Overview
- Provides the first history of the bebop jazz youth subculture in Britain
- Tells a compelling story by bringing together a wide range of unexplored sources for the first time
- Explores subcultural studies, race and ethnic studies, media studies, jazz studies, and fashion studies
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music (PSHSPM)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This is the first book to tell the story of the bebop subculture in London’s Soho, a subculture that emerged in 1945 and reached its pinnacle in 1950. In an exploration via the intersections of race, class and gender, it shows how bebop identities were constructed and articulated. Combining a wide range of archival research and theory, the book evocatively demonstrates how the scene evolved in Soho’s clubs, the fashion that formed around the music, drug usage amongst a contingent of the group, and the moral panic which led to the police raids on the clubs between 1947 and 1950. Thereafter it maps the changes in popular culture in Soho during the 1950s, and argues that the bebop story is an important precedent to the institutional harassment of black-related spaces and culture that continued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book therefore rewrites the first chapter of the ‘classic’ subcultural canon, and resets the subcultural clock; requiring us to rethink the periodization and social make-up of British post-war youth subcultures.
Reviews
‘This book draws upon a superb range of primary sources, from oral history interviews and press accounts to examples of zoot suits. Ray Kinsella offers rich, vivid insights into the emergence of a subculture in postwar Soho that was firmly rooted in the Black Atlantic, and which also has much to contribute to understandings of migration, movement and cultural hybridity.’
- Kate Bradley, University of Kent, UKAuthors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Bebop Scene in London's Soho, 1945-1950
Book Subtitle: Post-war Britain’s First Youth Subculture
Authors: Ray Kinsella
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05555-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05554-6Published: 24 November 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05557-7Published: 24 November 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-05555-3Published: 23 November 2022
Series ISSN: 2730-9517
Series E-ISSN: 2730-9525
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 275
Number of Illustrations: 24 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Modern History, Cultural History, Social History, Music