Music Reflections

Give me some music; music, moody food

Of us that trade in love--Shakespeare:Anthony and Cleopatra

It seems whether a love song or not there is a lot of truth in the idea posed that music is a venting source for moodiness. Looking at the theme of moodiness in music one turns to styles and thinks of the blues, or the soulful sound of a sax playing jazz...slowly.

The twang of a country guitar player, hitting licks for a cry in your beer song reflects the human psyche and the need for a release of sadness. If you've ever heard the playing of taps, even just in a movie, you are touched by the doleful notes.

The list of examples could go on, but no. I remember that in a college poetry course someone ask why so many poems were sad. Well, angst, depression, conflict, and love are the stuff of drama and poetry is dramatic just like music is dramatic.

Of course, there are happy songs and happy poetry, but that's another post.

Jazz Jazz and Poetry Dance

Poetry and music had quite a fling together in the 20th century. There has been a dance between jazz and poetry. The subject of jazz poetry is jazz--the poet describing the street musician or the player in a smokey club. Some poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes wrote this genre of poetry.

The Beat Poets or the Beat Generation were poets and writers that became popular in the 1950's and the beginning of the 1960's. The beatnniks were an offshoot of them and were the hip people before the hippies came on the scene in the middle to late sixties.

The most well known members of the Beat Generation were Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. The whole beat concept influenced different parts of culture. For instance, The Beatles coined their name from the term "beat." A word later about the word "hip."

The Origin of Hip

The origin of the word hip is disputed by some.Hep meant wise to or informed according to The Straight Dope and other sources. The History of Morphine claims that it was a phrase of opium addicts in England that used pipes so long they rested on their hips. Supposedly then when someone wanted to know if someone else smoked opium they asked if they were hip. Most entomologists think this idea is a puff of smoke.

In the 1800 century hep was a herding and teamster term to get animals on their feet and moving. There are literary examples of hep, hip, hurrah from 1818.

A 1914 novel The Auction Block by Rex Ellington Beach used the word hipped. Here is the quote from his novel: "His collection of Napoleana is the finest in this country; he is an authority on French history of that period - in fact, he's as nearly hipped on the subject as a man of his powers can be considered hipped on anything"

We do know that back in the 1930's big horn bands—swing bands like Count Basie's and Duke Ellington's were said to be hep. It meant that they were in the know. People called jazz fans hep-cats. Hep is said by William and Mary Morris, compilers and authors of Morris Dictionary and Phrase Origins to come from soldier slang of about 1900. They got it from the drillmaster's cadence count which went: Hep, two, three, four. Anyone familiar with old war movies will remember that phrasing. So anyone in step with the times was hep.

Cool jazz emerged in the 1940's in New York. It was a mixture of jazz influenced by white jazz players and black musicians bringing a more abstracted sound and heartier tempo called bebop. Though some people associate hard bop with the east coast and the west coast with cool jazz. When the 1940's rolled to an end hep was taken over by hip.

A song was written in 1947 called It Ain't Hep, the lyrics were about the change of the slang from hep to hip. It was the creation of Harry “The Hipster” Gibson. Then the 1950's came around and the beats or beatniks appeared. More on the beats later.