History of subcultures in the 20th century
Encyclopedia
The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many subcultures.
in London was one example, providing a place where the diverse talents of people like Virginia Woolf
, Leonard Woolf
, John Maynard Keynes
, and E.M. Forster could interact. Other pre-World War I subcultures were smaller social groupings of hobby
ists or a matter of style and philosophy
amongst artist
s and bohemian
poet
s. In Germany, from 1896 onward there developed a movement of young men (and later young women) which focused on freedom and natural environments. Called Wandervogel
(translated as "hikers", "ramblers" or, more precisely, "migratory birds"), they wanted to throw off the strict rules of society and be more open and natural. The first known organized club for nudists, Freilichtpark (Free-Light Park), was opened near Hamburg
, Germany, in 1903. In Italy, a popular art movement
and philosophy called Futurism
championed change, speed, violence and machines.
in the war, while men with longer hair might be thought of as pacifists and cowards, even suspected of desertion. Some artists managed to avoid the war by sitting it out in neutral
Switzerland
. A group of artists in Zürich
invented Dada
ism as an anti-war, anti-art, art movement
, and a parody of the pro-violent attitudes of Futurism.
In the 1920s, American jazz
music and motor cars were at the centre of a European subculture which began to break the rules of social etiquette
and the class system (See also Swing Kids
). In America, the same "flaming youth" subculture was "running wild" but with the added complication of alcohol prohibition
. Canada had prohibition in some areas, but for the most part, thirsty Americans coming over the border found an oasis. As a result, smuggling
escalated as crime gangs became organized. In the southern United States, Mexico
and Cuba
were popular with drinkers. Thus, a drinking subculture grew in size and a crime subculture grew along with it. Other drugs
were used as alternatives to alcohol. When prohibition ended, the subculture of drink, drugs and jazz did not disappear, and neither did the gangsters.
The German nudist movement gained prominence in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi
Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler
came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia
about 1939 and in Ontario
nine years later.
In the art world, Surrealism
was attempting to shock the world with their games and bizarre behavior. The Surrealists were at one and the same time a serious art movement and a parody of other art forms and political movement
s. Surrealism had been developed by André Breton
and others from the Dada movement. Based in several European countries, Surrealism was destined for trouble when the Nazis came to power. Subcultures and "degenerate art
" were almost completely stamped out and replaced by the Hitler Youth
.
In North America, the Great Depression
caused widespread unemployment and poverty, and a consequent malaise among adolescents that found its expression in urban youth gangs—the so-called "dead end kids." The dead end kid phenomenon was fictionalized on the stage and screen where it became a popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring the Dead End Kids
, East Side Kids
, Little Tough Guys
etc. were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. The genre also found its expression in the kid gang comic book
stories of Jack Kirby
and Joe Simon
, including the Boy Commandos
and Newsboy Legion
features.
The Dust bowl
disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma
and elsewhere to move their entire families to survive. They were labeled as "Okie
s" and treated poorly by the authorities in other states. Their refugee status was recorded in folk songs (including many by Woody Guthrie
), as well as John Steinbeck
's novel, The Grapes of Wrath
, and the film adaptation starring Henry Fonda
.
artists like Max Ernst
, Marcel Duchamp
and Marc Chagall
fled Europe following the outbreak of World War II. These artists arrived in the United States, where a subculture of surrealism and avant-garde experimentation developed in New York City, becoming the new centre of the art world.
American fashion remained gangster orientated, with gangs gravitating around immigrant and racial cultures. In California
, Hispanic
youth developed the distinctive zoot suit
fashion, such as the black widows, women who dressed in black. The zoot suiters use of language involved rhyming
and pig Latin
(also known as backslang). This style, collectively known as Swing
or Jive talk
(see: Dictionary of Swing), included Afro-American, Cuban, Mexican
and South American elements, as well as bits introduced by Slim Gaillard
(see 'McVouty oreeney).
The entry of the United States into World War II was heralded by new legislation making zoot suits illegal due to the extra cloth required. In June 1943, white American servicemen stationed in Los Angeles rampaged through Mexican American neighborhoods, attacking young people wearing the suits and often stripping them, in what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots
. The riots in Los Angeles were part of a nationwide phenomenon of urban disturbances arising out of wartime tensions exacerbating longstanding racial discrimination in America. The Zoot Suit Riots were unique in that the fashions of the largely Mexican American (and some white and African American) victims made them the target of white servicemen stationed in the city, many of whom were from southern white towns.
In Europe, black-marketeers prospered under rationing. Clothing styles depended on what could be begged or acquired by some means, not necessarily legal; There were restrictions everywhere. When the Americans arrived in Britain, black-marketeers, (called Wide boy
s or Spiv
s) made deals with GIs for stocking
s, chocolate, etc. Inevitably, subculture continued to have an image of criminality and the brave, the daring, the milieu, the resistance, etc. The black market in drugs thrived just about anywhere.
After the second war, the zoot suit craze spread to France in the form of the Zazou
youths. Meanwhile, the intellectuals in France were forming an existentialist subculture around Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
in Paris cafe culture
.
In post-war America, folk songs and cowboy
songs (also known, in those days, as hillbilly
music) were beginning to be more popular with a wider audience. A subculture of rural jazz and blues
fans had mixed elements of jazz and blues into traditional cowboy and folk song styles to produce a crossover
called western swing
. Thanks to the prevalence of radio, this music spread across the United States in the 1940s. Radio was the first almost instantaneous mass media with the power to create large subcultures by spreading the ideas of small subcultures across a wide area.
Bebop
, a new jazz subculture, formed from the rebellion against the melodic stylings of swing; Notable players included Dizzy Gillespie
and Charlie Parker
. In turn, bebop spawned the hipster
and beat generation
subculture.
In 1947, Jack Kerouac
made an epic journey across America, which he would later describe in his novel, On the Road
. In the same year, there was an incident involving a motorcycle gang at Hollister, California
, and Harper's Magazine
, published a story about it. In 1948, the Hells Angels
formed in Fontana, California
. The Hells Angels began as a motorcycle club looking for excitement in the dull times after the end of the war and became notorious as time passed. Motorcycle gangs in general began to hit the headlines. In 1953, the film, The Wild One
, was released starring Marlon Brando
.
and Albert Camus
transferred their French resistance
underground campaign to the context of a cultural revolution and the American beat scene
joined the movement. The emphasis on freedom of the individual influenced the beats
in America and Britain and this version of existential bohemianism
continued through the 1950s and into the 1960s under the guise of the beat generation
. Beard
s and longer hair returned in another attempt at returning to the image of peacetime man and the normality which had existed before the two wars. At the same time, as a result of American post-war prosperity, a new identity emerged for youth subculture: the teenager.
