1
Lecture # 20 – African-American Music: Blues and Jazz
Good morning. Today we’re going to be looking at perhaps the two most unique
contributions America has made to the world of art and culture: African-American
music—jazz and the blues. Some important themes in today’s lecture include: (1) the mix
of old and new, black and white, north and south, modern and pre-modern; (2) the role of
urbanization and commercial capitalism in bringing African-American music to the
world; (3) how African-American music contributed to an emerging youth subculture;
and (4) how jazz reversed the relationship between Europe and America in terms of
culture and art. I’ll begin this lecture by explaining the differences between blues and
jazz, as well as my decision to discuss them in one lecture, rather than treat them as two
unique genres of music.
*
*
*
Let’s begin by looking at the ways in which blues and jazz differ from one
another. This is important to distinguish because throughout the course of this lecture I’m
going to be using a catch-all phrase—namely, jazz or occasionally African-American
music—to describe both genres. The biggest difference between blues and jazz deals with
sophistication and emphasis on innovation. Blues music is structured in a relatively
simple manner. A blues song usually consists of one simple beat, a number of verses and
a chorus, and lyrics that are usually formed in simple three line stanzas. Jazz songs, on
the other hand, have many different parts to it, it may or may not have lyrics, and the beat
is constantly changing and is at times quite complex. Jazz songs, in other words, are a bit
more complex than blues songs, which may explain why intellectuals and artists love jazz
but neglect the blues. Larry Garner, a contemporary blues guitarist, puts it in another
2
way: “Jazz artists generally have studied at a college, and Blues artists have not.” The
blues is a lot like hip-hop in many ways, Garner explains. “Rap is one beat repeated with
someone ‘talking-shit’ over it, blues is one beat with a changing melody and somebody
‘talking-shit’ over it.”
Jazz and the blues also differ over the role of innovation in keeping the music
fresh and relevant. Jazz musicians prize innovation and experimentation above all else.
The first thirty years of recorded jazz music was a time marked by great change in how
jazz artists approached song writing and presentation; jazz is a progressive, some would
say avant garde, genre of music in that it is constantly being reinvented by its key
performers. Blues, on the other hand, is a bit more traditional. The same melodies and
rhythms that were played one hundred years ago are still being played today. Structurally,
a blues song written in 1905 is very similar to one written in 2005. The blues retained
much more of its folk traditions, emphasizing continuity over change, as well as tradition
over innovation. Standards—public domain songs that have been passed down from
generation to generation—still play an important role within blues culture.
However, the two genres of music are also very similar. Both types of music are
rooted in African-American culture (particularly in the exchange of culture that occurred
with the institution of slavery); both genres of music originated in the rural south but
came to prominence in the urban north; both emphasized the importance of improvisation
during performances; both reflected African-American culture as it took shape before and
after the days of slavery; both were created by musically illiterate amateurs (as opposed
to the orchestral music of Europe); and both genres of music would eventually become a
huge part of the American entertainment industry—they both started out as folk traditions
3
that would eventually be commodified and sold to the culture at large. Jazz and the blues,
in other words, were twins that were separated at birth. Thus, for the remainder of this
lecture, I’m going to be addressing both genres of music simultaneously by using the
word ‘jazz’ as a blanket term. All of which is a (very) long-winded way of saying that
blues and jazz, though unique genres of music in their own right, can (and will) be
discussed as two sides of the same coin.
*
*
*
The origins of jazz, like the origins of baseball and other cultural phenomena, is
difficult to locate historically. There is no precise date we can point to when jazz
officially became a recognized form of popular music. Some point to 1895 when Buddy
Bolden, a cornet player from New Orleans, assembled his first band; some say 1913
when the word ‘jazz’ was first uttered in printed form in San Francisco; some say 1917
when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the first jazz recording; some say 1923
when the first jazz craze swept across America. Most music historians, however, have
given up trying to establish an official founding myth, opting instead to emphasize jazz’s
long-term development. Thus, most would agree that jazz was born the moment the first
African slave stepped foot on American soil in the sixteenth century. It is out of this
cultural exchange—this interplay between African music and religion and European
music and religion—that led to the creation of jazz.
Most musicologists agree that jazz music can best be characterized as a mixture of
styles, one part African, one part European. In west Africa, the region where most slaves
originated from, music was not merely some idle pursuit to be engaged in during one’s
leisure time. It was an important form of communication, especially during religious
4
rituals. Unlike our relationship to music currently, African music was fully integrated into
their everyday life at a ritualistic level. Their meals, their work, their religious ceremonies
all involved music, particular drumming. Though slave owners attempted to destroy any
vestiges of African culture once the slaves landed in America, they soon found out that
that was easier said than done. Slaves continued to use music to express themselves,
particularly while working the fields. Work songs, using a call and response method in
which a chorus responds to a soloist, invariably acted as an invaluable form of
communication while slaves worked the fields. Slave music, as music historian Gunther
Schuller argues, was “an essential mode of expression, through which a minority could
render its suffering.” These songs, as many commentators at the time also noted,
emphasized rhythm over melody, which is in itself a hallmark feature of African music
So on the one side we have the African influence—the use of music as a form of
communication and the importance of rhythm. On the other side we have the European
influence, most notably European music’s sense of melody and harmony, as well as the
influence of Protestant Christianity on African-American culture.
