Did Jack Kerouac coin the term "world beat"?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

"The mambo is the beat from the Congo," [Kerouac] wrote, before adding, "It's really the world beat."--"The Latin Beat Goes On" by Karin Brookes, Tempo Oct/Nov/Dec 2003. (Publication of Temple University Public Radio)

It's very curious to see this phrase pop up in On the Road (quoted above--I have never actually read the book). He's not using it as a genre designation, but still, the phrase is there, and the concept is sort of there.

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Monday, 6 October 2003 01:13 (twenty-one years ago)

wow, you've never read On the Road?!! I thought that was, like, de riguer for all hipsters! Haha, just kidding. Anyway, Kerouac is a big time hero of mine but I seriously doubt he had anything to do with the adoption of that lamentable term.. Seems like an accident to me..

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Monday, 6 October 2003 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I agree with Mr Diamond - just an accident. 'World Beat' is a term that was introduced in record stores and magazines years after JK's death, in all likelihood completely removed from any kind of reference.

― calstars (calstars), Monday, 6 October 2003 01:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Mr. Diamond, Based on what I have read of his work, I don't think that highly of him as a writer; and I dislike at least as much as I like of the bohemian values he embraced.

You're probably both right about the term developing independently of Kerouac.

― Al Andalous, Monday, 6 October 2003 01:42 (twenty-one years ago)

KEROUAC = GREAT WPORÇD BEAT = MUSIC MY DAD LIKES I LUV MY DAD SO GREBT!!!!!

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 6 October 2003 02:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm sure you could find lots and lots of examples of two words used together that later came to mean something else.
"Heavy Metal" even. Wm. S. Burroughs used it, but not talking about Sabbath or Zepplin.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 6 October 2003 13:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought it might have accidentally in actuality been something that Cassidy had said on the spur of the moment anyway.

― george gosset (gegoss), Monday, 6 October 2003 14:06 (twenty-one years ago)

"I'm sure you could find lots and lots of examples of two words used together that later came to mean something else.
"Heavy Metal" even. Wm. S. Burroughs used it, but not talking about Sabbath or Zepplin."

Ditto with 'punk' and Ginsberg.

But then Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs (?), who I think first used these terms in relation to music in the same article of Creem, were obviously big Burroughs/Ginsberg fans, so I presume they 'borrowed' the phrases from the 'original' sources.

I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happened with 'world beat'.

On a tangent: seek out the jazz compilation CD which features Kerouac reading some of his own writings about bebop - 'Jazz of the Beat Generation'.

― Jim Robinson (Original Miscreant), Monday, 6 October 2003 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

seek out Kerouac Reads On the Road CD where he's drunk and making up words to jazz standards and dedicates one song to "Sue Evans--who has a beautiful box"

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 6 October 2003 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

didn't JK also come up with the phrase "pretty girls make graves"? or did he filch it from some old Buddhist text?

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 6 October 2003 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

"Heavy Metal" even. Wm. S. Burroughs used it, but not talking about Sabbath or Zepplin.

Erm, mind me for being pedantic, but that term has had a different meaning in chemistry since at least the 1930s (that's where the musical term was probably taken from).

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 7 October 2003 13:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Tuomas: I'll believe that Burroughs knew of the chemistry use of HM, but he gets credit not so much for INVENTING the term as for BRINGING it in to the popular (or sub-popular as his millions of readers worldwide may pretend themselves to be) discussion. Then Bangs (though wouldn't surprise if someone else did it first) applied it directly to music. Though Steppenwolf used it before Bangs in "Born to be Wild": "I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder!"
Which while it may not have been expressly meant as such definitely points the way for HM to be used to describe at the very least the lifestyle.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 7 October 2003 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm quite happy with Rundgren's "Heavy Metal Kids", from as late as Todd, and it turns up in lots of early songs i can't lay my hands on right now

but i think of Kerouac's beloved jazz as euphemism for booze (with bangs and marsh ?), but who can be bothered remembering On the Road anyway ? however for somewhere, it might have been the only lierature available .. america ? the subverts ? Burroughs ? A European guy Calder was the first to put him out .. a coincidence i think

― george gosset (gegoss), Tuesday, 7 October 2003 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

So you're saying rock writers got the term "heavy metal" via Burroughs and not straight from chemistry? I don't how it was in the seventies, but I've been familiar with the chemistry term ever since I was a child. Wouldn't be more plausible that whoever brought the term to music heard it at a chemistry class in school, or read it in a newspaper, and not in Burroughs' book?

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 06:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm pretty sure they did get it from Burroughs

― Dadaismus (Dada), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 10:55 (twenty-one years ago)

all them gonzo writers were always riffing on burroughs. so they might have heard the term in chemistry class but its more than likely they were referencing wb when they used it. i reckon so anyway...

― Jim Robinson (Original Miscreant), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Burroughs stole some pretty funny stuff from L. Ron Hubbard. ("You tryin' to push me down the tone-scale baby?")

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 23:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Of course, in some case he made it funny, like using pseudo-scientific jargon like "tone scale" as though it were part of everyday slang.

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

'punk' predates the beats

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 23:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Burroughs stole some pretty funny stuff from L. Ron Hubbard. ("You tryin' to push me down the tone-scale baby?")

Well he flirted with Scientology - in fact he might even have been a Scientologist for a while

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 9 October 2003 09:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Dadaismus, he was briefly, but then he broke with them and wrote some very funny, rather scathing criticism of Scientology (though he still felt that they were on to something, in some respects).

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.citylights.com/beat/WB/CLWBali.gif

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Amazing the numbers of perfectly intelligent people who have dabbled in Scientology ain't it?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I guess. Maybe it's problems were less obvious in the 60's (or whenever he was involved). I think there are similarities between Hubbard and Burroughs, too, that might have attracted Burroughs: the pulp science fiction world they both come from (at least partly), and the kind of home-grown scientific/technological approach to solving human problems (see also Reich's orgone accumulator), etc. (cop-out because I have to get ready to go to work).

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:23 (twenty-one years ago)

... but all true Al, all true

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:25 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

i doubt anyone cares, but apparently austin dj and musician Dan Del Santo is often credited as making the term popular.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/AMDB/Profile?oid=oid:420157

i just picked up an album of his from i think 83 called World Beat that's a weird mix of early rap/disco, reggae, african beats, funk and rock. his singing voice is kind of weird. wifee thought i was listening to dracula rapping.

― jaxon, Monday, 13 October 2008 19:06 (sixteen years ago)

i am a fan of dude

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 13 October 2008 19:10 (sixteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.