Jazz culture was transformed, by way of Rhythm and Blues
into Rock and Roll
culture. There are various suggested candidates for which record might have been the First rock and roll record. At the same time, jazz culture itself continued but changed into a more respected form, no longer necessarily associated with wild behaviour and criminality.
From the 1950s onward society noticed an increase in street gang
culture, random vandalism and graffiti
. Sociologists, psychologist
s, social workers and judge
s all had theories as to what was causing the increase to urban trouble but the consensus has generally tended to be that the modern urban environment offers all the bright lights and benefits of the modern world but often provides working class
youths with little in reality. This theory and others were parodied in the musical West Side Story (based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
) in song lyrics such as Jet Song, America, and Gee, Officer Krupke. Moral panic
s surrounding the advent of teenager subcultures and a perceived rise in adolescent criminality led to several attempts to investigate and legislate youth behavior, such as the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
. One of the many subcultures that was based around street violence was the greaser, a working class
subculture that was apart of and influenced the biker
subculture.
As American rock and roll arrived in the United Kingdom, a subculture grew around it. Some of the British post-war street youths hanging around bombsite
s in urban areas and getting drawn into petty crime
began to dress in a variation of the zoot suit style called a drape suit
, with a country style bootlace tie, winklepicker
shoes, drainpipe trousers, and Elvis Presley
style slicked hair. These youths were called Teddy boys. For a night out dancing at the palais, their girlfriends would usually wear the same sort of poodle skirt
s and crinoline
s their counterparts in America would wear. For day-to-day wear there was a trend toward girls wearing slacks or jeans. At the time, the idea of girls wearing trousers and boys taking time over their hairstyle was socially shocking to many people.
British youth divided into factions. There were the modern jazz kids, the trad jazz
kids, the rock and roll teenagers and the skiffle
craze. Coffee bars were a meeting place for all the types of youth and the coolest ones were said to be in Soho, London.
In Britain, the political side of the Beat Generation was the anti-nuclear movement led by CND. Ban the Bomb marches became a very successful British social phenomenon.
Teenage music and subculture was parodied in the 1957 play (and 1962 movie) The Music Man
, particularly in the song "Ya Got Trouble
".
In the United States and Australia, Hawaii
an-influenced Surfing
was the new youth sport. A whole subculture
grew around the sport and the associated parties, clothes, speech patterns and music. During the same time-frame skateboard
riding developed as a parallel lifestyle to wave riding. Both forms of board riding continued throughout the remainder of the century and into the next. From these two sports young people learned to provide their own social structure within which they could display skills and excellence.
In the Congo Free State
(now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo
), a youth subculture known as the Bills
flourished, taking Western movies
and cowboy
s as their main influence.
In the Netherlands, two youth groups evolved in big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. One group, the Nozems, similar to the British Teds, and another called the Artiestelingen, who can be compared to the bohemian artists of pre-world-war France. The Nozems spent their time listening to rock and roll music, driving motorcycles through town and picking up ladies while the Artiestelingen would discuss philosophy, paint, draw and listen to jazz music.
s) grew to be an even larger subculture, spreading around the world. Other 1960s subcultures included radicals
, mods, rockers
, bikers
, hippie
s and the freak scene
. One of the main transitional features between the beat scene and the hippies was the Merry Pranksters
' journey across the United States with Neal Cassady
and Ken Kesey
, in a psychedelically-painted school bus
named Further. In the USA, the hippies' big year was 1967, the so-called summer of love
.
The rude boy
culture originated in the ghettos of Jamaica
, coinciding with the popular rise of rocksteady
music, dancehall celebrations and sound system dances. Rude boys dressed in the latest fashions, and many were involved with gangs and violence. This subculture then spread to the United Kingdom and other countries.
The mod subculture began with a few cliques of trendy teenage boys in London, England in the late 1950s, but was at its most popular during the early 1960s. Mods were obsessed with new fashions such as slim-cut suits; and music styles such as modern jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, ska
, and some beat music
. Many of them rode scooters.
The mod and rude boy cultures both influenced the skinhead
subculture of the late 1960s. The skinheads were a harder, more working class version of mods who wore basic clean-cut clothing styles and favoured ska, rocksteady, soul and early reggae music.
The disco
scene originated in the 1960s, with discothèques such as the Whiskey A Go Go and Studio 54
.
Subcultures were often based on socializing and wild behaviour, but some of them were centred around politics. In the United States, these included the Black Panthers
and the Yippies. Allen Ginsberg
took part in several protest movements, including those for gay rights and those against the Vietnam War
and nuclear weapon
s. In Paris, France in May 1968, there was a university
student
uprising, supported by Jean Paul Sartre and 121 other intellectuals who signed a statement asserting "the right to disobedience." The uprising brought the country to a standstill, and caused the government to call a general election
rather than run the risk of being toppled from power.
The Hacker culture
was beginning to form in the 1960s, due to the increased usage of computer
s at colleges and universities. Students who were fascinated by the possible uses of computers and other technologies
began figuring out ways to make technology more freely accessible. The international anti-art movement Fluxus
also had its beginnings in the 1960s, evolving out of the Beat subculture.
and fantasy
forms of speculative writing
produced the freak scene
. Bands on the freak circuit cultivated an anti-capitalist, communal lifestyle. Freak bands like The Edgar Broughton Band or The Pink Fairies
played at free festival
s, spurning mainstream venues. The music/fashion subculture that became a commercial alternative to the freaks was glam rock
. It was a continuation of the trendies of the 1960s mod culture, appealing to the androgynous
trend of the 1970s.
At some point, some in the hacker/computer subculture took on the derogatory word geek
with pride, in the same way the freaks had done. Computer usage was still a very inaccessible secret world to most people in those days, but many people were interested in computers because of their appearance in science fiction
. The dream of one day owning a computer was a popular fantasy amongst science fiction fandom
, which had grown from a minor subculture in the first half of the 20th century to a quite large contingent by the 1970s, along with horror fandom, comics
fandom and fantasy
freaks.
The skinhead
subculture from the late 1960s continued into the 1970s, and some skinheads became influenced by the punk subculture
. These skinheads became associated with the Oi!
genre, and some skinheads became involved with far right
politics, creating the white power skinhead scene (despite the fact that the original 1960s skinheads were influenced by black culture).
