1 gen 1956 anni - Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" published

Descrizione:

Beats: A small group of literary figures based in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the 1950s who rejected mainstream culture and instead celebrated personal freedom, which often included drug consumption and sexual adventurism.

Many disapproving adults perceived rock ’n’ roll and other hallmarks of youth culture as dangerous provocations — encouraging rebellion, overtly sexual behavior, interracial relationships, and more. Denunciations poured forth from religious and political leaders as well as established print and television commentators, but the condemnation likely only added to the appeal. Youth rebellion was only one aspect of a broader artistic discontent with a consumer culture many found dull and mass produced. Painters, writers, musicians, and artists of all types contributed to a remarkable flowering of intensely personal expression. During and just after World War II, black musicians developed a hard-driving improvisational style known as bebop. Whether the “hot” sound of saxophonist Charlie Parker or the more subdued “cool” of the influential trumpeter Miles Davis, postwar jazz was intricate and individualistic — a striking departure from the dance-oriented commercial “swing” bands of the 1930s and 1940s.

Bebop found eager fans not only in the African American community but also among a group of mostly white young people called the Beats, writers and poets gathered in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In the poem “Howl” (1956), which became an unofficial manifesto of the Beat movement, Allen Ginsberg lamented: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” (Ginsberg employed a 1950s racial stereotype, “negro streets,” unselfconsciously.) So-called beatniks disdained sunny middle-class outlooks in favor of existential searching. In key works such as Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957), the Beats glorified spontaneity, sexual adventurism, drug use, and iconoclastic spirituality. The Beats themselves were largely apolitical, but they would help to inspire the defiant counterculture of subsequent generations.

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

Data: