Beat

 Background

The multi-faceted world of Post-World War II America set the stage for Beat culture to take root. As the country recovered from the horrors of the war, the economy experienced a boom which put more disposable income in the hands of Americans, leading to a rise in consumer culture. Advertisements and popular culture emphasized the mass produced and the artificial as cornerstones of the average American household. This trend very closely mimicked the transformation of marketing and the fixation of novel goods that took shape back in the Gilded Age. Although plastic had been invented in the 19th century and was used extensively in the 1930s and 1940s, it wasn’t until after the war that it surged in the markets and entered the everyday home environment, alluring Americans with its convenience, affordability and supposed disposability. Popular and consumer culture intersected frequently and gave rise to crazes, often in the realms of beauty or entertainment. Music itself fell into the streams of the mass produced and the popular. In order to ensure producibility in the market, music producers followed a specific format, in turn getting airtime on thousands of radios across America. 

Social and political struggles also characterized the country in the 1950s. In the year 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy launched a witch hunt at the beginning of the Red Scare, a nationwide hysteria that rose alongside the rise of Communism in Europe and Asia. Neighbors threw accusations against each other in a panic similar to that of Salem, often in an attempt to clear one’s own name. In the aftermath of World War II, the hidden anti-Semitic attitudes of many Americans rose to the surface. However, as these tensions declined, strife for African Americans climbed. For these individuals, a key moment in the 1950s came with the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, kick-started by the Brown vs. Board case of 1954 which made the segregation of public schools illegal. This movement continued into the ‘60s and ‘70s, and its effects are still felt to this day.

Read More: This is the Beat Generation

This 1952 newspaper article is the first printed use of the term "The Beat Generation," thus launching the term into the public consciousness

Culture and Music

.The Beat culture’s very nature as a counterculture drew on their skepticism towards American politics and popular culture, as they viewed conformity and conservatism as “spiritual toxins suffusing the postwar American dream” (Sterrit, xi). Although members of the culture did not unite under a collective cause (compared to the hippies of the next decade), they set in motion a range of social ideas that paved the way for the next generation. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg cites the following influences in his book, The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats:

• general liberation: Sexual ‘Revolution’ or ‘Liberation,’ Gay Liberation, Black   Liberation, Women’s Liberation too;
• liberation of the word from censorship;
• decriminalization of some of the laws against marijuana and other drugs;
• the evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll, and rock and roll into high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other popular musicians who were influenced in the 1960s by the writings of Beat Generation poets and writers;
• the spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized by Gary Snyder;
• opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, as emphasized in the works of Burroughs, Huncke, Ginsberg, and Kerouac;
• attention to what Kerouac called, after Spengler, ‘Second Religiousness’ developing within an advanced civilization;
• respect for land and indigenous peoples as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from On the Road, ‘The earth is an Indian’ 

Literature laid the foundation of many elements of Beat, especially through books and poetry. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes were a few of the influential and, at times, controversial literary figures of Beat culture. Music acted as a core feature that wove its way throughout all aspects of the culture. Jazz music in particular resounded with the Beats and became a significant influencing factor, as it fueled the energy, rhythm, and characteristics of the culture and its literature, permeating into the sound that “Beat poetry” achieved. For example, Jack Kerouac, one of the celebrated poets of the culture, entitled a poem “Charlie Parker” in celebration of the musician’s influence. Kerouac's poetry, itself, flowed in a rhythm meant to mirror that of Jazz music.

          

The musical genre’s influence went beyond artistic creation, coinciding with their social views as well. Jazz embodied the spirit of Beat culture in its freedom, its expressivity, and its allowance for experimentation. In addition, Beat participants’ enthusiasm for jazz directly challenged the public wariness of the genre due to its racial origins.

Jazz as America began to change during the decade's early years. In the 1940s, the predominant form of jazz came in the form of swing, performed by large, mostly white ensembles. This largely commercialized genre was largely dance-based and predictable in order to appeal to the dance craze that characterized the “Swing Era.” 

Black jazz musicians’ frustrations at racial barriers, poor working conditions, and the declining willingness to hire large, black ensembles gave birth to a new form of jazz: bebop. The forerunners of bebop got their start in jam sessions and flaunted the freedom given by improvisation, and the jam sessions spread to swing musicians’ dismay. Bebob - performed by small, African American ensembles - took an experimental and improvisatory approach as musicians ventured outside standard tonalities, meters, and harmonies. The genre resonated with the Beats, who celebrated such quintessential bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.