Customer Reviews

Hip: The History (P.S.)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book takes the reader on a remarkable journey from 17th century plantations to 21st century Williamsburg, Brooklyn. On route, we meet America's greatest hipsters- people who used language and manipulated the forces around them to transform society, from Mark Twain to Muhammed Ali, from Charlie Parker to Richard Hell. Leland draws a family tree linking the most influential cuktural movements across generations, detailing not only how the unique American experience begat our cultural icons, but how, in turn, those enlightened individuals have shaped the world around them, our world.
"Hip: A History" is sufficiently thorough and analytical to read like a textbook of American cultural history. But its much more than that. Leland's narratives put us right in the middle of some of the most provocative scenes: minstrel shows, the beats, bebops, early hip-hop and grafetti art, to name a few. You may not always agree with Leland about what is hip; that's part of the fun. But get on board for this trip across the racial, ethnic, geographic, economic and cultural divide that has brought us together and torn us apart over the last 350 years and catch a glimpse of the artists who had their fingers on the pulse of their America. Its quite a ride.

Clearly, those who say don't know and those who know don't
say; if you gotta ask, you ain't never gonna know; you might
as well be loading mercury with a pitchfork. And yet there
is something called hip, and it seems to have a story.
_Hip:_The_History_, by John Leland, takes a shot at it, even
if it can't be told.

Right at the beginning, then, Leland has this fairly serious
problem which is yet part of his story, and maybe even an
assistant; and that is finding the definition of _hip_. (You
can't tell the players without a program.) He earnestly
derives the word from Wolof etymons meaning "to know" or "to
open one's eyes"; but clearly it's not ordinary knowledge of
the sort which comes from experience, or the traditions conveyed
by elders, or from assiduous study. "Hep" or "hip" was at
first a word used by Negro slaves to denote knowledge of things
the White man didn't know about, and it came by whispers and
signs and subtle gestures.

The centrality of the African experience to hip is something
Leland doesn't forget about as he traces the history of hip
from slavery days. As the still-oppressed descendants of the
slaves moved to the big industrial cities of America after
the Civil War and especially in early the 20th century, they
ran into many other un-Whites: the Irish, the Jews, the
Italians, the "Spanish" (we say "Hispanics"). The confluence
of slavery, racism, oppression, exile, rampant industrialism,
crime, drugs, unspeakable loss, linguistic and cultural Babel,
the junkpile of abandoned cultures, all the great melting pot
on the fires of Hell's Kitchen: this was where hip got started
because it was what people _needed_ to know. It was know,
and know fast, or die.

These people were all, to some extent, at odds with the dominant
culture, which was (and is) White, Protestant, conservative,
complacent, sentimental and studiously simple-minded about
cultural matters, locally rational and globally insane -- in
short, corny.

While the dominant took care to keep their distance, they did
peer through the windows of negritude from time to time --
mostly through odd agency of the minstrel show. It is now
hard to believe, but in the 19th century mostly White men
wearing Negro makeup and cavorting in vaudevillian manner on
stage were as central an experience of popular culture as the
movies or television would later become. There is a bridge
between the two, of which can see one end pretty clearly,
however: the _The Jazz Singer_, that astonishing filmic
monument where, framed by two uncompromising renditions of
_Kol_Nidre_ (a later film would give us five or ten seconds
and turn away) Al Jolson makes his way to pop stardom and,
getting ready to perform in incredible blackface, talks about
his _race_ and the nexus between the slave calls and songs
that had been woven into popular music and the ancient cries
of the Jews' liturgy. Correctly, Leland explores the movie
in detail. There are other icons further up and down the
genealogical tree of hip, of course, from Mark Twain and Herman
Melville above to bebop and the Beat Generation below, but
everything goes through _The_Jazz_ _Singer_ -- in its time.

But hip, being the underknowledge of the underground, like
water and the Tao flows everywhere and stays nowhere. For
one generation it's popular music, for another it's the
studiously unpopular Modern Jazz or Harry Partch. Sometimes
it's being aware, at least of where to score, and sometimes
it's being totally on the nod, turned on, tuned it, and dropped
utterly out. For awhile it's the artists who are "ahead of
their time", but of course, the notion of an avant-garde, the
idea that some artists are ahead of their time, requires that
Art be going somewhere, so that these artists can get there
first; that is, it requires Art to be progressive in an
old-time, optimistic, 19th-century, bourgeois sense. It turns
out to be one of the squarest ideas imaginable.

