How Did The Beat Generation Influence Counter Culture

During the 1960s Music was heavily influenced by the political and social events happening at the time. At this time civil rights movements were common as many people were trying to spread the emancipation of racism and segregation. As a result the music of the time tended to reflect this counterculture of peace. This “culture” encompassed civil rights, anti-establishment and, inciting revolution. This was a vital time in history for civil rights activists as well as anti-war revolutionaries and the music industry. From folk music to rock music, everyone was affected by the war and chose to express it through the most international form of art, music. Anti-war activists and counterculture enthusiast craved the music that truly expressed

Around the same time within the late 1960’s, a new hippie movement was forming, which was often described as a counterculture.

Their dissatisfaction with the consumerism values and goals, with the work ethic, and with the dependence on technology (Edgar and Sedwick, 2008) fuelled their belief to set themselves free from this mainstream culture using drugs such as LSD to open their minds and become spiritual and free. Their fashion consisted of floral headbands and clothing, flared jeans and bare feet. In January of 1967, a Human Be-in in Golden Gate Park San Francisco publicised the culture and this lead to the Summer of Love (The Naked Truth……….., 2014). According to Philippa(Toturhunt.com, 2015), this culture has since moved on and developed, in the sense of beliefs, to become what is now known as the rave culture. Which followed on from the hippie culture of listening to music in fields, with spiritual and honing on values that counter the popular culture whilst using recreational drugs to open the mind and push the beliefs of the hippie culture of their predecessors. Rather than psychedelics this new culture used amphetamines such as MDMA and brought together every different kind of person. Either way, drugs have played part in counterculture for a very long time, and it didn 't end at with the hippies.

In the summer of 1969, a music festival known as “Woodstock” took place for three straight days in Upstate, New York with thirty-two musical acts playing, and over 400,000 people from around the world coming to join this musical and peaceful movement. Woodstock started out being a small concert, created to promote peace in the world. Now, Woodstock is still being celebrated over 40 years later. This three day music festival represented the perfect concert for the “baby boomers” during a messy political time. Woodstock significantly impacted the counterculture era of the 1960’s in a number of ways; how it began, the ideas of the concert, the sense of union and love it represented and it

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.

Haight-Ashbury, the Summer of Love, and Beyond From the late 1950s through 1960s America was experiencing turbulence through the changes in societal values and how the youth wanted to live. After WWII, Americans exercised conformity to get back into a life of stability. Families followed patterns of accepted social norms, and the children and young adults followed their parents’ footsteps. Conformity was accepted by many; however, there were the “Beatniks”, those who could not accept the thought of conforming and becoming like their parents. The alienation from society started small, with novelists, “Jack Kerouac, advocated a kind of free, unstructured composition”(Beat Movement).

The Beat Movement, beginning in the 1950’s, consisted of a group of American writers that went against the social norms of that generation. During that time in America, society bent themselves out

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

Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac formed the foundation of what would be referred to as the Beat Generation. The Beats were an anti-conformist movement who saw capitalism as detrimental to the human spirit and damaging to social equality. Among many various aspects of the arts, the Beats most notably wrote literature which was threatening to the establishment that was more straightforward and expressive than anything prior. Ultimately the Beat Generation disappeared just as quickly as they appeared but their work made lasting impacts on modern society. One example are the hippies who were a counterculture and anti-establishment movement during the 1960s and 1970s which the Beats laid the foundation for years

The hippie movements of the sixties were driven by a plethora of factors. There were many new technologies that were being introduced in this period, a war against Communism around the globe, internal struggles against several types of injustices, a growing drug culture, and several other important developments. To say the least, it was a volatile period in American history and many sub-cultures were actively seeking to carve out new paths that were starkly different than the traditional norms. These generations who rejected traditional culture helped carve out a new trajectory for the United States and the movements influences can still be felt to this day.

The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and

The “hippies” of the 1960s had many effects on the American society. The visual appearance and lifestyle of the hippies were in sharp contrast to the conservative nature of the older generation, which defined them as a counterculture. The hippie lifestyle was based on free love, rock music, shared property, and drug experimentation. They introduced a new perspective on drugs, freedom of expression, appearance, music, attitudes toward work, and held a much more liberal political view than mainstream society.

To understand the sixties counterculture, we must understand the important role of Bob Dylan. His lyrics fueled the rebellious youth in America. Songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times are A-Changin” made him favorable to anti-war demonstrators and supporters of the Civil Rights movement. He was commonly hailed as the spokesman for his generation. Dylan used lyrics to allow the youth to find their own form of counter-culture. The youth generation began to see the effects racism, war, etc. effect the society in America. To combat this, the youth created their own form of counter-culture to promote a peaceful change within society. Some of their actions include forming anti-war protests that opposed America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and supporting African Americans/women get the rights they deserve through the Civil Rights Movement. Bob Dylan’s music appealed to the young generation because he openly expresses his disapproval of the establishment in order to influenced his audience to move in a direction for change. Counterculture youth rejected cultural norms of the previous generation and their values and lifestyles opposed the mainstream culture present in the 1950’s. The folk music revival of the early 1960s, as well as the counter-culture movement played an important role in advocating change. Bob Dylan wrote songs that influenced the Civil Rights Movement, New Left Movement, and Anti-War Movement.

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).

For the first time in American history, a large population of people of all ages, classes, and races came together to challenge the traditional institutions, traditional values in society, and "the establishment" in general. Youth, women, ethnic minorities, environmentalists, migrant workers and others caused the emergence of the counter culture. This cultural movement from 1960 to 1973 was caused by many factors. This era was one that was filled with many important events that shaped the way that Americans viewed life. Those who were unhappy with what was going on around them and took part in this social phenomenon reflected and demonstrated their attitudes, values, and ideals in many ways. Various things from