Jazz Age

For the 2012 album by Bryan Ferry, see The Jazz Age (The Bryan Ferry Orchestra album). For the 1998 album by Jack, see The Jazz Age (Jack album). For the 1929 film, see The Jazz Age (film).

The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s, ending with the Great Depression, in which jazz music and dance became popular, mainly in the United States, but also in Britain, France and elsewhere. Jazz originated mainly in New Orleans as a fusion of African and European music and played a significant part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on pop culture continued long afterwards. The Jazz Age is often referred to in conjunction with the Roaring Twenties.

African Americans

The birth of jazz music is generally credited to African Americans, but expanded and over time was modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white Americans. Those people who opposed Jazz saw it as music of people with no training or skill. White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz music in America. Even though the jazz movement was taken over by the middle class white population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and ideals with the white middle class society. Cities like New York and Chicago were cultural centers for jazz, and especially for African American artists. People who were not familiar with Jazz music could not recognize it by the way Africans Americans wrote it. Furthermore, the way African Americans writers wrote about Jazz music, made it seem as though it was not a cultural achievement of the race. Some famous black artists of the time were Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. Several musicians grew up in musical families, where a family member would often teach how to read and play music. Some musicians, like Pops Foster, learned on homemade instruments. Urban radio stations played African American jazz more frequently than suburban stations, due to the concentration of African Americans in urban areas such as New York and Chicago. Younger demographics popularized the black-originated dances such as the Charleston as part of the immense cultural shift the popularity of jazz music generated. The migration of African Americans from the American south introduced the culture born out of a repressive, unfair society to the American north where navigating through a society with little ability to change played a vital role in the birth of jazz.

Radio

The spread of jazz was encouraged by the introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts in 1932. The radio was described as the "sound factory." Radio made it possible for Americans to experience different styles of music without physically visiting a jazz club. The radio provided Americans with a trendy new avenue for exploring the world through broadcasts and concerts from the comfort of their living room. These were broadcast from cities such as New York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. There were two categories of live music on the radio: concert music and big band dance music. The concert music was known as "potter palm" and was concert music by amateurs, usually volunteers. This type of radio was a way of making broadcasting cheaper. This type of radio's popularity started to decrease as commercial radio increased. The next type of music is known as big band dance music. This type is played by professionals and was featured from nightclubs, dance halls, and ballrooms. Musicologist Charles Hamm described three types of jazz music at the time: black music for black audiences, black music for white audiences, and white music for white audiences. Jazz artists like Louis Armstrong originally received very little airtime because most stations preferred to play the music of white American jazz singers. Other jazz vocalists include Bessie Smith and Florence Mills. In urban areas, such as Chicago and New York, African American jazz was played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. Big-band jazz, like that of James Reese Europe and Fletcher Henderson in New York, attracted large radio audiences.

Youth

1920s youth used the influence of jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the 1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers), women smoking cigarettes, free talk about sex, and new radio concerts. Dances like the Charleston, developed by African Americans, suddenly became popular among the youth. Traditionalists were aghast at what they considered the breakdown of morality. Some urban middle class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's music", and believed the improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting promiscuity.

Women

With women’s suffrage at its peak with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, and the entrance of the flapper, women began to make a statement within society and the Jazz Age was not immune to these new ideals. With women now taking part in the work force after the end of the First World War there were many more possibilities for women in terms of social life and entertainment. Ideas like equality and free sexuality were very popular during the time and women seemed to capitalize during this period. The 1920s saw the emergence of many famous women musicians including Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith also gained attention because she was not only a great singer but also an African American woman. She has grown through the ages to be one of the most well respected singers of all time. Singers such as Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin were inspired by Bessie Smith. Another exception to the common stereotype of women at this time was piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong, Louis Armstrong's wife. She was originally a member of King Oliver's band with Louis, and went on to play piano in her husband's band the Hot Five and then his next group called the Hot Seven It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that many women jazz singers, such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were recognized as successful artists in the music world. These women were persistent in striving to make their names known in the music industry and lead the way for many more women artists to come.

Origins of Jazz

Jazz music originated in New Orleans in the "sub-style" of Dixieland Jazz. The music that began in New Orleans was largely created from African folk music with some European roots in it. New Orleans provided great opportunity for such an occurrence because it was a port city, many cultures intertwined there. While in New Orleans, jazz gained influence from creole, ragtime, and most importantly blues music.

Perhaps the two most important aspects of jazz are swing and improvisation. The famous jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong's most influential impact upon jazz was bringing an improvisational soloist to the forefront of a piece.

Around the 1950s, jazz began to spread upriver to Chicago and New York City. It was there that the more modern "cool" jazz developed.

Classical music

As jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought to expand the listenership of their favored genre, hoping that jazz wouldn't become mainstream. Controversially, jazz became an influence on composers as diverse as George Gershwin and Herbert Howells.

See also

• Roaring Twenties

Further reading

• Allen, Frederick Lewis (1931). Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties. online edition
• Best, Gary Dean. The Dollar Decade: Mammon and the Machine in 1920s America. Praeger Publishers, 2003.
• Berger, Morroe. “Jazz: Resistance to the Diffusion of a Culture-Pattern.” The Journal

of Negro History 32 (October 1947): 461-494

• Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Hill and Wang, 1995.
• Fass; Paula. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. Oxford University Press, 1977.
• David E. Kyvig; Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1939: Decades Promise and Pain. Greenwood Press, (2002). online edition
• Leuchtenburg, William. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 University of Chicago Press, 1955.
• Lynd, Robert S., and Helen Merrell Lynd. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. Harcourt, Brace and World, 1929. Famous sociological study of Muncie, Indiana, in the 1920s.
• Mowry; George E. ed. The Twenties: Fords, Flappers, & Fanatics Prentice-Hall, 1963; readings
• Parrish, Michael E. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920–1941 W. W. Norton, 1992

• Chevan, David. "Musical Literacy and Jazz Musicians in the 1910s and 1920s." Current Musicology
• Dinerstein, Joel. "Music, Memory, and Cultural Identity in the Jazz Age." American Quarterly
• Peretti, Burton W. "The Great Travelers." The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America.

• Savran, David. "The Search for America's Soul: Theatre in the Jazz Age." Theatre Journal

External links

• The Jazz Age In America
• Roaring Twenties from U S History.com
• http://www.jazzageclub.com/
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