Now, European music (and by this I mean orchestral music—Beethoven, Bach,
etc) can be characterized as heavy on melody and harmony, but light on rhythm. African
music is the opposite of that—it’s heavy on rhythm but light on melody and harmony;
slave owners often complained that the vocal parts of slave music sounded as though
someone were talking rather than singing (which may explain the development of hiphop as well). But once European culture and African culture began mingling together
through the institution of slavery, a funny thing happened: a new form of music emerged
which combined African rhythm and European melody and harmony. This was furthered
5
even more once slaves began to adopt Protestant Christianity as their primary form of
religion. The major Protestant denominations of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries—Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans chiefly—all had choral
traditions which African-Americans quickly made their own. It is out of this mixing of
culture—be it in the form of spirituals or work music—that the blues and jazz emerged
from.
By the nineteenth century the culture of African slaves and European / American
slave owners were beginning to merge. However, it wasn’t until the 1820s and 1830s that
the end result of these two cultures was brought to a mass audience. Minstrel acts, in
particular, represent the first widespread display of the mixing of European and African
musical traditions. Besides the obvious racial context of minstrel acts—the black face, the
use of stereotypical black dialects, and the racist dialogue—minstrel performers also
played music that merged black and white traditions. On the one hand, many shows
featured waltzes, marching music, and polkas—music that was very familiar to the
European immigrants who made up the majority of the minstrel show audience in its
early years. European instruments, such as tubas, trumpets, and clarinets, dominated.
Mixed with this were the spirituals and work songs of the plantation slave, using
instruments of African origins, such as the banjo and the drum. The end result was a
further blurring of the lines between European music and African music. Many music
historians have argued that this mix of European immigrant music and African-American
slave music led to the creation of ragtime in the 1890s, one of the earliest manifestations
of jazz.
*
*
*
6
The southern city of New Orleans is where most historians point to as the birth
place of jazz. In the decades preceding the civil war, New Orleans had an impressive
musical tradition, bringing in musical influences from Europe (especially France), the
Caribbean (because of its proximity to Cuba, Jamaica, etc), and, of course, Africa
(through the institution of slavery). New Orleans was as good a place as any to develop
jazz mainly because it was a multi-cultural city in which a number of diverse cultures fed
off each other and adopted each other’s traditions. Moreover, New Orleans was not
nearly as segregated as other American cities at the time. Racial tension was still a
prominent feature of New Orleans culture, but race-mixing was not as taboo as it was in
other parts of America. In other words, jazz, a form of music premised on the merger of
two very different cultures—one European, the other African—was founded in the most
culturally diverse and culturally integrated city in the southern United States.
However, another thing distinguished New Orleans from other cities in the United
States. Namely, its impressive marching band tradition, which was the result of the
French presence there (the term Cajun is actually a variation on the word Acadian, as in
the French people who were expelled from Canada in 1755, many of whom ended up in
what was then the French territory of Louisiana). It is no coincidence that the same
instruments you see being played in a marching band are often played in a jazz band as
well. This marching band tradition was further intensified during the Civil War. Would
anyone care to venture a guess as to why this came about? That’s right: war means
armies, and armies—at least back then—means more marching bands. It should also be
mentioned that New Orleans was occupied by the Union from the beginning of the war
and it became an important strategic launching point for the Union war effort. Thus,
7
Union armies maintained a strong presence there until the 1870s when reconstruction
officially came to an end in the deep South. This meant that blacks and whites, already
accustomed to a marching band tradition, had tons of musical instruments to tinker
around with after the war drew to a close.
And this is exactly what happened for much of the post-war years. New Orleans
became a breeding ground for jazz and the blues. Most of the early innovators of AfricanAmerican music were either born in New Orleans, or nursed their talents there. This
includes: Buddy Bolden (long considered one of the first true jazz artists), Jellyroll
Morton (a Creole jazz artist who’s counted as one of the early innovators in jazz), Kid
Ory and King Oliver (two more early innovators), and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band
(the first recorded jazz group in the history of jazz music, and the band most responsible
for the jazz and blues craze of the 1920s). All these artists represent jazz music’s first
batch of superstars, and all of them began their careers in New Orleans. You could have
opened up a New Orleans telephone book back then, randomly pointed your finger
anywhere on the page, and end up hitting upon the name of a jazz musician. However,
New Orleans was still a southern city, first and foremost. Though things were better there
than many other southern cities, blacks were still treated as second-class citizens, and
their economic and educational opportunities were lacking. Like many regions of the
south during the early 1900s, New Orleans succumbed to a massive population shift as
black people were started leaving en masse for the cities of the north (this, of course, was
the Great Migration). It is here that the story of jazz moves from the south to the north.
