The Beatnik Impact
From the Renaissance to Postmodernism, many writers have experimented and challenged the form, style, and content of both poetry and prose. A majority of these writers can be grouped into a certain period that influenced or highlighted their work. These past writers were inspired by the world around them whether it was societal changes or their personal lives. When similar styles of writing occur from multiple writers during a time, that time becomes known as a period such as the Romantic Period or the Modern Period. Along with periods there are two other classifications. These are known as writing movements or writing groups. The difference between a movement and a group is that a movement is a trend within a period and a group is a circle of writers who go beyond what the movement or period is doing. None of these classifications occur on their own. There is always something that the period, movement, or group is in response to. One of the most influential past groups is known as the Beat Generation. This group of writers, also known as beatniks, became present in the literary community from the late 1940s to the 1960s. Although the group was small and their time in the spotlight was shorter than that of many other movements or periods these writers brought a very different perspective to the Modern and Postmodern periods with their anti-intellectual, anti-establishment, and anti-political views. The literature of the 1950s and 1960s was greatly impacted by the Beat Generation's response to World War II and their lifestyle.
The Beat Generation formed in New York City in the late 1940s after World War II ended. Oliver Harris, author of the article “Beating the Academy,” stated that Jack Kerouac coined the t...
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Thomas, Lorenzo. "`Communicating By Horns': Jazz And Redemption In The Poetry Of The Beats And The Black Arts.."African American Review 26.2 (1992): 291. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
van Elteren, Mel. "The Subculture Of The Beats: A Sociological Revisit." Journal Of American Culture 22.3 (1999): 71.America: History & Life. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Weinreich, Regina. "The Beat Generation Is Now About Everything." College Literature 27.1 (2000): 263-268. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Originating in the urban Bronx area of New York hip-hop culture emerged in the 1970’s as a way for minorities to form identifies and social status. Contemporarily, hip-hop has evolved to contain numerous activities such as, “spoken word poetry, theater, clothing styles, language, and some forms of activism,” (Petchauer). Also, in his Journal of Black Studies, author Tobey S. Jenkins states that the core framework of hip-hop culture consists of five elements, and those elements are, “the B-boy/B-girl (dance or break dance), the emcee (voice), the DJ (music), graffiti (art), and knowledge (the consciousness),”(Jenkins,2011). Jenkins also states that it is common for society to replace these elements when a person is to affiliate themselves with a product of hip-hop by five core stereotypes of the Black male hip-hop artist: “the nihilistic, self-centered, caked-out mogul with a god complex; the uneducated, lazy, absentee father; the imprisoned and angry criminal;
Werner, Craig Hansen. 2006. A change is gonna come: music, race & the soul of America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
The 1950s saw a period of extensive contentment within postwar America. A majority of the population adapted to the modern suburban lifestyle that emerged within this time period. They bought houses, started families, got steady jobs, and watched the television while complacently submitting to the government. Although fairly monotonous, this sort of lifestyle was safe and secure many Americans were ready to sacrifice individuality for a sense of comfort. There was a minority, however, that did not quite accept this conservative conformity that had swept across the nation; some of these people took the shape of artists and writers. During the 1950s, what became known as the "Beat Generation" inspired the challenging of and rebelling against conventional America.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
America was built on rebellion. This was no different for the Beat Generation whom took Americans in the 20th century, into a new way of life. Middle class free spirited people who questioned the practices of everyday lifestyle and mainstream culture, the beats lived in disillusionment with society. The fifties being a time of conservative family morals encouraged the bohemian nature of the beats for their want to experience more. The nature of this rejection is expected but, why? And how does such rebellion begin to take place, what forms does it take, and does such rebellion provide a lasting change?
In 1961, previous to the outbreak of Occupy Wall Street, Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park was filled with three–thousand young beatnik protestors. Playing instruments and singing folk music symbolized the starvation that these young folks wanted of freedom and equality for America. Protestors demonstrated mixed cultures, individualistic beliefs that went against the status quo of America after the post-war years. The Beatnik Riot involved young traditional Americans fighting not just for the musical crisis of that time, but for the social, racial, and cultural segregations that were brought on by the years of war. Acting as a catalytic reaction, the Beatnik Riot put in motion a new modernized America.
Music nurtured the African American tradition and their struggle towards equality in the same century.... ... middle of paper ... ... Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds Pub. Carter, D. (2009).
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Linda Pavlovski and Scott T. Darga, vol. 106, Gale, 2001. 20th Century Literature Criticism Online, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/KSZNPN102098467/LCO?u=schaumburg_hs&sid=LCO. Accessed 14 Dec. 2017. Originally published in CLA Journal, vol. 31, June 1988, pp.
The world was in 1950 at a point of multiple crossroads. After two World Wars an exemplary series of bad events followed, like the Cold War and the atomic menace. But it was also the beginning of some prosperity. People started again to gather material values. Nevertheless, the slow awakening from the fog of war was a process too complex to be generally accepted. In an apparently healing world there were still too many fears and too many left behind. On this ground of alienation, isolation and despair Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” emerged together with the Beat movement. John Tytell observed that the “Beat begins with a sense of natural displacement and disaffiliation, a distrust of efficient truth, and an awareness that things are often not what
Ryan, John. “The Seventh Stream: The emergency of rock n roll in American popular music,” (Book reviews) Social Forces (1994): March, p. 927. Star, Alexander. “Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music” (book reviews)
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
Weissman, Dick. (2010). Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution: Music and Social Change in America. Blackbeat Books: New York
Breckenridge, Stan L. (2003). "The 'Path African American music for everyone. Second Edition. Iowa: Kendall-Hunt Publications, Inc. Enotes.
These six words in many ways defined the late 1980s and 1990s, encapsulating the rise of hip-hop, NIKE, Michael Jordan, and the racial-class narratives embedded in each of them. The problem of such ethos are highlighted in a music video from Seattle’s very own Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
Overtime, Hip-Hop artists began to diversify their sounds and rhythms by different influences regarding ethnic backgrounds or creating certain moods for their audiences. Based on the article, “ The Significance of the Relationship Between AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC AND WEST AFRICAN MUSIC,” the author, Olly Wilson elucidates how African slaves used drumming as a way to call out to one another, for camp singing, and for negro spirituals as well (Wilson, 1974). During the Antebellum Period, African slaves would create beats from drums in which Hip-Hop today uses drums to project beats but at much different paces than in the past. Throughout its history, this genre of music has focused on beats instead of the melody, which is a commonality among African tribal music and today’s contemporary Hip-Hop. Depending on the timeframe and area the beat comes from, shows the impact of how those rhythms will sound. For instance, old school beats have different sound patterns than modern beats. Geographically, countries hear and spread music to each other and different ethnicities pick up their unique beats and rhythmic sounds; creating interrelationships of mixed musical cultures and specializations. In the article, “B-Beats Bombarding Bronx: Mobile DJ Starts Something 41with Oldie R&B Disk” by the author, Robert Ford expresses how the Hip-Hop pioneer, DJ Kool herc rose to fame by introducing assorted rhythm breaks (Ford, 2004). Also, as generations passed, Hip-Hop took a turn away from jazz and snappy blues to contemporary rap and R&B which is considered as “ghetto” or “gangsta music.” White critics have this false misconception of Hip-Hop and rap music and believe that they depict the harsh realities of ghetto life, poverty, and vulgarity. When in reality, it is a big phenomenon and apart of African culture because it conveys how they try to rise above the disorders of pauperism and the