Hippie

The movement

Origins

Created at the base by Rene Dumont French among the first ecologists, the movement hippie becomes the first movement ecologist of the history. Its celebrity will be done initially with the the United States in a context of dispute and refusal of the established order; the demonstrations against the War of Vietnam and the riots black in large the American Villes federate part of youth. But this generation just born after the Second world war refuses also the Conformisme and the tender with the capacity in place of the media and the artists. They seek to flee the Consumer society by proposing to the values ecologists and egalitarians resulting from Eastern and primitive philosophies. Many of these aspirations are inherited the writers the Beat generation who are often regarded as the precursors of the movement because they also are the expression first of the rupture with the company of mass. A life “with cool” made sex, of music and road. An escape out of America post-nuclear power (after 1945) and consuming right-thinking person, mainly under the influence of the Jazz and the surrealist movement whose members found refuge with New York during the war. The technique of the Cut-up specific to Burroughs will come directly from this source, and more generally the taste of the spontaneous prose whose Kerouac proves to be the best representing. Raise Alan Watts, introducer of the Eastern thought with San Francisco, Gary Snyder, joined by Kerouac then later by Ginsberg, will popularize the practice of the meditation, and more generally of CAT and the zen Buddhism. Little by little a new generation of singers like Bob Dylan or The Doors appears which represents a new musical genre, the Protest song . Since 1965, with the Netherlands, Provos of Amsterdam preach circulation in the bicycle. This movement on the left invites each person to paint her bicycle in white and to leave it at the free disposal of the inhabitants or organizes gatherings against the marriage of the Béatrix queen with a former Nazi. In France as in many countries, the year 1968 sees flowering the dispute of the established order in the campuses. In 1969, the weekly magazine Hara-Kiri is founded, he wants to be independent and provocative.

Music

The music is a capital and federator element followers of the movement. Far from a simple “leave-outward journey” of young idle middle-class men, the movement hippie secret a complete, musical esthetics initially (Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young), Jefferson Airplane…), with the first festivals the pop one: Monterey, Woodstock, the Island of Wight; but also pictorial, theatrical, etc the music of the hippies draws its inspiration in the country (Bob Dylan) or the blues (Janis Joplin) but can also come from much further like Ravi Shankar, player of sitar Indian which took part in the festival of Monterey. The music represents well the movement by its diversity, its will of opening to the various cultures and stamping from the rules in force. Moreover, to beginning of the year 90, the meeting between the last hippies of Goa and the djs international, fans of electronic musics and resulting, partly, of vagueness Acid house, gave rise to the psychedelic Trance-Goa or Trance (Psytrance), rigulièrement played, since in Rave party.

The experiment of the psychedelism

LSD was discovered in 1943 in the Sandoz Swiss laboratory and will be declared illegal in the USA on October 6th, 1966. Psychedelic esthetics can be comparable with the visions caused by the acid (another name of the LSD). The psychologist Timothy Leary, the chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III and the novelist Ken Kesey among others encouraged the consumption of LSD. In particular, at that time, of the acid was distributed free at the time of the famous acid tests of the Merry Pranksters. It is possible to attach many artistic currents to the consumption of Psychotrope, as well the music (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix…) the drawing and the fashion were thus influenced. In addition to the LSD, the Cannabis is also a drug which was massively consumed by the hippies. It was alleged that the goal of this consumption the psychotropic ones is a will of open-minded and abolition of the mental borders.

End

The majority of the hippies ended up giving up their desire for regenerating the " old man monde" and lined up as of the end of the Années 1970 and the current of the Années 1980. Come about thirty, they found work, founded a family and were finally integrated in the consumer society which they denounced at one time… The critics often say that they are " embourgeoisés".

However, some irreducible always made a point of remaining faithful to the ideals of their youth. Most talented and most skilful of them found a compromise while living, sometimes very comfortably, of their Artisanat of art, their music, the Organic farming, or even of the practice of parallel medicines (known as also " medicines douces"). Others there are flaring the wings and finished without the penny at the end of the road, devastated by the hard drugs, with the image of certain idols like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison died of overdose. Others still were very marked and decreased by last years, world cups, in sects New-old or vaguely Buddhists.

In Asia, the hippies were often driven out cities with the development of tourism of mass. The authorities made them hunting as Charles Duchaussois in his Flash book tells it.

The heritage

The movement hippie, although little structured, carried in him the germs of an inventive renewal of the culture and lifestyle of the years of Après-guerre, which, by the success even of its materialists goals arrived at breathlessness particularly perceptible by youth. In various fields of the novel ideas bored, the Autogestion, the ecology, the rejection of the traditional Religion S. In arts, the psychedelic music and the Pop-art marked the spirits. The slogan Flower Power (capacity of the flowers) was the symbol of non-violence. The hippie generation revolutionized the music, art and opened the way with ecology, the humanitarism, pacifism, the sexual release. who are as many symbols of a Cultural revolution and manners, completely integrated today in the Western companies, without those being inevitably aware of their origin hippie.

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