Psychedelic Music, Its Origins, and Its Effects on Music Today

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Psychedelic Music, Its Origins and Its Effects on Music Today

Psychedelia in music has been around for a long time and has changed much of the popular music of today. The dictionary definition of psychedelic is, “of or noting a mental state characterized by a profound sense of intensified sensory perception, sometimes accompanied by severe perceptual distortion and hallucinations and by extreme feelings of either euphoria or despair.” It started in the 1960’s with the discovery of LSD and use of other psychedelic drugs. Psychedelia did not only affect music, it affected people, cities, and the way people think.

LSD, which was the catalyst for psychedelic music, was discovered on April 16, 1943, by Albert Hofmann. For months he had been studying ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, and synthesizing lysergic acid for possible use to help migraines. On his twenty-fifth try, he made LSD-25, and after his work he began to feel dizzy. He assumed he had the flu, so he went home. “I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense kaleidoscopic play of colors,” Hofmann wrote in his biography LSD, My Problem Child. “After some two hours, this condition faded away.” He then knew that it was not the flu that made him dizzy, so he tried LSD again and got the same results. After this, he and his staff began to use LSD on themselves and soon

LSD was used in psychotherapy. Now that LSD was created, psychedelic music would soon follow (DeRogatis 2-4).

The birth date of psychedelic rock music, as far as it can be known, was in 1966. Many bands started making songs with psychedelic references. In May of 1966, the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, which was inspired by their experimentation...

... middle of paper ...

... constantly-changing names, but ravers do not care. Ravers do not focus on the performing artist like at rock concerts, they just listen to the beat of the music, and dance (DeRogatis 431-439).

Psychedelic music has expanded people’s minds since the 1960’s. It has given people a way to express themselves, and it has helped people to relate to each other. Psychedelic music revolutionized the way music is recorded, played, and listened to. Without psychedelic music, modern music would not be the same.

Works Cited

“Jimi Hendrix Biography.” Biography. 2006. 6 May 2007 < http://www.biography.com/

search/article.do?id=9334756>.

DeRogatis, Jim. Turn On Your Mind. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1996.

Scaruffi, Piero. “The History of Rock Music: 1966-1969.” History of Rock Music. 2002. 6 May 2007 < http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt21.html>

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