Beatnik Influence On American Culture

Music is often considered “the universal language.” Throughout, history it has symbolized love, brought people together, and has been the cornerstone of many lives. In the 1950s, a new form of music entered American mass culture that drastically changed the culture of the United States (U.S.): rock music. In the U.S., it began as Rock ‘n’ Roll, a originally “black” music genre that was then taken and promulgated by white Americans. Post WWII, many Americans—especially teenagers—struggled with the newfound societal conformity and normalcy, and rock provided them a form of retaliation. From its beginning, Rock united the younger generation of Americans, stirring up a sense of community amongst teenagers and troubling many adults by their actions—heightening

What lasting affect did loosing Buddy Holly, Little Richard joining the ministry, Elvis going into the military, and the many other problems with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis have on American Pop Culture?

2. The mood of the “Beat Generation’ is best reflected in which Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

Do you remember a time, during which hip hop music was a voice against African American oppression? Honestly, it is hard to tell nowadays. Even though hip hop was a concept coined my American artists, it is rooted in many cultures among different nations. It is one of the only nationalistic movements that have not lost its fundamental heritage throughout the test of time. Hip hop music has always been a voice for the voiceless, but in the past decade, the music genre has declined into commercialism. While these mainstream artists are cashing in their paychecks, young, talented artists, like the SaveMoney Crew are reinstating the consciousness in rap that has been missing for some time now. I believe that the majority of mainstream rap has changed for the worse because rappers are largely making music about meaningless things like extravagant purchases, hard core drugs, and sexual exploits, instead of using their position and influence to advocate against police brutality, discrimination, and the struggles inherent in a life of poverty like the underground movement spearheaded by the Savemoney Crew and other young, socially conscious rappers.

During the mid-1900’s many different types of music emerged and became popular. Each type of music that was popular brought along different social and political issues. Between 1950’s rock and roll, 1960’s psychedelic rock, and 1970’s disco, America was undergoing a great deal of changes. Among these three genres of music, rock and roll posed the greatest challenge to the status quo, with its bonding of African-Americans and white people in listening and dancing.

What movement changed the world and created many traditions, movements, and even lifestyles? Hip-Hop. This is a name for four elements, created in the late seventies, which includes turntablism, emceeing, graffiti, and break dancing. Hip Hop attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s. Today, many view this as just “Rap,” but Hip Hop is not just music, it is a cultural movement that influenced America in positive ways. These influences can be seen in the traditions, fashion, art, music, and lifestyles of America. It is important to recognize the voice of an otherwise underrepresented group and how it influenced lifes.

The Beatles were more than their music. They influenced the lives of millions of people unlike any musicians before them. They were the first and most popular band in one of the most important music movements in American history, the British Invasion. The year 1964 was the year both the British Invasion and “Beatlemania” came to America and forever changed the landscape of music in the United States by introducing the genre of pop, as it is today. The Beatles changed the rules of music. Many things that are considered normal now were pioneered by the Beatles such as: creating compilation albums, expressing their views on world happenings through the media, musicians in movies, and even mass media advertising. The beatles

Almost all aspects of American culture were changing and music was at the heart of it all. Ranging from the folk movement led by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Dave Van Ronk to the release of "Revolution 1" on the Beatles' White Album. Music gave the generation of the social change new inspiration and an outlet to express their dissatisfaction with the established morals of society. Rock n’ roll became popular, lyrics were becoming more sexual, and everyone wanted a piece of the rebellion. Artists like Bob Dylan and Elvis were a huge influence on the music scene of the 60s and bands such as The Beatle, The Rolling Stones, and The Doors were out to change the world. The Rolling Stones were not afraid to express their sexual desires through their music.

During the 1960’s America was a country felt like it was crumbling to pieces. It was the time when John F Kennedy was elected president but then killed 4 years later. Although during his time in office, America was involved in the Vietnam War. Not only that, but people were fighting against discrimination and for equal rights and opportunities, a movement for civil rights (1).

The beat generation was a movement that sought to oppose American society values, and any sort of control. They explored Eastern religions, was somewhat postmodernism, rejected the materialistic culture, spoke about drugs, our conscious mind, and fought for sexual liberation and exploration with their unapologetically offensive language. While reading the novel Jitterbug Perfume written by Tom Robbin, one can witness how the novel exhibits aspects of the beat literature, and thus concluding that the beat generation served as inspiration to Tom Robbin.

” Williams’ theory therefore suggests that the terms must necessarily co-exist in order to define each other. The “pervasiveness of consent ” therefore characterises the fifties, against which these Beat texts can be contrasted. Theodore Roszak’s 1969 article ‘The Making of a Counterculture,’ helps define beat ideology as “heightened self-expression and often a rejection of political and authoritative institutions… a negative spirit of the times coupled with a specific lifestyle .” Both On the Road and Howl and their author’s lifestyles of their writers reflect this criterion, in idiomatic and contextual terms, lending to the notion that they are, by the overall nature of their existence, countercultural texts. Roszak’s adolescent counterculture often seems the embodiment of Dean and Sal’s ‘beatitude’ in On the Road “when they pulse to music…value what is raunchy… flare against authority, seek new experience, ” but it is similarly descriptive of the naked, sometime vulgar language Ginsberg employs in Howl “who bit detectives in the neck… let themselves be fucked in the ass.” (13) The Beats admire the vibrancy naturally present among youth, and although this is a style for which their writing has been criticised, it is a move away from the traditionally

With the economic decline and availability of jobs with upward movement, a culture of youths formed in Britain that challenged the ideals and cultural norms of the generations that came before them. A consistent movement from traditional society through youth subcultures brings light through the eyes of the musicians that describe their generation’s feelings of homelessness in an era filled with unemployment, low wages, and violence. The insurgence of the counterculture movement, poor economic conditions, and the commercialization of previous Rock and Roll music in Britain directly led to the punk subculture because it allowed youths to speak up about their conditions and frustrations through an easily understood and accessible medium while maintaining a different stance than their predecessors.

The subcultures “Beatniks” and “Hipsters” have proven to media and society that they have an urge for individualism. This is not something that has gone unnoticed by anyone, especially in the 1950’s with the beatniks. As a rise in each of their cultures, they have both experienced harsh criticism, attacking their style and how they approach life. There are many different views on how beatniks and hipsters lived/live their lives. Today, it is easy to tell the differences and similarities between beatniks and hipsters, because there are many of them.

Jack Kerouac was one of a group of young men who, immediately after the Second World War, protested against what they saw as the blandness, conformity and lack of cultural purpose of middle-class life in America. The priorities of people of their age, in the mainstream of society, were to get married, to move the suburbs, to have children and to accumulate wealth and possessions. Jack Kerouac and his friends consciously rejected this pursuit of stability and instead looked elsewhere for personal fulfillment. They were the Beats, the pioneers of a counterculture that came to be known as the Beat Generation. The Beats saw mainstream life as a prison. They wanted freedom, the freedom to pick up and go at a moments notice. This search for

Influences of the Beat Movement can be noted in the next phase of American History: Hippie counter-culture of the 1960s. The Beat Generation was an important political catalyst for those minorities that had no voice. The “beatniks” of the movement were seen as a threat by those Americans that lived in the typical suburbs of American who tried to raise their children in morally upright ways (Silesky, 81).