Since 1958, the terms Beat Generation and Beat have been used to describe the
antimaterialistic literary movement that began with Kerouac in the 1940s, stretching on into the 1960s. The Beat philosophy of antimaterialism and soul searching influenced 1960s musicians such as
Bob Dylan, the early
Pink Floyd, and
The Beatles.
However, the soundtrack of the beat movement was the modern jazz pioneered by saxophonist
Charlie Parker and trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie that the media dubbed
Bebop. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg spent much of their time in New York jazz clubs such as the
Royal Roost,
Minton's Playhouse,
Birdland, and the Open Door, shooting the breeze and digging the music. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and
Miles Davis rapidly became what Ginsberg dubbed "Secret Heroes" to this group of aesthetes. The Beat authors borrowed much from the jazz/hipster slang of the 1940s, peppering their works with words such as "square", "cats", "cool", and "dig", but jazz meant much more than just a vocabulary to the Beat writers. To them, jazz was a way of life, a completely different and improvisational way to approach the creative process.
At the time the term Beatnik was coined, a trend existed among young college students to adopt the stereotype, with men adopting the trademark look of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie by wearing goatees, horn-rimmed glasses, and berets, and rolling their own cigarettes and playing bongos. Fashions for women included black leotards and wearing their hair long, straight and unadorned in a rebellion against the middle class culture of beauty salons.
Marijuana use was associated with the subculture, and during the 1950s,
Aldous Huxley's
The Doors of Perception further influenced views on drugs.
By 1960, a small "beatnik" group in
Newquay, Cornwall, England (including a young
Wizz Jones), had attracted the attention and the abhorrence of their neighbours for growing their hair to a length past the shoulders, resulting in a television interview with
Alan Whicker on BBC television's
Tonight series.
[17]
The Beat philosophy was generally countercultural and antimaterialistic and it stressed the importance of bettering one's inner self over and above material possessions. Some Beat writers, such as
Alan Watts, began to delve into Eastern religions such as
Buddhism or
Taoism. Politics tended to be
liberal, left-wing and anti-war, with support for causes such as
desegregation (although many of the figures associated with the original Beat movement, particularly Kerouac, embraced
libertarian and
conservative ideas). An openness to
African American culture and arts was apparent in literature and music, notably jazz. While Caen and other writers implied a connection with communism, no obvious or direct connection occurred between the beat philosophy (as expressed by the leading authors of this literary movement) and the philosophy of the
communist movement, other than the antipathy that both philosophies shared towards capitalism.
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