Disco
, which had begun in gay dance clubs, became a significant from about 1975 onward. In some sectors, particularly in the New York City area, where disco had seemingly "taken over" all aspects of youth life, an aggressive counter-disco movement was born. New York area rock radio stations such as WPLJ and WPIX encouraged their listeners to destroy disco records and embrace rock and roll. Musically and lyrically, punk rock
was the intentional antithesis of the disco scene, the progressive rock
genre and the hippie subculture. Early punks played aggressive, quick-paced three-chord rock and roll songs.
As punk was rising to prominence, some of the progressive rock elements took it as a challenge to live faster, harder and tougher than punk. They kept the long hair of the freak scene, adopted the black leather jacket as virtually a uniform, and took on the name heavy metal
(which is a phrase from the writings of William S. Burroughs
).
In 1976, a hit song "Convoy
" by C.W. McCall arrived in the pop charts and romanticised the Trucker and CB radio subculture. In 1978, the song inspired a film "Convoy" directed by Sam Peckinpah, and starring Kris Kristofferson
, Ali MacGraw
, Ernest Borgnine
, and Burt Young
. The word "convoy
" and quotes from the song lyrics became part of a popular cultural image of people standing up for their freedom. Gradually, from the 1960s, 1970s and through into the 1980s, the cultural influences of the Merry Pranksters
, the freak scene, the New Age
movement and the Convoy idea seem to have coalesced into what became New age travellers
.
Beginning around 1976, the anarcho-punk
scene in the UK developed the band Crass
and related bands, including The Poison Girls. The Crass Records label was an independent operation, enabling bands with an extremely raw sound to put out records when the major labels might not have bothered with them. Crass also organised gigs around the country for themselves and other bands, and campaigned politically for the anti-nuclear movement other causes.
Mods made a comeback in the late 1970s as a post-punk mod revival
, inspired by The Jam
and the British film
Quadrophenia
.
In 1979, Usenet
was created as a medium of communication over the, still very primitive, Internet
of the time. The Usenet and the Bulletin board system
(BBS) subculture would become increasingly significant over the next few decades.
Also in 1979, Papa Wemba
, a Rumba star in Zaire
/Democratic Republic of the Congo
, Africa began to be the leader of the Sapeur ('Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes d'Élégance' thus 'SAPE' for short), which he promoted as a youth cult. Papa Wemba's music has been influenced by previous stars of Rumba music in Zaire (such as Papa Wendo) and also by his visits to Europe and by the appearance, in 1974, of James Brown at the Rumble in the Jungle. Wemba said:
s, a group whose preferred music was synthesiser electro-pop. New Romantics tended to be slightly camp
y and fey, and there was a bisexual
vibe to the subculture generally, regardless of the individual's sexual orientation
. Clothing styles demonstrated a return to the freak scene's roleplay of fashions from previous eras or imagined future ones in order to use fashion to create a time warp. According to the music press at the time, the New Romantics identified themselves using a number of alternative terms including "Futurists" and "the cult with no name."
Other punk rock followers took the genre and culture further underground, where it evolved into a faster, harder genre coined as hardcore punk
. Along with the hardcore scene came the straight edge
subculture. Straight edge is a lifestyle that advocates abstinence in relation to tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug use (especially psychoactive and stimulant drug use), and for some people, in relation to promiscuous sexual behavior.
Other former punks searching for a new direction around 1979 eventually developed into the nucleus of what became the goth subculture
. The goths are a subculture of dark dress and gloomy romanticism. Unlike the New Romantics, goth has lasted into the 21st century. In the UK, goth reached its popular peak in the late 1980s.
In American urban environments, a form of street culture using freeform
and semi-staccato
poetry
, combined with athletic break dancing, was developing as the Hip hop and Rap
subculture. In jazz jargon, the word rap had always meant speech and conversation. The new meaning signified a change in the status of poetry from an elitist artform to a community sport. Rappers could attempt to outdo each other with their skillful rhymes. Rapping is also known as MCing
, which is one of the four main elements of Hip hop: MCing, DJing, graffiti
art
, and breakdancing. From the early to mid 1980s, poetry
culture in a broader sense caught the same kind of energy as rap and so began the first of the poetry slams. Poetry slamming became an irregular focus for the latest wave of poetry aficionados.
In 1985, Stonehenge Free Festival
was disrupted by a massive police presence attempting to prevent the festival and break up the Peace Convoy
. The resulting Battle of the Beanfield
was the largest mass civil arrest in English history.
Free parties
and rave
s began from the mid-80s and became a flourishing subculture. The music embraced by this subculture was electronic dance music
which developed from Techno
, pioneered in Detroit and Chicago
by people like Juan Atkins
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson
, as well as electronic music
, pioneered by Karlheinz Stockhausen
, John Cage
and others, taken by way of progressive rock bands like Hawkwind
, filtered through the sounds of dub
-reggae and the electro-pop bands like Kraftwerk
and Depeche Mode
and given a different twist via Art of Noise and early hip hop
and recycled psychedelia. Towards the end of the 80s rave culture had diversified into different forms connected to music such as Acid House
and Acid Jazz
and would continue to diversify into the 90s. Rave culture thrived from the mid-80s to the end of the century and beyond.
The Usenet and BBS subculture had developed an element called Slashdot
subculture which involved its own forms of etiquette and behaviour patterns both social and anti-social and the phenomena of trolling, spamming
, flaming
etc. The computer subculture was also influenced by fictional subcultures in cyberpunk
literature.
or Gen X, popularized by Douglas Coupland
's novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
, was used to describe the generation that followed the Baby Boom Generation, or those who came to adulthood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the UK, the Britpop
scene arose in the 1990s, influenced by the 1960s mods, the 1970s/1980s mod revival, and other British rock music
and subcultural styles. One of the main technological developments of the 1990s was the World Wide Web
. Running on the older infrastructure of the Internet
, the web allowed small subcultures to grow into large global online communities. Online game
communities, forums, chat rooms and Internet cafe
s became popular. The 1990s saw the rise of the anti-globalization movement
. This was a response to the increased impact of globalisation and global capitalism. The anti-globalisation protest movement was accompanied by the fair trade
movement.
or "Echo Boomers" (a reference to the fact that many of the parents of this generation had belonged to the Baby boomer
generation) consisted of individuals that had come to adulthood during the 2000s.
1900-World War I
In the early part of the 20th century, subcultures were mostly informal groupings of like-minded individuals. The Bloomsbury groupBloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
in London was one example, providing a place where the diverse talents of people like Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
, John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, and E.M. Forster could interact. Other pre-World War I subcultures were smaller social groupings of hobby
Hobby
A hobby is a regular activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one's leisure time.- Etymology :A hobby horse is a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like a real horse...
ists or a matter of style and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
amongst artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s and bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s. In Germany, from 1896 onward there developed a movement of young men (and later young women) which focused on freedom and natural environments. Called Wandervogel
Wandervogel
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom...
