Literature
Mersey Beat
Mersey Beat refers to a musical genre and cultural movement that emerged in the 1960s in Liverpool, England. It is characterized by its upbeat rhythm and was closely associated with the success of bands like The Beatles and The Searchers. The term also encompasses the music scene and the vibrant cultural atmosphere of Liverpool during that time.
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3 Key excerpts on "Mersey Beat"
eBook - ePubPostcolonial Manchester
Diaspora space and the devolution of literary culture
- Lynne Pearce, Corinne Fowler, Robert Crawshaw(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Manchester University Press(Publisher)
It seems important, therefore, not to underplay the regional status of Manchester’s poetry in performance nor, given the Mersey poets’ centrality to the British Poetry Revival, to ignore its emblematic, countercultural Britishness. In the following discussion I detail the technical and philosophical legacies of Liverpool’s ‘Mersey Beat’ to Manchester’s parallel history of poetry in performance.The Mersey Beat poets, and their followers, were inspired by famous performances such as Allen Ginsberg’s first ever rendition of his poem ‘Howl’ in Gallery Six in 1955 (Raskin, 2011 : 24). As Stephen Wade relates in his discussion of British poetry in performance:[A]lthough the Beats and Rexroth, Ginsberg and even Dylan played a part, surely our own British brand [of poetry in performance] owes most to the Mersey poets. It was the poems in that slim red and black Penguin paperback of The Mersey Sound that reflected direct displays of autobiographical pastiche and confession that the three poets [Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten] dealt in. What they did was show how eclectic influences from a more bohemian culture, a European type of student dolce far niente could be turned to a gentle love poetry and a sharp social satire all in one set of poems. Most of all, they had fun – in language, in their personae and in their media constructions [they] … established a discourse that was situated well clear of the Americans and yet also distant from … middle-class academic readings … [Their] impetus was always … [the] Liverpool / cosmopolitan delivery … creat[ing] moods … [and] emotional landscapes with voices at the centre. (Munden and Wade, 1999 : 10)The poetic expression of this devolved cosmopolitanism is further elaborated upon by Roger McGough, who describes writing about Liverpool as ‘a breakthrough – to make your homeland into a real place … We read in smoky pubs [and] the evening would include music’ (Munden and Wade, 1999 : 37).What I wish to propose is that many of the characteristics of the Mersey Beat poets are clearly discernible in poetry by black Mancunians. This is not to argue that the city’s black poets exclusively derive their commitment to poetic renderings of everyday speech by figures such as the Mersey Beat poets. Rather, I am suggesting that the poetics of influential poets such as the Leicester-based Jean Binta Breeze or the Lewes-based Grace Nicols, who argue that poetry exists ‘in any person speaking’,54
eBook - ePubMaritime Poetics
From Coast to Hinterland
- Gabriel N. Gee, Caroline Wiedmer, Gabriel N. Gee, Caroline Wiedmer(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- transcript Verlag(Publisher)
1 It is significant, then, that two art forms which helped define Liverpool culturally in this decade and brought national, indeed international, attention, were framed by its fast flowing river.The Mersey, 4.8 km across at its widest point and with the second highest tidal range in Britain, is a formidable and unyielding presence. Its potential was first harnessed for hugely profitable mercantile ends at the start of the eighteenth century, when revolutionary dock engineering and architecture created the port infrastructure that would propel Liverpool to global significance through multiple maritime trade routes. Unsurprising then, that the Mersey literally flows through the culture that developed in tandem with the city’s mercantile growth. For music writer, Paul Du Noyer, the city’s pop musicians do just what the river does: ‘they reflect the heavens while they churn the dirt below’, a reference to the silt and sand kicked up by the river’s fast current that renders it murky brown.2 From The Beatles, through successful chart acts of the 1980s like Echo & The Bunnymen, to more recent groups such as The Coral, there is a strand of transcendent Liverpool music that reflects a duality, ‘a contrast between the grit of its people, with their workaday concerns, and the romantic escapism inherent in their songs.’3
- Sara Cohen(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
I was brought up in St Joseph’s school in Kirkby, which was regarded as like a really nice catholic school … If I was to say anything important it was usually religious you know, because they had all the fabulous words … There was a guilt thing in there as well because when you’re brought up that way, you know, you’re wrong to kick off with. That’s how I interpreted it. And I suppose … whenever I was in a position where I was doing fine, there would always be this side of me saying ‘why are you feeling like this?’ Because a lot of the time I wasn’t feeling that great in the group but we were having, you know, this success, so I suppose the words would come to mind then and I would use them (cited in Cohen, 1994: 128). Music, Lament and the Soul of the City My discussion of the musical sounds and structures of ‘Christian’ has been brief and rudimentary, but it suggests that they allow for associations with images of river, sadness or grief, yearning and introspection. They cannot explain such associations, however, because music means different things to different people and musical representation is necessarily abstract. They also cannot explain why such images would be connected to Liverpool, and cities are likewise open to interpretation. Mike Brocken, for example, a Liverpool-based music lecturer and folk musician, has pointed to literature and media reports on the Beatles that commonly associate the band and their music with images of working-class Liverpool and its tough docklands (p.c.). 38 He has contrasted them with his own image of John Lennon walking across the golf course on his way home from school, and gazing at Strawberry Fields from the bedroom window of his comfortable, semi-detached house in the leafy suburbia of South Liverpool. Similarly, for some, the music of the Beatles and the Liverpool Sound of the 1960s may be perceived as an authentic expression of 1960s Liverpool, whilst for others it is a tourist cliché
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