Essay on The Beat Generation

Hip-Hop and rap resurfaced in the Bronx, in the 70’s, around this time people in Bronx were going through, poverty, unemployment, increased crime, etc. Which caused them to have freedom of expression through rhyming; creating the meaning rap. Although the meaning of the word “Rap” original meant to strike or blow. Which in my opinion fits perfectly because they are striking mentally with words instead of physically. This genre is basically a form of

    The Beat Generation can be perceived in many ways depending on how a person may translate the traits characterizing it but the real definition of this generation remains the same all throughout. The Beat Generation is a literary movement that happened during the 1950’s after World War II and was greatly influenced by a group of artists and authors who explored. The Beat movement was centralized in certain communities where freedom of expression was greatly prevalent. The lifestyle in bohemian centralized communities were explored and described by many authors and some of the most well-known authors of this generation are  Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Jack Kerouac. All authors gave light to what beat generation was like through their work of art. They outlined that Beat Generation is an approach made by the people to reach a certain goal. Some of the goals are personal release and purification. Sounds familiar? These goals are more similar to the goals of yoga. These goals were attained mainly through the use of drugs, sex, and expressed in jazz music.. The Beat Generation is a  rejection of standard narrative values, spiritual quest, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with drugs, and sexual exploration. All these components are widely known as the characteristics of “hippies” and

In the early 70's, a Jamaican, DJ known as Kool Herc attempted to combine his Jamaican style of disk jockey, that involved reciting improvised rhymes over the dub versions of his reggae records (Davey 1). He also invented turntables, which kept the music going, with the occasional voice on the top of records, which started the roots of rap music. Over time, the culture broke into mainstream, spread around the world, and young people who did not have much to do, created not only multi-million industry, but have also created a way we can speak to each other all around the world. Hip hop is linked to other music such as rap which is embraced by urban black population. It is raw self-expression, sometimes features expletive lyrics, and violence. “Hip hop artists spoke to despair and pain of urban youth and the poor who were often without a voice. The rappers themselves were, the product of that reality, and it was conveyed through their lyrics” (Muhammad 1).

Beastie Boys, now seen as a forefront in the gentrification of Hip Hop, were at first an anomaly. Being an all white group in a predominantly African-American industry was not a walk in the park at first, but once they showed their ability to rap; no one seemed to doubt that they truly belonged in the Hip

Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poem, Howl, is a powerful portrayal of life degraded. It represents the harsh life of the beat generation and chronicles the struggles of the repressed. Howl is a poem of destruction. Destruction of mind, body, and soul through the oppression of the individual. Using powerful diction, Allen Ginsberg describes this abolition of life and its implications through our human understanding of abstractions like Time, Eternity, and self. The poem’s jumbled phrasing and drastic emotion seems to correspond with the minds of the people it describes. Ginsberg uses surprisingly precise and purposeful writing to weave the complex

“I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there 's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that 's really important to us, and music is all we 've really got” – Missy Elliot. Hip-Hop is a cultural movement and popular genre of music that emerged during the early 1970 's by working class Black youths in New York City. The cultural movement has rapidly expanded across different countries and ethnicities over the years, becoming one of the few markers that define a generation. Hip-Hop can be seen as “the fundamental matrix of self-expression for this whole generation” (Katz & Smith, 1993). Through music, itself, artists can express their feelings towards different events or social changes that they’ve see or have experienced in their lives. According to Frith (1986), this perspective towards writing music is similar to Mooney’s argument that popular song lyrics is a reflection of what’s missing or needed at their time, giving us a trace of America’s ‘mood’ throughout history. In return, music artists captivate the minds of people among various backgrounds who use these relatable music lyrics as a source of empowerment or as an expression of their own thoughts. While some music artists create music to uplift their audience by giving them a sense of freedom, other artists create music that separates their audience by dehumanizing one group and giving power to the other.

This obstruction of expression resulted in the birth of "bourgeoisie" poetry known as rap (hip-hop sub-genre) created by the hip-hop cultural movement of the 1970’s. A movement with idealistic roots linked to the cultural awareness of the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance and the cultural preservation and unification of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. Nevertheless, the hip-hop genre is another outlet of Black Cultural Art redefining cultural perception through urban expression, relying on traditional African-American Art aesthetics.

Hip-hop has become a new cultural phenomenon in North America and has become quite popular all over the world. Hip-hop began in the 1970's in New York City where it has its origins in the African-American community. However, because of music videos, Hip-hop culture has become accessible to everyone in society and has merged into mainstream pop culture. Hip-hop culture may not have been as popular if it was not for the accessibility of this new media.

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.

Entertainment not only consists of movies, music, and television but also literature. The beat generation spoke against how materialistic people were, and they just simply spoke up that is why they were seen as rebels. “In the world of literature and art, the Beats stood in opposition to the clean, almost antiseptic formalism of the early twentieth century Modernist,”(The Beat Generation) that is what the Beat generation stood up for. Where literature had a turning point was in 1956 when Howel was published by Allen Ginsberg. “Censorship as a force for modulating public discourse, in the realm of literature at least, came to an end”(The Beat Generation).With their work we can express ourselves anyway desired,without anyone coming after us. Although the government had a valid reason to be worried which was the threat of communism, they believed their work had the ideology of communism. The beat generation was very open minded, intelligent, and had knowledge that still impact us today such as environmentalism.

The form of Ginsberg’s poem challenges the American culture by resistance from “best minds”. Howl is separated to three sections that include long lines, which look like paragraphs. Resisting

The “beat movement” is a literary period born out of World War II. This movement in American Literature has become an important period in the history of literature and society in America. Characterized by personal alienation and contempt for convention, the movement celebrated stylistic freedom and spontaneity. The Beat writers created a new vision of modern life and altered the nature of awareness in America.

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

The Beat Generation is characterized as a group of poets after World War II, they are widely known and recognized for their works because it is not only well documents but also because they inspired many future generation of writers.