The idea began to be seriously weakened after the fractures
of the Sixties left Modernism and Bebop (as two examples) out
on an evolutionary limb. We are in the realm of the Postmodern,
where progress vanishes into a maze of twisty paths. And
after progress vanishes, we have only the random strut of
fashion; and as hip becomes fashionable, so fashion becomes
hip. Its sign is reversed; now, instead of being special
knowledge held by a few, it becomes what everybody knows all
the time, if they want to. Giant shiny corporate machines
run hot to pour out glossy magazines, television programs,
clothes and shows to tell you how to be hip. Hip sells things
to the masses. Maybe this is the death of hip: what is
everything is nothing. If so, its span was not long, a bit
over a hundred years.

At the beginning of the book, Leland tells the reader to check
the index to see if his name is there, and apologizes if it's
missing: "Somehow," he says, "it fell through one of the many
holes in this book." He's not being so ironic; after the
Sixties, there must have been millions of people who thought
they were cool, and the sort of people who are likely to pick
up this book will be mostly from their ranks, like you and
me, dear reader, even if we now have to buy our jeans in the
Relaxed Fit style.

Of course there are as many holes in the book as in the rusty
remains of your old microbus. Yet the book covers a lot of
ground in a small space and hits many of the greater phenoms
and icons. It is made of heavy metal. Maybe Leland could
have spent a bit less time trying to explain what hip is,
philosophically and logically, and just showed it happening,
but, as I said, part of the story is this very trying to come
to grips with its elusive and now perhaps vanishing nature
before it completely disappears. Or is it to be secretly
reborn under the present rising sign of violent, triumphant
fundamentalist corniness? Is this part of the story which is
yet to be told, indeed, yet to be lived?

"Be there or be square."

In Hip: The History Leland offers up nothing less than an alternate history of the development and importance of American pop culture to understanding America as a whole. In doing so he makes us rethink the familiar (Bugs Bunny, Miles Davis, William Burroughs, Lou Reed, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman) in light of the common thread of "hip," which he refuses to define too simply. At the heart of the book is an attempt to rethink the complex interplay of black and white culture throughout American history, its effect on the arts, commerce, and background noise of our lives. Leland does not overlook the destructiveness of this story in the history of America, but he's out to show how productive the tensions have been as well. And it's not the only story he has to tell: the book sheds light equally on writers in the nineteenth century (Emerson and Thoreau among them), musicians in the early, middle and late twentieth, computer geeks in the last twenty years, and, of course, the jewfro.

The book is ambitious in the best sense of the word and invites, even compels argument from its readers, many of whom will know bits and pieces of this story but will almost certainly not have put all these pieces together in this way. And, while it is magisterial in its breadth, Leland's many years as a professional magazine and newspaper writer lend it a refreshing and easy style. He can be humorous and convincing seemingly at will, and despite the book's length (300+ pages), he does not waste words: it's really a fun read.

Is this book for you? Well, if you're a forty-something like myself and you're looking at this review, then you've probably thought about a lot of this stuff on your own. This is one smart read, and I at any rate came away educated AND entertained even about things I had thought long and hard about before. If you're a teen or a twenty-something for whom this search is new, this book will open your eyes to a whole range of moments in American history in a non-condescending, reader-friendly way. Leland thinks the history of pop culture is NOT a sidelight of American culture: it's at the heart of it. And he's pretty convincing.

Oh, and the black and white photos are GREAT.

When I finished reading "Hip: The History" I actually began to re-read parts of it for fear that all the wonderful and funny anecdotes and historical bits would begin slowly creeping out of my memory. If ever there is a thrill in reading it is when you can feel yourself trying to hold on to what you're reading, even SLOWING the pace at which you read just so the imprint is more indelible on your mind.

But more than excelling as a sum of its parts, this book really stands out as a tremendous voyage of intellectual curiousity. Did "hip" really start with those that Leland refers to as the O.G.s (original gangsters) of hip: Emerson, Wilde & Thoreau? Is there truly some connective throughline between Walden Pond, Be-Bop, and the likes of Tupac Shakur? If, like me, you're the kind of person that doesn't mind if there turns out to be no water on Saturn's moon -- you're just happy that somebody bothered to check it out -- then you're in for a real treat with this book. Mind you, in the end I wound up agreeing with the historical connections Leland asserts, but I almost feel that that's just icing on the cake for what is truly an enjoyable exploration into a phenomenon that marks our culture as no other.

