They were fascinated also by urban black culture, and they appropriated phrases from it: dig and cool and man and split. They saw themselves as white bopsters. They believed that blacks were somehow freer, less burdened by the restraints of straight America, and they sought to emulate this aspect of the black condition. An interest in African-American music of the time—the new sounds of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and others now seen as legends among jazz musicians—was almost a passport into Beat society.
