[Dancecult-l] Dancecult-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 1: The vibe

[eliot bates]

dancecult-l-request at listcultures.org wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 22:53:47 -0700
>From: Graham St John <g.stjohn at warpmail.net>
>Subject: [Dancecult-l] The vibe
>To: Dancecult-l at listcultures.org
>Message-ID: <p06240806c1c78ce8fc4d@[192.168.133.14]>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>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.
>  
>
Early spiritualist literature (1800s-1950s or so) wasn't consistent in 
terms, though: vibration, magneticism, harmonics, resonance, and various 
poorly-translated Hindi language-derived terms were thrown about with 
fervor though never really defined nor distinguished from each other... 
if vibe was one of those and was picked up later, it was more accidental 
than anything, perhaps.

I'd first focus more energy on jazz and African American colloquial 
history...

Also, have you checked out
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vibe

Some interesting alternate uses and derivative terms. My favorite is 
"vibe ops":
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vibe+op%27s

-eliot

-- 
Eliot Bates
Ph.D. candidate, ethnomusicology (UC Berkeley)
Turkish music, recording studios, electronic music cultures
http://www.eliotbates.com