Blues music and jazz traveled—metaphorically of course—up the Mississippi river,
stopping in smaller southern cities such as Baton Rouge (also in Louisiana), St. Louis,
8
Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee (where rock and roll and country got its start),
stopping finally in the two largest cities in the north: Chicago and New York, both of
which could lay claim as the jazz and blues capital of the United States.
*
*
*
By the end of World War One, Chicago and New York were brimming with jazz
musicians, many of whom made the long trek northward from southern cities such as
New Orleans and Memphis. New Orleans still played the blues (as it still does to this
day), but the movement had shifted northward and the New Orleans sound was giving
way to other innovative sounds, most of which found expression in the urban north. All
the major artists relocated to either Chicago or New York. Louis Armstrong and Duke
Ellington, probably the two most important jazz artists of the postwar years, lived and
plied their trade in either New York City or Chicago. The same can be said of all the
major players in jazz—male and female: Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker,
and on and on. Many jazz artists were born elsewhere, but none could call themselves a
truly accomplished musician without taking a shot at the Windy City or the Big Apple.
As a result, many of the most famous jazz and blues venues in the world could be found
in either of those cities, mainly in poor black neighborhoods. Chicago’s south side, for
example, featured the luxurious Savoy theater and the Panama Club. In New York—
particularly Harlem—prominent jazz artists played at the Apollo Theater and the Cotton
Club (some of you may have seen the Francis Ford Coppola movie about the Cotton
Club). It was in these cities and these venues that jazz became a truly nationwide (if not a
worldwide) phenomenon. This leads us to the fourth section of today’s lecture: the
importance of capitalism, urbanization, and technology to the world of jazz.
9
*
*
*
Before the civil war African-American music was limited largely to the south,
confined as it was to black neighborhoods and black churches. Minstrel shows did
incorporate black music into their acts in the 1830s and 1840s, but it wasn’t until after the
Civil War that this form of entertainment truly found a nationwide audience. In other
words, early African-American music was not seen as a bankable money-making venture
for much of its early existence. Early jazz artists such as Jellyroll Morton and Kid Ory
often owned their own saloons and they frequently went on whirlwind tours around the
country playing their music, but they certainly weren’t growing rich off their music. They
saw their music as a form of artistic expression, as well as a way to earn a decent living.
Many of these musicians, in fact, took advantage of the growth of dance halls and other
public amusements in the last half of the nineteenth century. They were small scale
entrepreneurs, in other words, roving entertainers who used whatever means necessary to
find an audience and make a decent living.
However, it wasn’t until the late-nineteenth / early-twentieth centuries that
African-American music truly became a nationwide cultural phenomenon. And this
relates to three inter-related themes of this course: the growth of capitalism (particularly
the leisure- and entertainment industries), urbanization, and technological change. With
regards to the theme of capitalism, jazz and blues became an important feature of the
growing American entertainment industry, be it in minstrel shows or the nightclubs and
dance halls that emerged in the 1880s and 1890s. I talked about the emergence of dance
halls last term, but what I failed to mention was how African-American music was often
times the music of choice for many of these venues. This was yet another reason many
10
reformers grew upset at the proliferation of dance halls—because the music being played
there came from the black community (we saw the same thing happen when rock ‘n’ roll
emerged on the scene in the mid- to late-1950s). When we consider the popularity of
minstrel shows after the Civil War, as well as the growing acceptance of dance halls in
the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it’s difficult to argue with the notion that
the success of the early entertainment industry was in many ways wholly dependent on
African-American music. This is true even in the film industry. After all, a number of
prominent American films—including the film noir masterpiece ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘A
Streetcar Named Desire’, Chinatown’, and ‘Taxi Driver’—have jazz soundtracks. And as
I mentioned a few weeks ago, the very first motion picture to feature sound was ‘The
Jazz Singer’ starring Al Jolson.
On a related note, jazz also helped define not only the contours of legitimate
capitalist practices, but also illegitimate capitalist practices. What I’m referring to, of
course, is the underground economy, otherwise known as the black market. After all, the
speakeasies and gin joints of the prohibition era often entertained their audiences with a
mix of illegal booze and free-wheeling jazz. Many nightclubs and cabarets were owned
by the mafia (Al Capone, for example, owned a number of jazz clubs in Chicago). Many
of these venues offered the public not only booze and jazz, but access to prostitutes,
drugs, and gambling as well. As a result, jazz, fairly or unfairly, is often associated with
the underground economy and the mobsters and hustlers who ran it.