(translated as "hikers", "ramblers" or, more precisely, "migratory birds"), they wanted to throw off the strict rules of society and be more open and natural. The first known organized club for nudists, Freilichtpark (Free-Light Park), was opened near Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany, in 1903. In Italy, a popular art movement
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...
and philosophy called Futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
championed change, speed, violence and machines.
World War I
After the First World War (1914–18) hair styles changed: the wartime trenches were infested with lice and fleas, so soldiers were forced to shave their heads. Consequently, men with short hair appeared to have been at the frontFront (military)
A military front or battlefront is a contested armed frontier between opposing forces. This can be a local or tactical front, or it can range to a theater...
in the war, while men with longer hair might be thought of as pacifists and cowards, even suspected of desertion. Some artists managed to avoid the war by sitting it out in neutral
Neutral country
A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907...
Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. A group of artists in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
invented Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ism as an anti-war, anti-art, art movement
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...
, and a parody of the pro-violent attitudes of Futurism.
1920s and 1930s
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
music and motor cars were at the centre of a European subculture which began to break the rules of social etiquette
Etiquette
Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...
and the class system (See also Swing Kids
Swing Kids
The Swing Kids were a group of jazz and swing lovers in Germany in the 1930s, mainly in Hamburg and Berlin. They were composed of 14- to 18-year-old boys and girls in high school, most of them middle- or upper-class students, but some apprentice workers as well...
). In America, the same "flaming youth" subculture was "running wild" but with the added complication of alcohol prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
. Canada had prohibition in some areas, but for the most part, thirsty Americans coming over the border found an oasis. As a result, smuggling
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
escalated as crime gangs became organized. In the southern United States, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
were popular with drinkers. Thus, a drinking subculture grew in size and a crime subculture grew along with it. Other drugs
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
were used as alternatives to alcohol. When prohibition ended, the subculture of drink, drugs and jazz did not disappear, and neither did the gangsters.
The German nudist movement gained prominence in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
about 1939 and in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
nine years later.
In the art world, Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
was attempting to shock the world with their games and bizarre behavior. The Surrealists were at one and the same time a serious art movement and a parody of other art forms and political movement
Political movement
A political movement is a social movement in the area of politics. A political movement may be organized around a single issue or set of issues, or around a set of shared concerns of a social group...
s. Surrealism had been developed by André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and others from the Dada movement. Based in several European countries, Surrealism was destined for trouble when the Nazis came to power. Subcultures and "degenerate art
Degenerate art
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...
" were almost completely stamped out and replaced by the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
.
In North America, the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
caused widespread unemployment and poverty, and a consequent malaise among adolescents that found its expression in urban youth gangs—the so-called "dead end kids." The dead end kid phenomenon was fictionalized on the stage and screen where it became a popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring the Dead End Kids
Dead End Kids
The Dead End Kids were a group of young actors from New York who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End in 1935. In 1937 producer Samuel Goldwyn brought all of them to Hollywood and turned the play into a film...
, East Side Kids
East Side Kids
The East Side Kids were characters in a series of films released by Monogram Pictures from 1940 through 1945. Many of them were originally part of The Dead End Kids and The Little Tough Guys, and several of them later became members of The Bowery Boys....
, Little Tough Guys
Little Tough Guys
The Little Tough Guys were a group of actors who made a series of films and serials released by Universal Studios from 1938 through 1943...
etc. were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. The genre also found its expression in the kid gang comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
stories of Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
and Joe Simon
Joe Simon
Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon is an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.With his...
, including the Boy Commandos
Boy Commandos
Boy Commandos was a 1940s comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for DC Comics. A combination of "kid gang" comics and war comics, the title starred an international cast of little tough guys fighting the Nazis — or in their own parlance, "the Ratzies".-Creation:Simon & Kirby, hired...
and Newsboy Legion
Newsboy Legion
The Newsboy Legion are fictional characters, a kid gang in the DC Comics Universe. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, they appeared in their own self-titled feature which ran from Star Spangled Comics #7 to Star Spangled Comics #64 .-Pre-Crisis version:A group of orphans, living on the streets...
features.
The Dust bowl
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...
disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
and elsewhere to move their entire families to survive. They were labeled as "Okie
Okie
Okie is a term dating from as early as 1907, originally denoting a resident or native of Oklahoma. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas....
s" and treated poorly by the authorities in other states. Their refugee status was recorded in folk songs (including many by Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
), as well as John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
's novel, The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
, and the film adaptation starring Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
.
1940s
Avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
artists like Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
fled Europe following the outbreak of World War II. These artists arrived in the United States, where a subculture of surrealism and avant-garde experimentation developed in New York City, becoming the new centre of the art world.
American fashion remained gangster orientated, with gangs gravitating around immigrant and racial cultures. In California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
youth developed the distinctive zoot suit
Zoot suit
A zoot suit is a suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing was popularized by African Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Italian Americans during the late 1930s and the 1940s...
fashion, such as the black widows, women who dressed in black. The zoot suiters use of language involved rhyming
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
and pig Latin
Pig Latin
Pig Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Pig Latin form of an English word the first consonant is moved to the end of the word and an ay is affixed . The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules...
(also known as backslang). This style, collectively known as Swing
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
or Jive talk
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
(see: Dictionary of Swing), included Afro-American, Cuban, Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and South American elements, as well as bits introduced by Slim Gaillard
Slim Gaillard
Bulee "Slim" Gaillard was an American jazz singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, noted for his vocalese singing and word play in a language he called "Vout"...
(see 'McVouty oreeney).
The entry of the United States into World War II was heralded by new legislation making zoot suits illegal due to the extra cloth required. In June 1943, white American servicemen stationed in Los Angeles rampaged through Mexican American neighborhoods, attacking young people wearing the suits and often stripping them, in what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots
Zoot Suit Riots
The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots in 1943 during World War II that erupted in Los Angeles, California between white sailors and Marines stationed throughout thehi c mlc city and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored...
. The riots in Los Angeles were part of a nationwide phenomenon of urban disturbances arising out of wartime tensions exacerbating longstanding racial discrimination in America. The Zoot Suit Riots were unique in that the fashions of the largely Mexican American (and some white and African American) victims made them the target of white servicemen stationed in the city, many of whom were from southern white towns.
