1. Background
    Jazz music  Prohibition 

2. History
    Swing in the 1920s and 1930s 

3. Radio

4. Elements and influences
     Youth    Role of women    African American influence   Beginnings of European Jazz 

5. Criticism of the movement
     Classical music  

6. See also

7. Notes

8. Further reading

9. External links

The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the United States. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans as a fusion of African and European music, jazz 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, and in the United States it overlapped in significant cross-cultural ways with the Prohibition Era. The movement was largely affected by the introduction of radios nationwide. During this time, the Jazz Age was intertwined with the developing cultures of young people, women, and African Americans. The movement also helped start the beginning of the European Jazz movement. American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is widely credited with coining the term, first using it in the title of his 1922 short story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age.^[1]

Background

Jazz music

Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music".^[6] In the beginning of the 20th century, dixieland jazz developed as an early form of jazz.^[7]. In the 1920s, jazz became recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation.^[8] From Africa, jazz got its rhythm, "blues", and traditions of playing or singing in one's own expressive way. From Europe, jazz got its harmony and instruments. Both used improvisation, which became a large part of jazz.^[9]

Louis Armstrong brought the improvisational solo to the forefront of a piece.^[10] Jazz is generally characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.

Prohibition

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.

In the 1920s the laws were widely disregarded, and tax revenues were lost. Very well organized criminal gangs took control of the beer and liquor supply for many cities, unleashing a crime wave that shocked the nation. This prohibition was taken advantage of by gangsters, led by Al Capone earning 60 million from illegally selling alcohol ^[11]. The resulting illicit speakeasies that grew from this era became lively venues of the "Jazz Age", hosting popular music including current dance songs, novelty songs and show tunes.

By the late 1920s a new opposition mobilized nationwide. Anti-prohibitionists, or "wets," attacked prohibition as causing crime, lowering local revenues, and imposing rural Protestant religious values on urban America.^[12] Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. Some states continued statewide prohibition, marking one of the last stages of the Progressive Era.

History

From 1919, Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings.^[13][14] That year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers.^[15] Chicago, meanwhile, was the main center developing the new "Hot Jazz", where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.

That same year, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band^[16] as featured soloist, leaving in 1925. The original New Orleans style was polyphonic, with theme variation and simultaneous collective improvisation. Armstrong was a master of his hometown style, but by the time he joined Henderson's band, he was already a trailblazer in a new phase of jazz, with its emphasis on arrangements and soloists. Armstrong's solos went well beyond the theme-improvisation concept, and extemporized on chords, rather than melodies. According to Schuller, by comparison, the solos by Armstrong's bandmates (including a young Coleman Hawkins), sounded "stiff, stodgy," with "jerky rhythms and a grey undistinguished tone quality."^[17] The following example shows a short excerpt of the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston (top), compared with Armstrong's solo improvisations (below) (recorded 1924).^[18] (The example approximates Armstrong's solo, as it does not convey his use of swing.)

Armstrong's solos were a significant factor in making jazz a true 20th-century language. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed his virtuosic Hot Five band, which included instrumentalist's Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), and wife Lil on piano, where he popularized scat singing.^[19]

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.^[23]

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.^[24]

Swing in the 1920s and 1930s

The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to "solo" and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be complex "important" music.

Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. In the 1930s, Kansas City Jazz as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music and blues chord progressions, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.

Radio

The introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts enabled the rapid national spread of jazz in 1932. The radio was described as the "sound factory." Radio made it possible for millions to hear for free the music—especially people who never attended expensive, distant big city clubs.^[25] These broadcasts originated from clubs in leading centers 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.^[26] Big band dance music is played by professionals and was featured from nightclubs, dance halls, and ballrooms.^[27]

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.^[27] 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.^[27]

Elements and influences

Youth

Young people in the 1920s 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, a willingness to talk about sex freely, 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.^[28] Some urban middle-class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's music", and believed the improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting promiscuity.^[29]

Role of women

With women's suffrage—the right for women to vote—at its peak with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, and the entrance of the free-spirited flapper, women began to take on a larger role in society and culture. With women now taking part in the work force after the end of the First World War there were now many more possibilities for women in terms of social life and entertainment. Ideas such as equality and open sexuality were very popular during the time and women seemed to capitalize on these ideas 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.^[30]

Piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong 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^[33] 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.^[33] Another famous female vocalist, dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the one of the most popular female jazz singers in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible and wide-ranging. She could sing ballads, jazz, and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman.^[34] These women were persistent in striving to make their names known in the music industry and to lead the way for many more women artists to come.^[33]

African American influence

The birth of jazz is credited to African Americans.^[35] But it was modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white Americans. Those critical of jazz saw it as music from people with no training or skill.^[36] White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz music in America. Although jazz was taken over by the white middle-class population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and ideals with white middle-class society.^[37]

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.^[38]

Some famous black artists of the time were Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.^[39]

Beginnings of European Jazz

As only a limited number of American jazz records were released in Europe, European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson, who visited Europe during and after World War I. It was their live performances which inspired European audiences' interest in jazz, as well as the interest in all things American (and therefore exotic) which accompanied the economic and political woes of Europe during this time.^[40] The beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz began to emerge in this interwar period.

British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC. Thereafter jazz became an important element in many leading dance orchestras, and jazz instrumentalists became numerous.^[41]

This style entered full swing in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which began in 1934. Much of this French jazz was a combination of African-American jazz and the symphonic styles in which French musicians were well-trained; in this, it is easy to see the inspiration taken from Paul Whiteman since his style was also a fusion of the two.^[42] Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette", and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel; the main instruments were steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as guitar and bass form the rhythm section. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership characteristic of the genre,^[43] which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.^[44]

Criticism of the movement

During this time period, jazz began to get a reputation as being immoral, and many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old cultural values and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring Twenties. Professor Henry van Dyke of Princeton University wrote: "... it is not music at all. It's merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion."^[49] The media too began to denigrate jazz. The New York Times used stories and headlines to pick at jazz: Siberian villagers were said by the paper to have used jazz to scare off bears, when in fact they had used pots and pans; another story claimed that the fatal heart attack of a celebrated conductor was caused by jazz.^[45]

Classical music

As jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought to expand the listenership of their favored genre, hoping that jazz would not become mainstream.^[46] Controversially, jazz became an influence on composers as diverse as George Gershwin and Herbert Howells.

See also

• Flapper
• Roaring Twenties
• The Great Gatsby

Notes

Further reading

• Allen, Frederick Lewis (1931). Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties. online edition
• Barlow, William. "Black music on radio during the jazz age." African American Review 29.2 (1995): 325-328.
• 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
• 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 55.2 (2003): 303-313.
• Doerksen, Clifford J. American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age (2005) [L: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13658 online review]
• 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). [https://www.questia.com/read/101545426 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.
• 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.
• Snelson, Tim. "‘They’ll Be Dancing in the Aisles!’: Youth audiences, cinema exhibition and the mid-1930s swing boom." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 37.3 (2017): 455-474.

External links

• The Jazz Age In America
• Roaring Twenties from U S History.com

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