The changing aesthetics from beat culture to hippie culture

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The "here & there" between the 1950's and the 1960's in San Francisco entered a void that sucked beatnik culture in one end and spat hippie culture out the other. We know the surface level differences of these two somewhat distinct movements: beats are beat down, humble, political – hippies are energetic, colorful, humorous, freely loving. Many similarities exist between the two cultures, but aesthetically, what happened in this shift?

First, I think of the bebop jazz sounds of the 1950's music fading into the Grateful Dead-dominated jamband craze of the hippie culture. What happened to the hip sports coats and top hats – where did the tie dye shirts and patchouli come in? When did trumpet solos become rock guitar?

I think the popularization of LSD had a lot to do with this aesthetic shift. The beats were experimenting with psychedelics, but in a more intellectual and controlled way. Kerouac and Ginsberg wrote about their experiences with mescaline, Alan Watts and Ram Das gave well-though-out lectures on the effects of psychedelics on the human consciousness. And then, in the 1960's Owlsley and the Grateful Dead culture made LSD free-flowing and widely available. Sitting on straw mats sipping tea and reading books became basking in meadows tripping on LSD. The music became more frantic, the sights became more colorful. The Grateful Dead sparked something that was fun-loving, not beat down. I think of the Further bus and the Band of Merry Pranksters, banging cymbals, tapping tambourines, drinking unknown doses of acid out of water bottles. The aesthetic shift between the beats and hippies is subtle and gradual, yet at either end there is a shift in value from a sad and conservative outlook to a primal unleashing of joy, of possibility, and of art.

The war culture of the 1960's also promoted the shift into hippiedom– being political became hip, it became mainstream. No longer were a select few intellectually writing and conversing about peace and politics, rather the entire nation took hold of the new political ideas and possibilities in the 1960's. Perhaps this rapid acceptance of liberal culture is what turned beats into hippies. Or, maybe it was just the acid.