In Europe, black-marketeers prospered under rationing. Clothing styles depended on what could be begged or acquired by some means, not necessarily legal; There were restrictions everywhere. When the Americans arrived in Britain, black-marketeers, (called Wide boy
Wide boy
Wide boy is a British term for a man who lives by his wits, wheeling and dealing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is synonymous with spiv. The word 'wide' is in this sense means wide-awake or sharp-witted...
s or Spiv
Spiv
In the United Kingdom, a spiv is a particular type of petty criminal, who deals in stolen or black market goods of questionable authenticity, especially a slickly-dressed man offering goods at bargain prices...
s) made deals with GIs for stocking
Stocking
A stocking, , is a close-fitting, variously elastic garment covering the foot and lower part of the leg. Stockings vary in color, design and transparency...
s, chocolate, etc. Inevitably, subculture continued to have an image of criminality and the brave, the daring, the milieu, the resistance, etc. The black market in drugs thrived just about anywhere.
After the second war, the zoot suit craze spread to France in the form of the Zazou
Zazou
The Zazous were a subculture in France during World War II. They were young people expressing their individuality by wearing big or garish clothing and dancing wildly to swing jazz and bebop...
youths. Meanwhile, the intellectuals in France were forming an existentialist subculture around Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
in Paris cafe culture
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
.
In post-war America, folk songs and cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
songs (also known, in those days, as hillbilly
Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term referring to certain people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term is frequently considered derogatory, and so is usually offensive to those Americans of...
music) were beginning to be more popular with a wider audience. A subculture of rural jazz and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
fans had mixed elements of jazz and blues into traditional cowboy and folk song styles to produce a crossover
Crossover (music)
Crossover is a term applied to musical works or performers appearing on two or more of the record charts which track differing musical tastes, or genres...
called western swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
. Thanks to the prevalence of radio, this music spread across the United States in the 1940s. Radio was the first almost instantaneous mass media with the power to create large subcultures by spreading the ideas of small subcultures across a wide area.
Bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
, a new jazz subculture, formed from the rebellion against the melodic stylings of swing; Notable players included Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
and Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
. In turn, bebop spawned the hipster
Hipster (1940s subculture)
Hipster, as used in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic...
and beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
subculture.
In 1947, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
made an epic journey across America, which he would later describe in his novel, On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
. In the same year, there was an incident involving a motorcycle gang at Hollister, California
Hollister, California
Hollister is a city in and the county seat of San Benito County, California, United States. The population was 34,928 at the 2010 census. Hollister is primarily an agricultural town.-History:...
, and Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, published a story about it. In 1948, the Hells Angels
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a worldwide one-percenter motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation. Their primary motto...
formed in Fontana, California
Fontana, California
Fontana is a city of 196,069 residents in San Bernardino County, California. Founded in 1913, it remained essentially rural until World War II, when entrepreneur Henry J. Kaiser built a large steel mill in the area...
. The Hells Angels began as a motorcycle club looking for excitement in the dull times after the end of the war and became notorious as time passed. Motorcycle gangs in general began to hit the headlines. In 1953, the film, The Wild One
The Wild One
The Wild One is a 1953 outlaw biker film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. It is famed for Marlon Brando's iconic portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler.-Basis:...
, was released starring Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
.
1950s
The Existentialists had a profound influence upon subcultural development. Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
transferred their French resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
underground campaign to the context of a cultural revolution and the American beat scene
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
joined the movement. The emphasis on freedom of the individual influenced the beats
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
in America and Britain and this version of existential bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
continued through the 1950s and into the 1960s under the guise of the beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
. Beard
Beard
A beard is the collection of hair that grows on the chin, cheeks and neck of human beings. Usually, only pubescent or adult males are able to grow beards. However, women with hirsutism may develop a beard...
s and longer hair returned in another attempt at returning to the image of peacetime man and the normality which had existed before the two wars. At the same time, as a result of American post-war prosperity, a new identity emerged for youth subculture: the teenager.
Jazz culture was transformed, by way of Rhythm and Blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
into Rock and Roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
culture. There are various suggested candidates for which record might have been the First rock and roll record. At the same time, jazz culture itself continued but changed into a more respected form, no longer necessarily associated with wild behaviour and criminality.
From the 1950s onward society noticed an increase in street gang
Gang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...
culture, random vandalism and graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
. Sociologists, psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
s, social workers and judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
s all had theories as to what was causing the increase to urban trouble but the consensus has generally tended to be that the modern urban environment offers all the bright lights and benefits of the modern world but often provides working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
youths with little in reality. This theory and others were parodied in the musical West Side Story (based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
) in song lyrics such as Jet Song, America, and Gee, Officer Krupke. Moral panic
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
s surrounding the advent of teenager subcultures and a perceived rise in adolescent criminality led to several attempts to investigate and legislate youth behavior, such as the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
The United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was established by the United States Senate in 1953 to investigate the problem of juvenile delinquency.- Background :...
. One of the many subcultures that was based around street violence was the greaser, a working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
subculture that was apart of and influenced the biker
Motorcycling
Motorcycling is the act of riding a motorcycle. A variety of subcultures and lifestyles have been built up around motorcycling.-Benefits:Robert M. Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a paean celebrating motorcycling...
subculture.
As American rock and roll arrived in the United Kingdom, a subculture grew around it. Some of the British post-war street youths hanging around bombsite
Bombsite
A bombsite is the wreckage that remains after a bomb has destroyed a building or other structure.-World War II bombsites:After World War II many European cities remained severely damaged from bombing. London and other British cities which had suffered the Blitz were pock-marked with bombsites,...
s in urban areas and getting drawn into petty crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
began to dress in a variation of the zoot suit style called a drape suit
Drape suit
Drape suits are a 1930's British variation of the lounge suit. The drape cut, sometimes called a "London drape" was popularized by Frederick Scholte, tailor to the Prince of Wales . Scholte observed that adding cloth to the shoulders of a jacket made many men look trimmer and more athletic...
, with a country style bootlace tie, winklepicker
Winklepicker
Winklepickers are a style of shoe or boot worn from the 1950s onward by male and female British rock and roll fans...
shoes, drainpipe trousers, and Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
style slicked hair. These youths were called Teddy boys. For a night out dancing at the palais, their girlfriends would usually wear the same sort of poodle skirt
Poodle skirt
A poodle skirt is a wide swing felt skirt of a solid bold color displaying a design appliquéd or transferred to the fabric. The design was often a coiffed French poodle. Later substitutes for the poodle patch included flamingos, flowers, and hot rod cars...
s and crinoline
Crinoline
Crinoline was originally a stiff fabric with a weft of horse-hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread. The fabric first appeared around 1830, but by 1850 the word had come to mean a stiffened petticoat or rigid skirt-shaped structure of steel designed to support the skirts of a woman’s dress into...
s their counterparts in America would wear. For day-to-day wear there was a trend toward girls wearing slacks or jeans. At the time, the idea of girls wearing trousers and boys taking time over their hairstyle was socially shocking to many people.
