I'm told that the Beats/Beatniks in the UK, didn't listen to Modern Jazz but preferred Traditional Jazz. There was a Trad revival at the time and that is what the Beat Clubs played.

The footage is excellent, although I have to question many aspects of the essay. It is wrong to credit the Beats as the original counter-culture in America. It is not rue that the United States transformed suddenly into a war machine in the 1940s. Every war in US history had been followed by cultural shifts, some greater than others, but the First World War was no less tumultuous in ushering in cultural upheaval. WW1 had many of the same effects as WW2, including rationing basic commodities, and WW1 was more radically authoritarian than 2, as people were incarcerated for speaking and writing against the war. The Lost Generation earned their title resulting from their distrust of government, which sent America's best to die for a dubious cause. After the Armistice, they danced to jazz and drank illegal alcohol as if it were a statement of their contempt for conservative social expectations. The predecessors of the Beats were the Bohemian artist and writers, ex-patriots living in Europe, as well as communists and anarchists, hunted by the newly-formed FBI. Sorry, but the narration of this video is a bit weak, but maybe you can make an improved version. Incidentally, the counter-culture legacy has not abated; it is expanding, alive, and rotting on the streets of major cities along the West Coast, where governments are utterly baffled as to how the deal with the nuisance of druggies and other lost souls living hopelessly homeless, helpless, and hated. Any video on the Beats is incomplete without a summary of post-modern philosophy that has advanced our present-day dysphoria.

Another conformist subculture claiming to be nonconformist but try not conforming and you weren't accepted.

Beats, not niks. Nik means Russian communist influence, a lie.

No mention of Lord Buckley? He invented the language of the Beats. R&B musician Melba Moore's father was the manager of Mintons. She had a lot of inside stories.

They were beats,not beatnicks

The beats did not call themselves beatniks that was the main stream press. They were the beat generation.

Like, Cool.

Bebob music is awesome

Bop is not easy to follow.

Wow, you said a lot in such a short amount of time. Thanks for the overview! Great collection of footage, too.

How stupid

Well done!

URGENT: where can i find more research and primary sources on this relationship between bebop and beatnik communities

Excellent job...

Yeah but todays man likes Money, money, money -

1:15 The music is Miles Davis' So What, definitely *not* bebop.

Everyonr wants to show how serious and important the beatniks were. Pshaw!! I wanna see portrayals of beatniks ib their natural habitat like Frank Gorshin in Ring of Fire. He would tell you what he thought of yer serious an impotant!

So,if there's a community of non- conformists,& they all think,dress,& behave alike,are they conforming?

The cliched wardrobe of the stereotypical beatnik, as they were portrayed in media - beret, horn-rimmed glasses, black turtle-neck sweater etc - was also taken directly from Dizzy Gillespie’s signature look.

"During the 1940s, the United States found itself in a condition of total warfare"? The Civil War was far more "total" for Americans.

Gotta be the most legitimately informative college video essay I've ever seen. This is actually a great jump-off point, in that it provides a great selection of overarching topics of these movements I've been curious about, to decide where to start my own research. As an autodidact this is invaluable, cheers!

#PepStepAnthem by #RobinHoodloom

Why degrade this to the hipsters?

Great Start...and then the Narrator spews shit for 7 minutes.... nobody should begin any discussion of Beats without understanding that the ennui and horrors of WWII and evolving BeBop ( salt peanut was current while the war was still on ! ) and the legacy of the Lost Generation ( who fought the fascists in Spain in the late 30;s) are Absolutely Fundemental to the Beat Psyche ! To understand BeBop... you have to ask yourself.. If you have the mind of a Brain Surgeon, or an Astrophysicist, but no access to education.. and you are musical... what do you do with that Burning Creativity, and Complex Intellect ? BeBop Baby... if you are a Young Lion.. not one to sit in line of a big band... BeBop...and Beyond. It is PURE IDIOCY and IGNORANCE to talk about "chaotic Improvisation" ( except when discussing imitators of bebop ) It is also probably unconciously rascist.. to talk about "stream of conciousness:" in an Irish Drunk... but call the brilliant musical strategies of some of the Finest Minds Of A Generation... Chaotic ! Fuck That Shit Jack ! When one fails to see booze and dope use as a response to the Curse of Intelligence... and the Pain of Existence when one is AWARE... then one should shut the fuck up about nearly everything Bohemian or Beat...Now this Jack-Ass thinks the civil rights movement began in the 60;'s. Man we stood on shoulders older than the nation itself ! A lot more inclusion and cross-cultural awareness came about through the efforts of musicians...and the undeniably seminal works of black musicians in Jazz... than were ever effected by Beatniks in art or letters...And the Beats will be the first to tell you that. Beats lived on the fringes of black society, physically, and emotionally sucking on that tit..of black culture ( sex, dope, music, food) and not the other way around...and Beats will tell you that too ! It is self serving bullshit to color the narcissitic douches of current hipsterism as carriers of the torch of BeBop or Beat Culture. They are a shallow pop culture... like the hippies. All Style and no Soul. The beats had soul.

one correction , alcohol is a drug .

Do they still have this intellectual thing going on in New York and other big cities? They should, I am so damn bored now! I need to jump into this scene!

Beatniks were so cool. They were before Hippies and drugs. Mostly coffee, wine, dark clothing, slacking and non materialistic. Very cool! We need more Beatniks today.

Rejecting Capitalism is rejecting life.

saying the beatnik movement was the foundation of the civil rights movement is ridiculous

Nice...BUT, no mention of San Fran.? where "Howl" was first read? or where Hippiedom flowered?

Great work! A+

Cool , daddy O.

Jack Kerouac On the Road is an important documents of this subject.

Very well done! I like how you tied the bebop and beatniks together. This is not well understood by many. I would have liked to have heard some verified references from academic and historical sources to give your script more credence and authenticity. It feels like a home project put together by a bright kid who looked some stuff up on wiki and did not necessarily research by using authentic references. How do I know, as an audience, what you are saying is factually correct? Maybe you did research this properly and maybe you didn't. The point is you come across as a true expert when you reference source materials in your documentary. But you did write the script; you did edit this together and it came across as real and I like and mostly agree with the conclusions you made. Real good job.

Really, Really good! I just stumbled upon it while looking for images of Beatniks from the 1940's. I was prompted to do this when I saw a picture in an old Music Appreciation text book from collage that showed a very modern looking studio/stage with a piano surrounded by people wearing all black with black turtle necks and really modern looking studio lighting.It looked like they were developing a score or a production or rehearsing something. At first I'd dismissed this picture as being from the 1960's but when I read that it was from the 1940's I almost fell out of my chair! This prompted my fascination of this culture. It always seems like the cutting edge of Art is always about 20 or so years ahead of mainstream society.

i have mpd . but its fucking hurting my contious .

Good job! That was entertaining!