"Hipster" as pejorative.

(i got this from the net, not a speaker of Wolof)

Almost anyone who wasn't mainstream and 'square' was a hipster.

E.g. almost no-one was a "hipster" -- Mark is spot-on here, that such terms can only be developed by the subculture they describe (as a way of identifying and distinguishing themselves) but as of the 40s and 50s in America the standard arc was for that description to be revealed to the mainstream public ("here we have the freaks who describe themselves as X") and then become bulk-usage pejorative. (If the dynamics were anything like they are with such words now, one assumes the subculture quits using it as soon as it's revealed to the larger public -- it loses its purpose as a shibboleth and in lots of senses cops to what they'd probably consider the public's "misunderstanding" of them.)

E.g. in bulk usage from 1963-1976 what would you guess the ratio would be between "hippies" as positive or neutral description and "hippies" with an implied "damn dirty" beforehand?

I was called before a high school English department tribunal for using this word in a newspaper article my freshman year. They wanted to know where I had stolen it from.

Martin, I think you're on the right track, since I do recall reading about jazz musicians favorably talking about "hipsters," at least c. 1950. Although by then the word had a slightly patronizing cast, it seems, meaning someone who came from the outside but eagerly, admirably wanted in. (I.e. the white fans who would trek to Harlem clubs in those days.)

I think the word's lost most if not all of its racial implications right? Can we safely say that?

What do people who are overly populist about having fun do for fun?

I don't know if you're hip or not, Edd, but you're definitely OTM.

-- Stuart (gonzomoos...), February 10th, 2003

See, Stuart, I'm so unhip I don't even know what "OTM" means. On the money? Off the money? Off the mark? On the mountain (Hank Williams Jr. reference)? I always thought the word itself came from Wolof (sp?); that's what Robert Palmer (the late music writer, not the British singer who wears suits all the time) says in "Deep Blues."

I always was under the impression that "hipster" was not a compliment, it referred to a white-person jazz wannabe--who was that guy, Dean Benedetti, who wire-recorded all the Charlie Parker solos he could get but left out the others? Am I wrong here? Didn't the term come into general use in the bebop era?

(when i was in the shower today i flashed on that sun ra quote "blah blah these are the hopes and dreams of someone, don't be so hip" to his sneering band. i can't date it, tho.)

And it's the third one at that.

So--who out there can get to the bottom of the etymology of "hip"? The "hip-hip-hooray" hypothesis doesn't strike me as very convincing. Surely someone out there knows the answer. Actually, looking back up the thread, the explanation of its origin in the name of the Chicago saloonkeeper strikes me as plausible.

I haven't read the piece yet, but he quotes Foreigner's 'I Want To Know What Love Is' as one of the ten worst songs of all time, so I'm suspicious.

i think the wolof "hipicat" deal is a gazillion times more plausible than the chicago barman one!!

ps the word "dude" was reintroduced to america by p.g.wodehouse

I don't think Paul Oliver is that bad, he always carefully qualifies the connections he draws b/t Africa and the blues even if it is a more central part of his writing than of Charters's, Lomax's, etc. Anyways, I should add that Palmer had the benefit of a few decades' more ethnomusicological analysis than Charters (who *ahem* chartered blues studies to some extent).

I had this problem with "ululating"

I myself believe (off-topic here) that 99% of all blues writing is worthless--I've read just about every book on the topic.

clearly, the boy is a hipster.

He's so dangerous!

I'm sorry I hijacked your thread! I didn't mean any harm to you or them or anyone, it was just a really bad combination of my eye happening to fall on something I thought was cool and me failing to realize that presenting it in a certain way could be construed in a way other than I intended.

again, I'm sorry, but also: look at those first two kids, is there any way I (or anyone) could have possibly have even suggested that they were anything other than very, very cool?

TRENDY, by the way, is a bit of an insult in my books. But I prefer leading to following in terms of my aesthetic choices. I also do not abandon my aesthetic choices according to the whims of fashion (which is not the same as getting sick of a record or a skirt; my aesthetic will merely inform my next choice).

i suppose cool is like eccentric or diva. it cannot be self-bestowed.

(See Nabisco!)