British youth divided into factions. There were the modern jazz kids, the trad jazz
Trad jazz
Trad jazz - short for "traditional jazz" - refers to the Dixieland and Ragtime jazz styles of the early 20th century in contrast to any more modern style....
kids, the rock and roll teenagers and the skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
craze. Coffee bars were a meeting place for all the types of youth and the coolest ones were said to be in Soho, London.
In Britain, the political side of the Beat Generation was the anti-nuclear movement led by CND. Ban the Bomb marches became a very successful British social phenomenon.
Teenage music and subculture was parodied in the 1957 play (and 1962 movie) The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
, particularly in the song "Ya Got Trouble
Ya Got Trouble
"Ya Got Trouble" is a song by Meredith Willson from the 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man, and its 1962 filmed version The Music Man. It is one of the most popular and recognizable songs in the musical, and Robert Preston's performance in the film is admired...
".
In the United States and Australia, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
an-influenced Surfing
Surfing
Surfing' is a surface water sport in which the surfer rides a surfboard on the crest and face of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore...
was the new youth sport. A whole subculture
Surf culture
Surf culture includes the people, language, fashion and life surrounding the art of surfing.The culture began early in the 20th century, spread quickly during the 1950s and 1960s, and continues to evolve. It affected fashion, music, literature, films, jargon, and more...
grew around the sport and the associated parties, clothes, speech patterns and music. During the same time-frame skateboard
Skateboard
A skateboard is typically a specially designed plywood board combined with a polyurethane coating used for making smoother slides and stronger durability, used primarily for the activity of skateboarding. The first skateboards to reach public notice came out of the surfing craze of the early 1960s,...
riding developed as a parallel lifestyle to wave riding. Both forms of board riding continued throughout the remainder of the century and into the next. From these two sports young people learned to provide their own social structure within which they could display skills and excellence.
In the Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...
(now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
), a youth subculture known as the Bills
Bills
The Bills were a youth subculture that thrived in Léopoldville in the late 1950s, basing much of their image and outlook on the cowboys of American Western movies...
flourished, taking Western movies
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
and cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
s as their main influence.
In the Netherlands, two youth groups evolved in big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. One group, the Nozems, similar to the British Teds, and another called the Artiestelingen, who can be compared to the bohemian artists of pre-world-war France. The Nozems spent their time listening to rock and roll music, driving motorcycles through town and picking up ladies while the Artiestelingen would discuss philosophy, paint, draw and listen to jazz music.
1960s
In the 1960s, the beats (AKA beatnikBeatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
s) grew to be an even larger subculture, spreading around the world. Other 1960s subcultures included radicals
Radicalization
Radicalization is the process in which an individual changes from passiveness or activism to become more revolutionary, militant or extremist. Radicalization is often associated with youth, adversity, alienation, social exclusion, poverty, or the perception of injustice to self or others.-...
, mods, rockers
Rockers
Rockers, leather boys or ton-up boys are a biker subculture that originated in the United Kingdom during the 1950s. It was mainly centered around British cafe racer motorcycles and rock and roll music....
, bikers
Motorcycle
A motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
, hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s and the freak scene
Freak scene
The freak scene was a term used by a slightly post-hippie and pre-punk style of bohemian subculture. It referred to overlaps between politicised pacifist post-hippies, generally non-political progressive rock fans, and non-political Psychedelic music and Psychedelia fans...
. One of the main transitional features between the beat scene and the hippies was the Merry Pranksters
Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...
' journey across the United States with Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
and Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, in a psychedelically-painted school bus
School bus
A school bus is a type of bus designed and manufactured for student transport: carrying children and teenagers to and from school and school events...
named Further. In the USA, the hippies' big year was 1967, the so-called summer of love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
.
The rude boy
Rude boy
Rude boy, rudeboy, rudie, rudi or rudy are common terms used in Jamaica. In the 1960s it was also used for juvenile delinquents and criminals in Jamaica, and has since been used in other contexts...
culture originated in the ghettos of Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, coinciding with the popular rise of rocksteady
Rocksteady
Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor to ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, The Maytals and The Paragons. The term rocksteady comes from a dance style that was mentioned in the Alton...
music, dancehall celebrations and sound system dances. Rude boys dressed in the latest fashions, and many were involved with gangs and violence. This subculture then spread to the United Kingdom and other countries.
The mod subculture began with a few cliques of trendy teenage boys in London, England in the late 1950s, but was at its most popular during the early 1960s. Mods were obsessed with new fashions such as slim-cut suits; and music styles such as modern jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
, and some beat music
Beat music
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul...
. Many of them rode scooters.
The mod and rude boy cultures both influenced the skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
subculture of the late 1960s. The skinheads were a harder, more working class version of mods who wore basic clean-cut clothing styles and favoured ska, rocksteady, soul and early reggae music.
The disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
scene originated in the 1960s, with discothèques such as the Whiskey A Go Go and Studio 54
Studio 54
Studio 54 was a highly popular discotheque from 1977 until 1991, located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York, USA. It was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming a CBS radio and television studio. In 1977 it...
.
Subcultures were often based on socializing and wild behaviour, but some of them were centred around politics. In the United States, these included the Black Panthers
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
and the Yippies. Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
took part in several protest movements, including those for gay rights and those against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
s. In Paris, France in May 1968, there was a university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
student
Student
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...
uprising, supported by Jean Paul Sartre and 121 other intellectuals who signed a statement asserting "the right to disobedience." The uprising brought the country to a standstill, and caused the government to call a general election
General election
In a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...
rather than run the risk of being toppled from power.
The Hacker culture
Hacker culture
A hacker is a member of the computer programmer subculture originated in the 1960s in the United States academia, in particular around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
was beginning to form in the 1960s, due to the increased usage of computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s at colleges and universities. Students who were fascinated by the possible uses of computers and other technologies
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
began figuring out ways to make technology more freely accessible. The international anti-art movement Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
also had its beginnings in the 1960s, evolving out of the Beat subculture.
1970s
In the 1970s, the hippie, mod and rocker subcultures were in a process of transformation, which temporarily took on the name of freaks (openly embracing the image of strangeness). A growing awareness of identity politics combined with the legalisation of homosexuality and a huge amount of interest in science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
forms of speculative writing
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
produced the freak scene
Freak scene
The freak scene was a term used by a slightly post-hippie and pre-punk style of bohemian subculture. It referred to overlaps between politicised pacifist post-hippies, generally non-political progressive rock fans, and non-political Psychedelic music and Psychedelia fans...
