11. Music and youth culture

→ 1st youth culture (inoffensive, bland, conservative)

• based around rock n’ roll

• rebellion, looking cool, not being in the mainstream, but still looking like all of the cool people (irony, paradox)

• 1st rock n’ roll music is black music (bad for tv, fashion, film industry) – it’s still illegal to have interracial marriage

• → they make white version out of it soon enough (rock around the clock)

• James Dean – first film star, Rebel without a cause – empty acts of rebellion

• Chuck Berry – black, but the best guitarist – but he has the wrong skin colour

• Elvis Presley – a threat to the morality, people were scared of him back in the days, Jailhouse rock, film star, rock n’ roll star, he was a white trash from deep south, extremely masculine, what was so troubling about him: showing so much flesh, sexual moves, his voice doesn’t sound white (you sing like a black person x black people: he stole our music) - the world is still really conservative, he was a supported of the Vietnam war, he is very mainstream though.

• The beat generation – directly challenging the mainstream (materialism, marriage, monogamy)

  • Jack Kerouac - On the road - you don’t have to do what your parents do, slightly homoerotic under the surface, be free

  • Inspired masses

  • The counter (=to oppose) culture = hippies

    • Political activists

    • Alternative lifestyle

    • Hedonism

    • Cleardance clearwater – revival-fortunate son (about unfairness)

    • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (movie), Easy rider (Born to be wild)

  • People are questioning things (Vietnam war → USA is supplying the guns and soldiers)

  • John Lennon – massive fan of EP and R’n’R

    • The Beatles

  • Sexual revolution

    • Women – child outside the marriage → a problem, getting the child taken from her, mental institute, objectified

    • Birth control saved the women, abortion was legalized in the late 70’s, they can finally have control over their sexual and romantic lives

    • Feminism – against men’s oppression, civil rights movements, explosion of literature

• originally it was often rebellious, anti-establishment and intentionally shocking

• in the period between the 1960s and 1980s, it was also often politically defined; this political content becoming less and less important into the 1990s

• this may in part be because of a change in social values

• what was shocking in 1955 is no longer or less shocking now especially regarding attitudes to sex and marriage, soft drug use, social behaviour and many other areas

• in America, the first semi politicised youth subculture were the Beats or beatniks of the 1950s

• music-wise it was formed by the adoption of Black music (jazz, blues and rock’n’roll), the most important voices of the generation were writers such as Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti (it is often called the shortest-lived youth culture and literary generation as by the early 1960s the protagonists had mostly got jobs with well-established universities)

• though, the beatniks were not that many in numbers they were massively influential, nevertheless

• the philosophy of living your life for pleasure, knowledge and experience certainly paved the way for the later Hippies and John Lennon cited Kerouac as an early inspiration

• with the Beatniks, we see the first idea of an alternative lifestyle (the press presented them as violent, dangerous and degenerate)

• the fashion – a quiff (patka), suede jacket (semišová bunda) and jeans

• meanwhile in Britain, a parallel movement inspired by rock’n’roll – the Teddy Boys (Teddy an abbreviation of Edward, referring to the rule of Edward VII, Victoria’s son, 1901 - 1910, associated with a high fashion-consciousness) were getting headlines for violence and anti-social behaviour

• later the Mods (extremely fashionable; scooters) and Rockers (developed Teddy Boy ideology minus the fashion; motor bikes) followed in the early 1960s

• the skinheads grew out of a schism amongst Mods, working-class and despite a later well deserved, reputation for racism and violence (the early skins were interested in West Indian Jamaican music – ska, rocksteady, early reggae)

• perhaps the most influential and politically important youth subculture were the Hippies, a direct follow-up to the Beat Generation, they were defined by the use of psychedelic drugs, the sexual revolution, the first modern music festivals (1969 Woodstock festival) and opposition against the war in Vietnam

• they often faced violence from the police and others

• the 1970s – Punk is perhaps the most eye-catching youth group. Antiestablishment, antisocial, mostly antiracist perhaps the most famous groups were The Clash and Sex Pistols.

• The 1980s and early 1990s – Hip-Hop, Grunge (US), Rave (GB). The Rave scene was probably the last mass semi politically active youth culture in Britain and was closely linked with a moral panic about a new drug- ecstasy (It culminated in Castlemorton and other illegal rave parties. It also provoked a new law- the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which banned people from gathering in public spaces without permission and gave the police new powers to closedown parties.)

• Hip Hop

  • from black urban community, primarily NYC, 1970’s

  • break dance, originally influenced by disco

  • it’s political – 1st hip hop song is called Rapper’s delight – message: multicultural

  • starts like a disco pop thing

  • first black hip hop artists started experimenting

  • commercialization of a self-created musical style

  • form of social realism = early hip hop – recognize the reality – The message by Grandmaster flash – poverty, chaos, crime, dirt → Ol’ dirty Bastard – Got your money - description of gang culture, glorification of pimping

  • N.W.A – Straight outta Compton – it’s about fighting the police

  • Can’t Truss It – never trust white people

  • Kriss Kross – Jump – morally wrong

  • Eminem

    • My name is

    • he is ironic, dark humor, his mom was a junkie, he is trying to say as much offensive things, he is mixing the reality, he is the postmodern hip hop artist, legitimize homophobia, misogyny, you know he means it ironically, but some people take it seriously (satira) → he pushed it too much

    • Stan – mental illness, obsessive behavior, suicidal feelings, postmodernism (he talks for his fan, he is reading it and then he responds to it)