Beatniks were members of a social movement in the mid-20th century, who subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle. They rejected the conformity and consumerism of mainstream American culture and expressed themselves through various forms of art, such as literature, poetry, music, and painting. They also experimented with spirituality, drugs, sexuality, and travel. The term "beatnik" was coined by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in 1958, as a derogatory label for the followers of the Beat Generation, a group of influential writers and artists who emerged during the era of the Silent Generation's maturing, from as early as 1946, to as late as 1963, but the subculture was at its most prevalent in the 1950s. This lifestyle of anti-consumerism may have been influenced by their generation living in extreme poverty in the Great Depression during their formative years, seeing slightly older people serve in WWII and being influenced by the rise of left-wing politics and the spread of Communism. The name was inspired by the Russian suffix "-nik", which was used to denote members of various political or social groups. The term "beat" originally was used by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to describe his social circle of friends and fellow writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Kerouac said that "beat" had multiple meanings, such as "beaten down", "beatific", "beat up", and "beat out". He also associated it with the musical term "beat", which referred to the rhythmic patterns of jazz, a genre that influenced many beatniks.
Cabell Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was a regular performer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.
Jazz rap is a fusion of jazz and hip hop music, as well as an alternative hip hop subgenre, that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter." The rhythm was rooted in hip hop over which were placed repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, etc. Groups involved in the formation of jazz rap included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Gang Starr, and Jungle Brothers.
Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, born Harry Raab, was an American jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. He played New York style stride piano and boogie woogie while singing in a wild, unrestrained style. His music career began in the late 1920s, when, under his real name, he played stride piano in Dixieland jazz bands in Harlem. He continued to perform there throughout the 1930s, adding the barrelhouse boogie of the time to his repertoire.
Wigger, also wigga, whigger and whigga, is a term for a white person of European ethnic origin who emulates the perceived mannerisms, language, and fashions that are generally stereotypically reserved for African-American culture, particularly hip hop culture. The word is a shorthand variation of "white nigger".
A zoot suit is a men's suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. It is most notable for its use as a cultural symbol among the Hepcat and Pachuco subcultures. Originating among African Americans it would later become popular with Mexican, Filipino, Italian, and Japanese Americans in the 1940s.
The jive is a dance style that originated in the United States from African Americans in the early 1930s. The name of the dance comes from the name of a form of African-American vernacular slang, popularized in the 1930s by the publication of a dictionary by Cab Calloway, the famous jazz bandleader and singer. In competition ballroom dancing, the jive is often grouped with the Latin-inspired ballroom dances, though its roots are based on swing dancing and not Latin dancing.
"Minnie the Moocher" is a jazz song co-written by American musician Cab Calloway and first recorded in 1931 by Calloway and his big band orchestra, selling over a million copies. "Minnie the Moocher" is famous for its nonsensical ad libbed lyrics, also known as scat singing. In performances, Calloway would have the audience and the band members participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of a call and response, eventually making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate.
Hepcat is a ska and reggae band formed in southern California in 1989. Their soulful harmonies and mellow rhythms were unlike those of contemporaries and more akin to musicians from the heyday of 1960s Jamaican ska with elements of soul, jazz and R&B.
The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many subcultures.
Hip is a slang for fashionably current and in the know. To be hip is to have "an attitude, a stance" in opposition to the "unfree world", or to what is square or prude. Being hip is also about being informed about the latest ideas, styles, and developments.
How to Speak Hip is a comedy album by Del Close and John Brent, released by Mercury Records in 1961.
The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster is a 9,000-word essay by Norman Mailer that connects the "psychic havoc" wrought by the Holocaust and atomic bomb to the aftermath of slavery in America in the figuration of the Hipster, or the "white negro". The essay is a call to abandon Eisenhower liberalism and a numbing culture of conformity and psychoanalysis in favor of the rebelliousness, personal violence and emancipating sexuality that Mailer associates with marginalized black culture. The White Negro was first published in the 1957 special issue of Dissent, before being published separately by City Lights. Mailer's essay was controversial upon its release and received a mixed reception, winning praise, for example, from Eldridge Cleaver and criticism from James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Allen Ginsberg. Baldwin, in particular, heavily criticized the work, asserting that it perpetuated the notorious "myth of the sexuality of Negros" and stating that it was beneath Mailer's talents. The work remains his most famous and most reprinted essay and it established Mailer's reputation as a "philosopher of hip".
The 21st-century hipster is a subculture. Fashion is one of the major markers of hipster identity. Members of the subculture typically do not self-identify as hipsters, and the word hipster is often used as a pejorative for someone who is pretentious or overly concerned with appearing trendy.
According to lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip and the synonym hep, whose origins are disputed. The words hip and hep first surfaced in slang around the beginning of the 20th century and spread quickly, making their first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1904. At the time, the words were used to mean "aware" and "in the know". In the late 1960s, African language scholar David Dalby popularized the idea that words used in American slang could be traced back to West Africa. He claimed that hipi was the source for both hip and hep. Sheidlower, however, disputes Dalby's assertion that the term hip comes from Wolof origins.
Hi De Ho is a 1947 American musical race film directed by Josh Binney. Distributed by All American Entertainment, the film stars an all African American cast, led by Cab Calloway. It first showed at the Squire Theatre in New York, and would be shown in the more than 500 African-American theaters in the US.
Stilyagi were members of a youth counterculture from the late 1940s until the early 1960s in the Soviet Union. A stilyaga was primarily distinguished by snappy clothing—preferably foreign-label, acquired from fartsovshchiks —that contrasted with the communist realities of the time, and a fascination with zagranitsa, modern Western music and fashions corresponding to those of the Beat Generation. English writings on Soviet culture variously translated the derogatory term as "dandies", "fashionistas", "beatniks", "hipsters", or "zoot suiters".
The low five is a hand gesture when two people slap palms together. One party extends an open palm, face upward at about waist level, the other party strikes the palm in a downward swing with their open palm. It is sometimes known as "slapping five", "give me five", or "giving/slapping skin". Archaic terms for it include "slip-slapping", "slapping the plank" and "soul shake".
Jive talk, also known as Harlem jive or simply Jive, the argot of jazz, jazz jargon, vernacular of the jazz world, slang of jazz, and parlance of hip is an African-American Vernacular English slang or vocabulary that developed in Harlem, where "jive" (jazz) was played and was adopted more widely in African-American society, peaking in the 1940s.
Albert Lavada Durst, known as Dr. Hepcat, was an American blues pianist, singer, and baseball commentator who became the first black radio DJ in Texas, influential in the spread of rhythm and blues and rock and roll music.