The author's style is at once literate and funny and ultimately really entertaining. His research is fascinating, the book is filled with riveting and laugh-out-loud anecdotes, and unlike many books that talk about race in America, here you will find cogent, thoughtful and enlightening insights into "what's-up-with-that?" subjects like white homeboys in the 'burbs and the curious relationship of Jews and Blacks in America.

Enjoy.

I was in Berkeley when Tower of Power recorded "What is Hip?" Like John Leland, my kids would correctly never have seen me as hip - just an interested bystander.
Last week a Mexican friend asked me, "Why has the US developed, or more exactly, enjoyed such increases in income and wealth, while Mexico still seems to be stuck?" Oddly, John Leland seems to have important parts of the answer. The openness of hip, the synergy with the main culture, the drive and attraction of change and freedom to focus on the present helped create an environment that invited change.
The way Leland reminds us of our evolution from farm to factory to urban life and the way his key groups, south-to-north African Americans, Eastern Europe to East Coast (and LA, too) Jews, built on change must surely be an unsung part of our development story. That's not what Leland is trying to write about; it's just that his digging into this world of freedom and complex interrelations must surely be a new way to think about how we have been not just lucky but shored up by OG's (his original gansta's, Whitman, Melville, Samuel Clemens et. al.) through Miles Davis and right down to Dennis Hopper and YES, Jeffrey Sachs, prophet of the Millenium Development Goals (you have to look hard to find him in the book).
As my friend Lional Barber once said about far less effective dips in the pool of America's real past, "More, more."

Upon my initial skimming of the book, it looked to be a collection of brief vignettes about the general direction of cool pop culture in America. After reading it though, I was amazed by Leland's ability to construct the narrative of hipness, going all the way back to the continent of all origins, Africa. For the detractors who claim this book is too 'hip-hop centric', wake up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around your cool collection of obscure import singles. And for the record, most 'scholars' spell 'valiant' with an 'A'.

My friends always told me I was not hip, uncool, etc... So I decided to read this book to learn what one means by the term hip. I found this book very interesting, quite insightful, and a great text for understanding the history and origins of not only modern American black culture, but pop culture, street culture, the counter culture, and of course, what is cool and acceptable in social norms. The book shows how much of modern American culture is due to a thesis - antithesis of how blacks and whites dealt with each other, both face-to-face and behind each others' backs. The book also shows how the business community has tried to capitalize on social attitudes, and in turn how social attitudes alternately opposed or accepted changes within the business world; i.e. clothing styles, the consumer culture...

Given the great topic of this book, I found the text difficult to read. The author splices in various slang terms throughout the text, trying to make the words sound like how someone would say them in a street conversation. For example, discussions of jazz music would be written using phrases that jazz musicians and fans would (I assume) use on a daily basis. I guess the author's purpose is to fully expose the reader to the topic matter; but this reader found it difficult to go through and sometimes confusing. This book is an okay read in my opinion.

Leland's basic thesis that hip comes from the fusion of black and white cultures, and especially "his" big idea about the white boy who stole the blues is a flat-out rip-off of some major texts in American studies, especially Eric Lott's _Love and Theft_. Leland misidentifies Lott as a "sociologist" and footnotes him only in relation to something else. This is just bad. Overall, the book is glib and shallow the way you might expect a book by a former editor at _Details_ to be: even though Thoreau is listed as one of hip's forebears (Leland calls the American Renaissance men the "o.g.'s," for original gangstas--get it? it's, like, from rap!), the book blithely claims hip has always been about buying stuff.

I think not.

But I can see Leland pitching this book to the suits at HarperCollins: "See, the book is HIP. Instead of acknowledgments, it's got 'Shout-outs,' see? That's from rap. I may be 45 but I can Talk to the Young, a Target Market!"

Look, if you read Details, knock yourself out, buy the book. But if you're still a college student, take an American Studies course. And if you're out of school and can actually read, read Lott. Read Dick Hebdige. Read Sarah Thornton. (DEFINITELY read Sarah Thornton.) But if you can't read, or are in high school and want to know what names to drop at whatever Williamsburg party your older brother lets you come to, well, whatever. You might want to check it out of the library.

