240px, The "classic quintet": ,_Tommy_Potter">Charlie_Parker,_Tommy_Potter,_Miles_Davis.html" ;"title="Tommy_Potter.html" ;"title="Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter">Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis">Tommy_Potter.html" ;"title="Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter">Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach performing at Three Deuces in New York City. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (August 1947), Library of Congress.
Hipster or hepcat, as used in the 1940s, referred to
aficionados
A fan or fanatic, sometimes also termed an aficionado or enthusiast, is a person who exhibits strong interest or admiration for something or somebody, such as a celebrity, a sport, a sports team, a genre, a politician, a book, a movie, a ...
of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
, in particular
bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster
subculture adopted the lifestyle of the
jazz musician, including some or all of the following features: dress,
slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gr ...
, use of
cannabis
''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: '' Cannabis sativa'', '' C. indica'', and '' C. ruderalis''. Alternative ...
and other
recreational drugs, relaxed attitude,
sarcastic humble or self-imposed poverty, and relaxed
sexual mores.
History
The words ''hep'' and ''
hip'' are of uncertain origin, with numerous competing theories being proposed. In the early days of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
, musicians were using the ''hep'' variant to describe anybody who was "in the know" about an emerging, mostly
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
subculture, which revolved around jazz. They and their fans were known as ''hepcats''. In 1938, the word ''hepster'' was used by bandleader
Cab Calloway in the title of his dictionary, ''Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary'', which defines ''hep cat'' as "a guy who knows all the answers, understands
jive". British author and poet
Lemn Sissay remarked that "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away."
By the late 1930s, with the rise of
swing
Swing or swinging may refer to:
Apparatus
* Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth
* Pendulum, an object that swings
* Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus
* Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse
* Swing ri ...
, ''hep'' began to be used commonly in mainstream "square" culture, so by the 1940s ''
hip'' rose in popularity among jazz musicians, to replace ''hep''. In 1944, pianist
Harry Gibson modified ''hepcat'' to ''hipster'' in his short glossary "For Characters Who Don't Dig Jive Talk", published in 1944 with the album ''Boogie Woogie In Blue'', featuring the self-titled hit "Handsome Harry the Hipster". The entry for ''hipsters'' defined them as "characters who like hot jazz." In 1947, Gibson sought to clarify the switch in the record "It Ain't Hep" which musically describes the difference between the two terms.
Initially, hipsters were usually
middle-class European American youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
jazz musicians they followed.
In ''The Jazz Scene'' (1959), the British historian and social theorist
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. ...
(originally writing under the pen name Francis Newton) described hipster language—i.e., "jive-talk or hipster-talk"—as "an
argot
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...
or
cant designed to set the group apart from outsiders". This group crucially included White jazz musicians such as
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".
From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His conc ...
,
Al Cohn,
Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996), also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrum ...
,
Stan Getz
Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre ...
,
Mezz Mezzrow,
Barney Kessel,
Doc Pomus,
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...
,
Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin,
Jerry Lewis,
Joey Bishop,
Perry Como,
Tony Bennett,
Chet Baker, and
Gene Krupa who ought to be counted as some of the "true" original hipsters as they were instrumental in turning the White American audience onto jazz and its underground culture in the 1930s and 1940s. Clarinetist
Artie Shaw described singer Bing Crosby as "the first hip white person born in the United States."
Hipsters were more interested in
bebop and "hot" jazz than they were in swing, which by the late 1940s was becoming old-fashioned and watered down by "
squares" like
Lawrence Welk,
Guy Lombardo and Robert Coates. In the 1940s, White youth began to frequent Black communities for their
music and dance. These first youths diverged from the mainstream due to their new
philosophies of racial diversity and their exploratory sexual nature and drug habits. The drug of choice was marijuana, and many hipster
slang terms were dedicated to the substance.
The hipster subculture rapidly expanded, and after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, a burgeoning literary scene grew up around it.
In 1957, the American writer and adventurer
Jack Kerouac described hipsters as "rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere
scharacters of a special spirituality". Toward the beginning of his poem ''
Howl'', the Jewish-American
Beatnik poet
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
mentioned "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night". In his 1957 essay ''
The White Negro'', the American novelist and journalist
Norman Mailer characterized hipsters as American
existentialists
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...
, living a life surrounded by
death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
—annihilated by the
atomic war or strangled by
social conformity—and electing instead to "divorce
hemselvesfrom society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self".
Racial role reversal
The new philosophy of racial role reversal was transcribed by many popular hipster authors of the time.
Norman Mailer's 1957 pamphlet, entitled ''
The White Negro'', has become the paradigmatic example of hipster ideology. Mailer described the hipsters as individuals "with a middle-class background (who) attempt to put down their whiteness and adopt what they believe is the carefree, spontaneous, cool lifestyle of Negro hipsters: their manner of speaking and language, their use of milder narcotics, their appreciation of jazz and the blues, and their supposed concern with the good orgasm." In a nod to Mailer's discussion of hipsterism, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
'
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
deployments of
African-American culture and
personalities
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
* construction of a c ...
for the purposes of
public diplomacy has been discussed as "hipster diplomacy".
[Roberts, B. R., ''Artistic Ambassadors: Literary and International Representation of the New Negro Era'' (]Charlottesville
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen ...
: University of Virginia Press, 2013)
pp. 145–148
See also
*
Aftermath of World War II
*
Beatnik
*
Bohemianism
*
Cannabis culture
Cannabis culture describes a social atmosphere or series of associated social behaviors that depends heavily upon cannabis consumption, particularly as an Entheogenic use of cannabis, entheogen, recreational drug and Medical cannabis, medicine. ...
*
Cultural appropriation
*
Etymology of hippie
*
Hipster (contemporary subculture)
* ''
How to Speak Hip''
*
Wigger
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
"A Portrait of the Hipster"by
Anatole Broyard, a critical dissection of the hipster phenomenon from 1948.
"The White Negro by
Norman Mailer from 1957.
{{Authority control
1940s neologisms
Fashion aesthetics
History of subcultures
Jazz culture
Social groups
Stereotypes
Youth culture in the United States
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