Instead of the traditional stressing of the first and third beat of a measure, as in traditional Western music, bop music stresses the second and fourth. The playing pattern usually initiates with the theme, then follows with a reed solo, trumpet solo, piano solo, bass or drum solo every second, third, or fourth number. Within a song would sometimes hold "trading fours," alternating four-bar improvisations between instruments. "Music expressed the feirce divisions in American culture. modern jazz musicians over the nature of music, new forms of personal freedom, racial assertiveness, and generational alienation. (Erenberg 252). Additionally, when familiar tunes were included, it was to satirize such antiseptic creations of the white world, and were more often then not turned upon their heads and wrecked for bop motives. Bop musicians rejected the idea of playing solely for an audience; they graduated from the roles of entertainers to the positions of musicians. Therefore, "having lost their mass audience, jazzmen were freer to develop some of their best music in the mid to late 50's." (Erenberg 253). Their music was not as melodic and hyperactive as swing. Subsequently, bop never became an obsession of popular culture, and remained introspective, for a largely introspective Beat culture. The Beat Generation was a movement that rebelled against the social and literary conformity and conservatism of white, middle class, suburban, post-war America. The term "Beat" holds many origins. One is canonized, as tired and weary. Another derivation, pinpointed by Kerouac, comes from the word "beatitude," holy, state of ultimate bliss. A relevant definition to jazz involves the division of music into equal portions, such as "four beats to a measure." The Beats sought the grit and grim of urban life, the poverty and pathos of black existence. Thus, they happened upon, in the sweeped-into-the-cobwebbed corners of American life, the liquor-nursed, Benzedrine-hopped cats of smoky jazz joints.
