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Jazz In The 1920's

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Imagine an array of musicians (a saxophonist, trumpeter, bassist and drummer) passionately playing a symphony of music—with an apoplectic intensity and at a bone-rattling volume. This is jazz. Jazz has an identifiable history and distinct stylistic evolution. Jazz grew up alongside the blues and popular music, but what changed the way of music in America was still jazz. From the 1920 's through the late 1950 's jazz was formed from the heart and soul of African American. In the mid-1930s, as the Great Depression stubbornly refused to lift, Jazz became America 's popular music, its impact was so strong, and it could be called revolutionary.

While it is possible to connect revolutions in society with revolutions of sound, that has become a …show more content…

Jazz goes back to the 1920s, and even earlier. Popular music, commercial dance music had been very “white” and derived from European styles. But, with the rise of ragtime, blues, and jazz, a “black” approach to rhythm and harmony starts to seep in. And that sound, that approach to rhythm was fresh and exciting, not like the stale music the kid’s parents listened to. In the 1920s in the U.S, it was prohibition times. Alcohol was illegal, many people were inhibited socially. But the younger generation broke through it and embraced the concept of swing. Their parents hated it, of course, and conservatives rejected it, but the kids loved it and wanted to dance. In the U.S., that time was known as “the roaring 20s”, marked by a modernist sensibility in the arts, especially after the world war when things were changing at a very fast rate. It meant something different in the 30s-50s, and especially in the late 50s-70s, when some musicians expressed political statements with their music. This referring to Max Roach (We Insist Freedom Now), Sonny Rollins (The Freedom Suite), Charles Mingus (Fables of Faubus) and so on. This was not abstract. These were explicit musical statements about segregation and civil rights.

Born of African rhythms, the spiritual "call and response," and other American musical traditions-- jazz was by the 1920s the dominant influence on this country 's popular music. Writers, musicians, and many other Americans celebrated it--as both an expression of black

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