The CJM Blog

Bob Dylan’s classic album Highway 61 Revisited has been the soundtrack to the Jewish High Holidays at The Contemporary Jewish Museum this year. This past Sunday, smack in the middle between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur (a holiday of reflection and atonement), UnderCover Presents offered extraordinary live cover versions of each song on Bob Dylan’s epic album Highway 61 Revisited , for the closing program for the exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg . Ginsberg and Dylan had a father-son style relationship, and were creative allies and confidants. Many see them both as secular Jewish prophets, with Ginsberg’s iconic poem “Howl” and Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” from Highway 61 Revisited evoking the strident and lyrical moral criticism of the prophets. The social critiques inherent in these works of art evoke the spiritual and sensual disorientation of the Jewish High Holidays, when the life and death of both individuals and th...

William S. Burroughs was, according to director John Waters, “the first person who became famous for things you were supposed to hide.” Burroughs' heroin addiction is almost synonymous with his name. He wrote about drugs and the underside of society. He showed no remorse nor attempted any justification for his actions. Burroughs has been referred to as "Gentleman Outlaw," "Pope of Dope," and a "junkie." He brought the technique of cut up writing to a wider audience and inspired David Bowie, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead to experiment with it in their music. Lou Reed cites Burroughs as “the person who broke the door down. When I read Burroughs, it changed my vision of what you could write about, how you could write.” Burroughs allowed people to write about their indiscretions; his postmodern approach to literature introduced a new way to read and write. His writing created a new audience for publishers that had never existed befo...

Founder of The Beat Museum, Jerry Cimino in front its North Beach home. In 1968, Jerry Cimino was in the eighth grade when the world exploded. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Russian tanks were moving into Czechoslovakia. The Vietnam War was escalating and there were race riots in the streets of America. Cimino grew up thinking that he was going to Vietnam. His high school English teacher read Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem, “Sometime During Eternity” to the class. Having attended a Catholic school, Cimino had never heard or read anything like it before. Using a hip-bopster language, the poem reinterprets Christ's crucifixion in a shocking way. He was fourteen years old and completely unaware that this Beat poem would influence his life’s direction and work.

Every city has its history, which is easy to ignore when you live there. Cultural pilgrimages often end when the urban honeymoon is over, and you complete the transformation from starry-eyed visitor to jaded inhabitant. But there are stories everywhere, and few stories are as good as those from the Beat Generation, which came of age and influence in 1950s San Francisco.

Burberry as Jack Kerouac Created in conjunction with the San Francisco SPCA  All photography by Rod Kilpatrick A lot of the cats at the San Francisco SPCA have had beat lives. Living in backyards, alleys, and abandoned buildings, they have been deserted by their families. Some of the female felines are impregnated and left to care for their litter. And yet these creatures still persevere. They lead dignified lives full of spirit and love. They are open and ready for new relationships at a moment’s notice, much like the Beats. For example, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg all fall in love with multiple people in the beloved Beat bible,  On the Road. These cats, more importantly, are survivors. They have lived outside of society, looking in, observing, and wanting to be part of it.

by Melanie Samay, Contemporary Jewish Museum "once again I wanted to get to San Francisco, everybody wants to get to San Francisco and what for? In God's name and under the stars what for? For joy, for kicks, for something burning in the night." –Jack Kerouac,  On The Road: The Original Scroll Recently, I went on a walking tour of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood with some Museum colleagues to visit historical sites related to the Beat Generation. It was a fun way to prepare for the Museum’s exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg is currently on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) through September 8.

by Rusty Aceves , SFJAZZ Music is reflected in the literature of every era in American history, and the soundtrack, indeed the heartbeat, of the Beat Generation was modern jazz. Specifically, it was the propulsive, adventurous, and boundary defying sound of bebop which had evolved during the early and mid-1940s out of the swing era of the previous decade. With its concentration on small-group dynamics and solo virtuosity, bebop could be seen as a necessary reaction to big band swing’s stifling rigidity of form and structure. Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and other bebop giants provided the rhythm for the work and model for the Beats lifestyle who adopted the “hep cat” lingo of the musicians and in many cases, unfortunately, their taste for heroin and other drugs.