San Francisco Renaissance

The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centred around that city and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others (e.g., Ralph J. Gleason, Alan Watts) felt this renaissance was a broader phenomenon and should be seen as also encompassing visual and performing arts, philosophy, cross-cultural interests (particularly those that involved Asian cultures), and new social sensibilities.

Legacy

The Bay Area-based philosopher and writer Alan Watts, in his autobiography, mentioned that by around 1960 or so "? something else was on the way, in religion, in music, in ethics and sexuality, in our attitudes to nature, and in our whole style of life" (from Watts, In My Own Way).

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It was the case that some of the songwriters of the upcoming rock-music generation of the mid-1960s and later read and appreciated writers like Kerouac, Snyder, McClure, and Ginsberg (e.g., Bob Dylan, for one, has talked about this). Hence, given that much of the late-'60s wave of groundbreaking rock music developed within rock's famous "San Francisco Sound," it seems very likely that the writers of the San Francisco Renaissance had an influence on the lyrics, both artistically and in terms of attitudes to living. Both Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure were featured on-stage in the rock-star jammed The Last Waltz, a documentary and concert film made by Martin Scorcese about The Band (who had an immense following in the late '60s to mid '70s) and a large number of their musical friends.

Related Topics:
Bob Dylan - Rock music - San Francisco Sound - Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Michael McClure - The Last Waltz - Martin Scorcese - The Band

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