. Bands on the freak circuit cultivated an anti-capitalist, communal lifestyle. Freak bands like The Edgar Broughton Band or The Pink Fairies
Pink Fairies
Pink Fairies were an English rock band active in the London underground and psychedelic scene of the early 1970s. They promoted free music, drug taking and anarchy and often performed impromptu gigs and other agitprop stunts, such as playing for free outside the gates at the Bath and Isle of Wight...
played at free festival
Free festival
Free festivals are a combination of music, arts and cultural activities for which, often, no admission is charged, but involvement is preferred. They are identifiable by being multi-day events connected by a camping community without centralised control. The Free festival movement being the...
s, spurning mainstream venues. The music/fashion subculture that became a commercial alternative to the freaks was glam rock
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
. It was a continuation of the trendies of the 1960s mod culture, appealing to the androgynous
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
trend of the 1970s.
At some point, some in the hacker/computer subculture took on the derogatory word geek
Geek
The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...
with pride, in the same way the freaks had done. Computer usage was still a very inaccessible secret world to most people in those days, but many people were interested in computers because of their appearance in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. The dream of one day owning a computer was a popular fantasy amongst science fiction fandom
Fandom
Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...
, which had grown from a minor subculture in the first half of the 20th century to a quite large contingent by the 1970s, along with horror fandom, comics
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
fandom and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
freaks.
The skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
subculture from the late 1960s continued into the 1970s, and some skinheads became influenced by the punk subculture
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
. These skinheads became associated with the Oi!
Oi!
Oi! is a working class subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads and other working-class youths ....
genre, and some skinheads became involved with far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
politics, creating the white power skinhead scene (despite the fact that the original 1960s skinheads were influenced by black culture).
Disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
, which had begun in gay dance clubs, became a significant from about 1975 onward. In some sectors, particularly in the New York City area, where disco had seemingly "taken over" all aspects of youth life, an aggressive counter-disco movement was born. New York area rock radio stations such as WPLJ and WPIX encouraged their listeners to destroy disco records and embrace rock and roll. Musically and lyrically, punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
was the intentional antithesis of the disco scene, the progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
genre and the hippie subculture. Early punks played aggressive, quick-paced three-chord rock and roll songs.
As punk was rising to prominence, some of the progressive rock elements took it as a challenge to live faster, harder and tougher than punk. They kept the long hair of the freak scene, adopted the black leather jacket as virtually a uniform, and took on the name heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
(which is a phrase from the writings of William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
).
In 1976, a hit song "Convoy
Convoy (song)
"Convoy" is a 1975 novelty song performed by C. W. McCall that became a number-one song on both the country and pop charts in the US. Written by McCall and Chip Davis, the song spent six weeks at number one on the country charts and one week at number one on the pop charts...
" by C.W. McCall arrived in the pop charts and romanticised the Trucker and CB radio subculture. In 1978, the song inspired a film "Convoy" directed by Sam Peckinpah, and starring Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson
Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...
, Ali MacGraw
Ali MacGraw
Elizabeth Alice "Ali" MacGraw is an American actress. She is known for her role in Love Story, for which she won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination.-Early life:...
, Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine is an American actor of television and film. His career has spanned more than six decades. He was an unconventional lead in many films of the 1950s, including his Academy Award-winning turn in the 1955 film Marty...
, and Burt Young
Burt Young
Burt Young is an American actor, painter and author. He is best known for his Academy Award-nominated role as Sylvester Stallone's brother-in-law and friend Paulie in the Rocky film series.-Personal life:...
. The word "convoy
Convoy
A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...
" and quotes from the song lyrics became part of a popular cultural image of people standing up for their freedom. Gradually, from the 1960s, 1970s and through into the 1980s, the cultural influences of the Merry Pranksters
Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...
, the freak scene, the New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
movement and the Convoy idea seem to have coalesced into what became New age travellers
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
.
Beginning around 1976, the anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
scene in the UK developed the band Crass
Crass
Crass are an English punk rock band that was formed in 1977, which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, way of living, and as a resistance movement. Crass popularised the seminal anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, and advocated direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism...
and related bands, including The Poison Girls. The Crass Records label was an independent operation, enabling bands with an extremely raw sound to put out records when the major labels might not have bothered with them. Crass also organised gigs around the country for themselves and other bands, and campaigned politically for the anti-nuclear movement other causes.
Mods made a comeback in the late 1970s as a post-punk mod revival
Mod Revival
The mod revival was a music genre and subculture that started in England in 1978 and later spread to other countries . The mod revival's mainstream popularity was relatively short, although its influence has lasted for decades...
, inspired by The Jam
The Jam
The Jam were an English punk rock/New Wave/mod revival band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were formed in Woking, Surrey. While they shared the "angry young men" outlook and fast tempos of their punk rock contemporaries, The Jam wore smartly tailored suits rather than ripped...
and the British film
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
Quadrophenia
Quadrophenia
Quadrophenia is the sixth studio album by English rock band The Who. Released on 19 October 1973 by Track and Polydor in the UK, and Track and MCA in the US, it is a double album, and the group's second rock opera...
.
In 1979, Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
was created as a medium of communication over the, still very primitive, Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
of the time. The Usenet and the Bulletin board system
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
(BBS) subculture would become increasingly significant over the next few decades.
Also in 1979, Papa Wemba
Papa Wemba
Papa Wemba was born Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba in 1949 in Lubefu . He is a Congolese rumba musician, one of Africa's most popular musicians, and prominent in World music.-Zaiko Langa Langa:...
, a Rumba star in Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
/Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
, Africa began to be the leader of the Sapeur ('Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes d'Élégance' thus 'SAPE' for short), which he promoted as a youth cult. Papa Wemba's music has been influenced by previous stars of Rumba music in Zaire (such as Papa Wendo) and also by his visits to Europe and by the appearance, in 1974, of James Brown at the Rumble in the Jungle. Wemba said:
The Sapeur cult promoted high standards of personal cleanliness, hygiene and smart dress, to a whole generation of youth across Zaire. When I say well groomed, well shaven, well perfumed, it's a propriety that I am insisting on among the young. I don't care about their education, since education always comes first of all from the family.
1980s
At the beginning of the 1980s, some of the followers of punk rock became bored with it and wanted to make it more stylish and introduce elements of glam. By 1981, this trend resulted in the development of the New RomanticNew Romantic
New Romanticism , was a pop culture movement in the United Kingdom that began around 1979 and peaked around 1981. Developing in London nightclubs such as Billy's and The Blitz and spreading to other major cities in the UK, it was based around flamboyant, eccentric fashion and new wave music...
s, a group whose preferred music was synthesiser electro-pop. New Romantics tended to be slightly camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
y and fey, and there was a bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
vibe to the subculture generally, regardless of the individual's sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
. Clothing styles demonstrated a return to the freak scene's roleplay of fashions from previous eras or imagined future ones in order to use fashion to create a time warp. According to the music press at the time, the New Romantics identified themselves using a number of alternative terms including "Futurists" and "the cult with no name."
