyles of black people around the country. They are also turned off by the current state of hip-hop and R & B, with their limited subject matter and emotional options.

Their sound is most often a deeply soul-inflected rock reminiscent of the mellower moments of Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Parliament Funkadelic rather than the full-on guitar assault of Fishbone or Living Colour. Much of this rock is difficult to distinguish from soul music, but the musicians use the word rock to distance themselves, they say, from the overly produced treacle that passes for modern soul.

Rock, they say, gives them the freedom to express their own ideas. Santi White of Stiffed said: "There's a Smiths song that I love that says, `Hang the D.J. because the music he constantly plays says nothing to me about my life.' And that's how I felt. So I said, `Fine, I'm going to find some music that does say something about my life.' "

The undisputed aesthetic leader of the movement is an eccentric, 33-year-old, Atlanta-born Los Angeles resident named Cody Chestnutt. He wears a royal blue velvet hat with a large gold buckle that is a cross between a fedora and a stovepipe; answers the phone by saying "Praise the Lord"; and always carries his own drinking glass, a stout bowl-like cup with curved edges that looks like something out of the film "Beetlejuice."

In October he will release his debut album, "The Headphone Masterpiece," a stunning collection of 36 mostly laid-back songs on which he sings and plays nearly every instrument. He recorded the album in his bedroom using $10,000 worth of equipment. Its lo-fi quality adds a homespun charm to what he calls "rock with a soulful edge," which recalls the Beatles, the Velvet Underground and the Strokes as well as Sly Stone, Prince and D'Angelo.

Mr. Chestnutt said he was a drummer who wrote "the typical smoothed-out R & B" until he heard Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." "I heard `Teen Spirit,' and I said that's what it's about," he said. "It's powerful, it's passionate, it's living and breathing right now. That song inspired me to pick up the guitar. And the guitar was the turning point."

That was about seven years ago. Since then Mr. Chestnutt has not held a job, but, supported by his wife and friends, he has spent his time studying the guitar and searching for a sound that moved him. "I was blessed with having soul," he said, "but I went out to see what's going with the rock 'n' roll that I'm not familiar with. Hip-hop was not speaking to me. I didn't feel like I was learning anything. I was saying, how can I get the same soul that hip-hop has, but have an intellectual stimulation about it?"

His first single, "Look Good in Leather," is a deceptively simple ditty that begins with him strumming an acoustic guitar and singing, "I can do anything I want because I look good in leather." What follows is four minutes of bodacious black male vanity and egotism of the sort often heard in hip-hop. It also extols a quintessentially American sartorial style and is thus a celebration of Americana.

"That is the Fonz's theme song," Mr. Chestnutt said, referring to the character in the 1970's television show "Happy Days." "This is what `Happy Days' taught us. What defines cool? Black leather jacket and jeans."

Such a song would not be possible in hip-hop because of its largely contentious relationship with America and Americanness. Even hip-hop's embrace of the American designer Tommy Hilfiger carries a certain ironic sneer. "Hip-hop brought the whole thing to the next level," Mr. Chestnutt said. "Now it's time to evolve into the future."

The 32-year-old Martin Luther is another major voice. His 1999 debut album, "The Calling," and its followup, "Funk Soul Rebel," to be released in the fall, evoke the rock-meets-swinging-funk of Bootsy Collins and Parliament-Funkadelic. Last year Res (pronounced Reese), a singer from Philadelphia, released "How I Do," a collection of seductive post-punk that recalled the Pretenders, with lyrics about self-empowerment that harked back to the roaring female singer-songwriters of the 70's. Most of her songs were written by Santi White, whose band Stiffed has toured with the seminal black punk-hardcore rock band Bad Brains and is releasing a seven-song EP this fall.