Hippie

 Background

Contrasting the political inaction of the Beats, the hippie movement sprouted as a direct response to the social and political issues of the 1960s and ‘70s. Although many cite the Vietnam war as the primary inciting factor, the hippie counterculture arguably began in 1960 in Greensboro when four African American students held a sit-in. This origin ties in with the advent of the Berkeley Free Speech movement four years later, a student protest that erupted on the University of California’s Berkeley campus in response to the prohibition of on-campus political activities. This particular event spread to other colleges as students advocated for their rights to free speech, and, within a few years, these newly-formed protests served as vehicles for anti-war rallies as well as Civil Rights demands. Women’s liberation, experimental drug use, and gay rights joined the fold of causes uplifted by the liberal youth of the era.

 

In another building block of the subculture, the future hippies cast aside the cultural norms of their parents as well as of the world around them. This involved an attitude of disdain towards materialism, commercialism, and conformity as well as towards rampant political corruption, elements that the Beats had rebelled against years before. The Vietnam war, they believed, directly sprang from this corruption, bringing with it a swath of senseless violence. The public eye most frequently linked hippies with war opposition, glossing over the other aforementioned social issues.

Read More: Before the Summer of Love

This 1967 newspaper article features interviews with a couple of hippies and a tour around the Haight, an iconic dwelling place of the Hippie community.

Culture and Music

Although the hippie movement in many ways grew out of the Beat counterculture, they did not share the emphasis on jazz music. However, what remained consistent was the value of experimentation, of organic, non-cookie-cutter compositions, and of songs that resonated with their values. Like the jazz of the Beats, their music also bridged racial boundaries through themes and new genres. For hippies, music was of course a source of entertainment but also became a communal experience and a means of expressing their often controversial ideology. 

The music of the hippie community encompassed a wide range of styles, as some variations grew directly out of the movement whilst others thrived through close association. The development of electronic instruments and new recording techniques aided the birth of rock music, a genre fed at its core by blues as well as by the riotous rock and roll of the 1950s. While some rock musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix or Joe Cocker, merely resounded with their hippie audiences, others were active participants in the subculture, such as the members of Big Brother and the Holding Company. The fusion of rock music and psychedelic drugs such as LSD (acid) created an additional genre: psychedelic rock. 

Hippies embraced the music of the folk revival due to similar worldviews expressed, making it a common staple at protests and rallies. In fact, Joan Baez, a leading folk revival artist, performed in the first student protests in Berkeley, whilst both she and Bob Dylan appeared at Civil Rights protests, including the March on Washington in 1963. 

 

The 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival drew thousands of hippies to California in a multi-day event that create the format that subsequent rock festivals followed. The festival heralded the first major performances of previously unheard rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, who famously lit his guitar on fire at the end of his set. The same year spawned another significant hippie event in California, the Summer of Love, named for the surge of happenings in San Francisco. Various songs chronicled the event including John Phillips’ “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” Although many other rock festivals followed, especially in the year 1969, it was the Woodstock Music and Art fair that became nearly synonymous with the public hippie appearance, representing the highpoint of the culture. Although the coordinators of the event planned for 50,000 attendees, about 400,000 in totality arrived. This necessitated intense collaboration to ensure the wellbeing of all attendees, and it represented the power of the hippie ideology of peace, understanding, and cooperation, as they successfully implemented a communal lifestyle. The festival featured performances by several of the most important figures in both rock music and folk revival music, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joan Baez, and Ravi Shankar.