Other punk rock followers took the genre and culture further underground, where it evolved into a faster, harder genre coined as hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
. Along with the hardcore scene came the straight edge
Straight edge
Straight edge is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and other recreational drugs. It was a direct reaction to the sexual revolution, hedonism, and excess associated with punk rock. For some, this extends to not engaging in promiscuous sex, following a...
subculture. Straight edge is a lifestyle that advocates abstinence in relation to tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug use (especially psychoactive and stimulant drug use), and for some people, in relation to promiscuous sexual behavior.
Other former punks searching for a new direction around 1979 eventually developed into the nucleus of what became the goth subculture
Goth subculture
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify...
. The goths are a subculture of dark dress and gloomy romanticism. Unlike the New Romantics, goth has lasted into the 21st century. In the UK, goth reached its popular peak in the late 1980s.
In American urban environments, a form of street culture using freeform
Freeform
The word freeform may refer to:* Freeform , an alias used by experimental/IDM producer Simon Pyke* Freeform Style of Hardcore Techno influenced by trance.* Freeform Five, UK electro-house band...
and semi-staccato
Staccato
Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, combined with athletic break dancing, was developing as the Hip hop and Rap
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
subculture. In jazz jargon, the word rap had always meant speech and conversation. The new meaning signified a change in the status of poetry from an elitist artform to a community sport. Rappers could attempt to outdo each other with their skillful rhymes. Rapping is also known as MCing
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
, which is one of the four main elements of Hip hop: MCing, DJing, graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, and breakdancing. From the early to mid 1980s, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
culture in a broader sense caught the same kind of energy as rap and so began the first of the poetry slams. Poetry slamming became an irregular focus for the latest wave of poetry aficionados.
In 1985, Stonehenge Free Festival
Stonehenge Free Festival
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures...
was disrupted by a massive police presence attempting to prevent the festival and break up the Peace Convoy
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
. The resulting Battle of the Beanfield
Battle of the Beanfield
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on the afternoon of Saturday 1 June 1985 when Wiltshire Police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred new age travellers, known as "The Convoy" and referred to in the media as the "Peace Convoy" from setting up at the 11th Stonehenge...
was the largest mass civil arrest in English history.
Free parties
Free party
A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one...
and rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
s began from the mid-80s and became a flourishing subculture. The music embraced by this subculture was electronic dance music
Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...
which developed from Techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
, pioneered in Detroit and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
by people like Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
, as well as electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, pioneered by Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and others, taken by way of progressive rock bands like Hawkwind
Hawkwind
Hawkwind are an English rock band, one of the earliest space rock groups. Their lyrics favour urban and science fiction themes. They are also a noted precursor to punk rock and now are considered a link between the hippie and punk cultures....
, filtered through the sounds of dub
Dub music
Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...
-reggae and the electro-pop bands like Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
and Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
and given a different twist via Art of Noise and early hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and recycled psychedelia. Towards the end of the 80s rave culture had diversified into different forms connected to music such as Acid House
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
and Acid Jazz
Acid jazz
Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Grant Green are...
and would continue to diversify into the 90s. Rave culture thrived from the mid-80s to the end of the century and beyond.
The Usenet and BBS subculture had developed an element called Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
subculture which involved its own forms of etiquette and behaviour patterns both social and anti-social and the phenomena of trolling, spamming
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
, flaming
Flaming
Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of an Internet forum, Internet Relay Chat , Usenet, by e-mail, game servers such as Xbox Live or Playstation Network, and on video-sharing websites...
etc. The computer subculture was also influenced by fictional subcultures in cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
literature.
1990s
The term Generation XGeneration X
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...
or Gen X, popularized by Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...
's novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, published by St. Martin's Press in 1991, is the first novel by Douglas Coupland. The novel popularized the term Generation X, which refers to Americans and Canadians who reached adulthood in the late 1980s...
, was used to describe the generation that followed the Baby Boom Generation, or those who came to adulthood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the UK, the Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
scene arose in the 1990s, influenced by the 1960s mods, the 1970s/1980s mod revival, and other British rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and subcultural styles. One of the main technological developments of the 1990s was the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. Running on the older infrastructure of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, the web allowed small subcultures to grow into large global online communities. Online game
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
communities, forums, chat rooms and Internet cafe
Internet cafe
An Internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name...
s became popular. The 1990s saw the rise of the anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
. This was a response to the increased impact of globalisation and global capitalism. The anti-globalisation protest movement was accompanied by the fair trade
Fair trade
Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards...
movement.
2000s
Named in relation to Generation X, Generation YGeneration Y
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation , Generation Next, Net Generation, or Echo Boomers, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere...
or "Echo Boomers" (a reference to the fact that many of the parents of this generation had belonged to the Baby boomer
Baby boomer
A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...
generation) consisted of individuals that had come to adulthood during the 2000s.
See also
- History of sexuality
- Music historyMusic historyMusic history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...
- Post-industrial societyPost-industrial societyIf a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of information, innovation, finance, and services.-Characteristics:...
- Sexuality and gender identity-based culturesSexuality and gender identity-based culturesSexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of persons who have shared experiences, background, or interests due to a common sexual or gender identity. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can constitute cultural minorities as well as...
- SubcultureSubcultureIn sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
& List of subcultures
Further reading
- This is the Beat Generation by James CampbellJames CampbellJames Campbell, Esq. was the founder of the Estate of James Campbell, one of the largest and wealthiest landowners in the United States Territory of Hawaii and in the state of Hawaii until 2007...
- We are the people our parents warned us against by Nicholas Von HoffmanNicholas von HoffmanNicholas von Hoffman is an American journalist and author. He wrote for the Washington Post. Later, TV audiences knew him as a "Point-Counterpoint" commentator for CBS's 60 Minutes, from which Don Hewitt fired him in 1974.-Biography:He is of German-Russian extraction, descendant of Melchior...
- Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. ThompsonHunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
- The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom WolfeTom WolfeThomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
- Mod: A Very British Phenomenon, Rawlings, Terry (2000). London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-6813-6.
- Mods!, Barnes, Richard (1979). London: Eel Pie Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-85965-173-8.
- Spirit of '69 - A Skinhead Bible, Marshall, George (1991). Dunoon, Scotland: S.T. Publishing. ISBN 1-898927-10-3.