The 1930s were great years for jazz, and jazz musicians were making a name for themselves. Jazz lovers had a name for themselves too, and it’s a word we’ve all used to mean something different.
Red hot jazz artists took the country by storm in the 1930s and 1940s. Black people who understood the “jive” jazz scene came to be known as “hip,” “hep cats,” or “hipsters.”
In 1957, a famous white journalist published a controversial essay called “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,” which, among other things, described a hipster as any white person who tries to identify with Black culture because they don’t want to conform to their own. That’s a far cry from where the word started, but it still caught on.
Hipster was our unique way of speaking and relating to each other. It connected those who loved jazz. But as obsessed as the mainstream is with Black culture, the journalist didn’t know “hipster” already had a meaning.
There’s no question that “hipster” is rooted in Black culture, and the word’s meaning changed over time. Nevertheless, our ability to keep creating and building connections with each other won’t - no matter how we say it.