Jazz music's influence on the Beats
The writings of the poets of the Beat Generation, namely Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, resulted from the many factors of the time in which they wrote. They were accused of being crazy, yet their only real fault was writing with complete honesty. Their originality consequently placed them on the outskirts of society. The post-war, in which their poetry thrived, was a huge influence on their writing. Also influential on the poets' literature was jazz music at this time; evoking many of the same feelings that these marginalized poets were feeling. Jazz was used either in coherence with poetry or as an inspiration for some of the writing techniques. The post-war era and the jazz music of the time heavily impacted the writings of Kerouac and Ginsberg. These two factors created for them inspiration as well as an outlet through which they escaped war and the negative aspects and feelings of the times. Both the jazz musicians and the writers of the Beat Movement were able to relate to the same type of feeling: ostracism. The predominantly African American jazz musicians were feeling ostracized during this time period because of the discrimination against their race. Like these musicians, the writers of the Beat Movement, a
lthough chiefly white males, were not accepted because of their desire to go against the "norms of society." In this respect, the two groups were able to relate to one another on a certain level. The Beat writers were able to use the feelings, evoked by the jazz, in order to inspire them because they were able to relate to the music. We do not have to assume that they used the feelings given by the jazz music to inspire them, the writers show us that they use jazz as an inspiration as well as a type of literary device in their writings. The timing of the poem, for one, would emulate that of a jazz song; it would be in unison with the essence of speech, it would flow and be free from punctuation and pauses as though it were an undisturbed flow from the mind to the paper. In "CIA Dope Calypso" Allen Ginsberg uses these tactics to write about the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling. His poem is racing with beats and rhythms, each word thriving off of the other, never ending, streams of consciousness; all of these suggested by the absence of punctuation, Ginsberg's poem flows smoothly yet pulsates as fast as a heartbeat bringing it to life and pulling us in. The poem is written in such a way that it is almost in the form of a song, there is a verse and then after every verse he reverts back to the same line "Supported by the CIA" . It also thrives off of Ginsberg's choice of words, his curt one syllable words make up a style that emulates the staccato sound of a jazz piece. The absence of punctuation suggests the smooth flowing sound that jazz music alike creates. In excerpt from Kerouac's "On the Road" (part III, Chapter 10) we see in his word usage the influence of the abrupt sound of jazz through such words that he spontaneously throws into the dialogue. For example "Wup! Wup! [...]", "Whee. [...]", "Whooee! [...]". The jazz influence is also evident in the context of the story as Kerouac sets the excerpt in such a way that he and his companion in the story are observing the jazz musicians and critiquing them. The post-World War II era was arguably the spark of a cultural revolution. People began to realize the uniformi
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Approximate Word count = 1450
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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