The title led me to expect a simplistic, pop-culture look at what makes someone hip. That isn't what this book is. Leland's thoughts run deeper than that. His approach is sociological. He finds the roots of hip, not unexpectedly, within the subcultures of black America. His analysis proceeds from there, but he never strays far from his thesis that hip is linked with the American black experience, and so the book reads at times like a report on the cultural interplay between whites and blacks in America. However, he also says: "In American culture, there are no pure black or white sources to tap." (133) Each group adopts from the other.

Abstracting from Leland's discussion, but not taking his language:

Hip, in intention, is against the mainstream, an outsider's stance. Hip lays bare the sexual. Hip is a style, an aesthetic, an attitude, a pose, an artifice. Hip is a point of view and a performance to be viewed.

Being an outsider can be through the force of cultural exclusion or through the predisposition or choice of nonconformity, or even through both (the outsider going further outside, abandoning, for example, one aesthetic for another). Only those outside the mainstream can be truly hip.

The appeal of the hip as performance and image can fashion outsiders out of those who, not yet hip and looking from the inside at the hip outsiders, want to be hip, too. They then may put on hip as a surface aesthetic and perform a pre-established, outsider-inspired script or they may go further and fervently indulge in a defiant, outsider lifestyle in order to acquire the status of hip.

"If hip is a form of rebellion - or at least a show of rebellion - it should want something. Its desires are America's other appetite, not for wealth but for autonomy. It is a common folk's grab at a rich folk's freedom - the purest form of which is freedom from the demands of money." (7)

"Outlaws show the public what its desires would look like with the brakes off." (236)

"If we lay aside the question of authenticity, which is dubious anyway, hip continues to be relevant not despite its contact with commerce but in proportion to it. Commercial hip is less a betrayal of the legacy than a part of its natural evolution. With its traffic in enlightenment, its coded language, its viral distribution networks and its framing of the immaterial, hip anticipated and helped shape the information economy that we now live in. Power and resources in America now move mainly through the realm of information and images, and for individuals hip is a foothold in this realm. In other words, hip was in the market before the market was." (306)

- Contents -
Preface: Getting Hip
Introduction: What is Hip? Superficial Reflections on America
1. In the Beginning There Was Rhythm: Slavery, Minstrelsy and the Blues
2. The O.G.'s: Emerson, Thoreau, Melville and Whitman
3. My Black/White Roots: Jazz, the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance
4. Would a Hipster Hit a Lady? Pulp Fiction, Film Noir and Gangsta Rap
5. The Golden Age of Hip, Part 1: Bebop, Cool Jazz and the Cold War
6. The Golden Age of Hip, Part 2: The Beats
7. The Tricksters: Signifying Monkeys and Other Hip Engines of Progress
8. Hip Has Three Fingers: The Miseducation of Bugs Bunny
9. The World is a Ghetto: Blacks, Jews and Blues
10. Criminally Hip: Outlaws, Gangsters, Players, Hustlers
11. Where the Ladies At? Rebel Girls, Riot Grrrls and the Revenge of the Mother
12. Behind the Music: The Drug Connection
13. "It's Like Punk Rock, But a Car": Hip Sells Out
14. Do Geeks Dream of HTML Sheep? A Digressive Journey Through Digital Hip
15. Everybody's Hip: Superficial Reflections on the White Caucasian
Notes
Photo Credits
Index

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, the history of what is hip is truly a history of American culture seen through the eyes of the non conformists. Starting with the pre-Civil War south and the mixing of cultures inherent in the American practice of slave labor and following it up to the "digital" rebels that created a cyber frontier of sort with trips through jazz, Thoreau and Whitman, the Velet Underground and gangsters. While parts of this book are truly outstanding, there are times when it gets a little bit like a text book and Leland goes overboard with information, i.e. the entire chapter on Jews in the music business could have been covered in three pages and didn't need an entire chapter. The chapter on how drugs influenced "hip" is well done but there is just this feeling that it is a little too much information at time, although you feel like he could have spent more time on Charlie Parker, it's kind of a weird balance. Leland also jumps around a lot because the chapters are organized by theme vs. a timeline. But overall it is a worthwhile read.