[Dancecult-l] The vibe

[Graham St John]

I've made this inquiry on a couple of other lists - where I had 
assistance from Gonnie amongst others - and maybe ill make some 
further progress here.

When and where did the vibe start?

Ok, let me put that another way. I'm interested in the cultural 
backstory of 'the vibe' a phrase which has been a common designation 
for an 'energy', 'ambience' or 'atmosphere' within EDMC since 
proto-disco. We know that the OED (3rd ed) recognises the first 
literary use of 'vibe' in 1967, a reflection of its circulation in 
the 'summer of love' of mid-1960s SF. But its appearance there 
appears to have been the result of at least two intersecting 
histories.

One is its legacy in an African American tradition. After all, as Kai 
Fikentscher suggests, as a word for energy and synchonicity in EDM 
contexts the 'vibe' is: "meaningful especially for culture bearers of 
the African American tradition and those who have learned its idiom" 
(2000:82). But how far back can we go with this. There is the 
suggestion that its usage goes back to at least the jazz era of the 
1920s where the term may have been used in an oral tradition (ie 
'jive talk'), which was also appealling to beats, hipsters (perhaps 
"white negroes"?) and their offspring engaging in its transmission.

The second relates to the legacy of the term 'vibration', of which 
'vibe' is a contraction,  which has been in currency since at least 
the mid 19th century, according to the OED, designating an "intuitive 
signal" which may be picked up from other people and the atmosphere. 
Its popularity probably has derivations in an Eastern mysticism 
inflected spiritualist tradition evolving within that century. There 
seems to be a great deal of pseudo-scientific discourse on 
'wave-vibrations' circulating around that time, and it seems likely 
that later on Leary et al were picking up on this, particularly as 
conveyed in the digressions on 'wave-vibrations' in The Psychedelic 
Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964). Of 
course Leary also made a huge splash in 1967 imploring the thousands 
gathered in Golden Gate Park at the Gathering of the Tribes for a 
Human Be In, to "tune in ....[to the vibes]." And Leary's huge 
influence on David Mancuso of New York's The Loft fame has been 
documented by Tim Lawrence.

But I'm wondering if anyone might shed more light or leads on the 
history of the vibe, in either its African American, spiritualist, 
countercultural or disco derivations.

Get on the vibe!

Graham
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/dancecult-l_listcultures.org/attachments/20070107/4915da47/attachment.html