Research Paper Rough Draft

Evolution of Hip: The Not-So-Underground Underground Scene

Walk into a local coffee shop. Note the 20-something man to your left sporting a flannel plaid button-up, accessorizing with an eccentric ethnic girlfriend. Hipster. Turn to the barista. She’s a freelance graphic design artist, amateur photographer, or creative writing major. Also a hipster. The introvert reading Salinger in the corner, the tattooed tassel drinking chai with her lesbian lover, and the newly successful architect with an ironic handlebar mustache are all hipsters. Hipsters are defined as the young, elite oddities of society with a leftist frame of mind and a middle class upbringing (Ramos). This information leads one to believe that hipsters are a splinter group, which somehow manages to seep through the cracks of capitalistic society. However, the anthropological history of America refutes this generalization. While many consider hipsters to be a select few modern Americans who reject the mainstream, hipsters have been brewing in America since slavery and are becoming the majority rather than the minority.

Hip did not protrude with Samuel Adam’s tongue as he dumped tea in the Boston Harbor, and it certainly wasn’t aboard the Mayflower. Hip is derived not from white contempt—towards British tyranny or modern politics. It begins on the antebellum plantations of Southern America (Leland 19). Hip’s story begins as a collision of cultures. African dialect infiltrated the cotton fields of the South, and began to blend with the British formalities of Southern speech. Historian Mechal Sobel stated that by the end of the colonial period, “both blacks and whites held a mix of quasi-English and quasi-African values.” (22) Even the word hip is rooted in Africa. Used as a term of enlightenment by African slaves in American, the word hip comes from the Wolof word “hipi” which means “to open one’s eyes” (Asante 7).

To briefly summarize the history of hip is to eat a hamburger in a Mexican restaurant, but is necessary for understanding. In the beginning, there was music, and the music was good. Composer Brian Eno asked, “You know why music was the center of our lives for such a long time? Because it was a way of letting Africa in.” (Leland 17). After emancipation of slaves, white Americans placed tangible restrictions on African American society. However, legalities failed to repress the beats and whines of black American blues. Soon, white men, displeased with societal patterns, went into the forest and thought about stuff. Thoreau and Whitman broke philosophical molds with transcendentalist literature. Walt Whitman gave birth to a beat inspired by African rhythms…white boy style (Leland 40). In the twenties, radios were invented, bringing rhythm to the rhythmically inept masses. Hip’s Golden Age began after World War II, with the bebop jazz of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (113). Jack Kerouac wrote a book called On the Road about being on the road and fucking nothing else and everybody was like “Oh, Jack Kerouac, you’re cool. Let’s be like you.” (5, 8, 10, 44, 50-52, 105, 108, ∞) And so they did.

So now, people are all like “yeah, I’m hip and indie.” But you’re not because everyone is so you fail.

Lololol.

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