Urbanization is also important for similar reasons. For one thing, urban centers
provided businesses with a large, centrally located demographic—an audience in other
words. In the countryside or in small towns, audiences for sporting events and other
11
forms of entertainment was relatively small—a couple hundred at the most. In cities,
however, entertainment venues were built that could accommodate thousands of
people—for example, hockey arenas, baseball stadiums, and lush movie theaters. With
the rise of expendable income in America at the turn of the century, as well as the
emergence of a shrinking work week, many city dwellers had both the time and money to
devote to leisure pursuits. Urbanization allowed entrepreneurs to take part in economies
of scale—that is, business activities that were geared towards a mass audience. The
bigger the audience, the bigger the potential for profits. In many respects, the story of
jazz is no different than the story of baseball discussed last term. What was once a hobby
or a past-time became first a small-scale money-making venture, before finally morphing
into a full-blown corporate enterprise.
The final theme of this section of the lecture—and again, this one is very much
related to the previous two just mentioned—is the all-important role of technology in
helping to transform African-American music into a cultural force. There are three
particular technological developments that must be noted. (1) Radio. The development of
radio technology in the 1890s, and its subsequent popularity in the teens and twenties,
helped make African-American music the most widespread form of popular culture in the
United States. Without radio, African-American music may not have found its way out of
African-American neighborhoods and churches. (2) Recording technology and the
production and sale of portable phonographs. The first recorded jazz album was the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. This was the group—they were all white by the
way—that kicked off the jazz craze of the late-teens / early-twenties. At the same time,
phonographs and hi-fis began to be sold to Americans at an increasingly affordable price.
12
Though invented by Thomas Edison in 1878, the phonograph really didn’t become truly
popular until the early 1900s. Original units could cost as much as $200-300, which
represented half the income of your average American wage earner. But by the twenties
and thirties, the price of phonographs were starting to dip to the point where even
working-class Americans were able to buy phonographs. By the fifties—and this is
important for the lecture on adolescence next week—phonographs were selling for as
cheap as $20-30. If Americans didn’t have the means to visit a jazz club and see a
performance in the flesh, they could now buy an album and play it at home. This allowed
African-American music to find an audience outside of the urban setting, as smalltowners and farm folk began to encounter this new type of music within the confines of
their own home. (3) And finally, as I mentioned earlier, the advent of film (also invented
by Thomas Edison) greatly helped push forward the cause of African-American music,
whether it was on the soundtrack or as a featured part of the story line (i.e. The Jazz
Singer). All of these technologies, as well as the transport advances that allowed people
to travel to the city and enjoy black music in a club or theater setting, helped transform
jazz and blues from a local, southern tradition into a nationwide cultural phenomenon.
By the 1920s, when both jazz and blues hit the big time, African-American music was
perhaps the most profitable form of entertainment in America—and this can be attributed,
at least partly, to the emergence of capitalism, urbanization, and technological change.
Anyone who started up a record company, a nightclub, a theater, or a radio station in the
early part of the twentieth century was in one way or another indebted to the musical
traditions of African-Americans for their success in the marketplace (and vice-versa).
*
*
*
13
While the warm reception afforded to black music greatly affected the cultural
standing of African-Americans, it also offered middle-class white youth something
tangible as well: an identity based on rebellion. In fact, one of the most enduring legacies
of the jazz age was in how it helped foster the creation of a youth-based subculture,
which would be replicated with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll in the fifties, and the related
emergence of the hippie movement in the 1960s and 70s. However, it was jazz culture
that first captured the imagination of rebellious youth in the early part of the twentieth
century. Many of the hallmarks of youth rebellion seen since the 1950s can, in fact, be
traced back to the jazz age. This includes: the importance of slang; the association of drug
use and rebellion; the increased importance of fashion and a ‘sense of style’ in asserting
individual identity; and, of course, the consumption of so-called race music that directly
challenged the values of middle-class respectable society. All these things found
expression in the 20s with the advent of jazz, and all these things would re-emerge in the
50s, 60s, and 70s with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll. I’ll begin by discussing the importance
of slang.
Slang has always been an important part of youth culture. This was especially true
in the 1920s when Americans in their early teens and twenties—that is, caught halfway
between the world of childhood and adulthood—began to impact the culture at large in a
significant way. The word ‘jazz’, it should be pointed out, is a slang term in itself that
was used within the Creole community in New Orleans to denote sex or the act of
engaging in sex. Thus, African-American culture challenged the way the dominant
culture approached both music and culture, offering them new forms of expression that
were rooted in sexuality and other taboo topics amongst more respectable Americans
14
(this includes African-American families as well, many of whom grew angry whenever
their children showed an interest in the blues and jazz—the devil’s music, as some have
called it). The 1920s, in many ways, was the first decade to emphasize youth culture over
adult culture. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the changes taking place in the
English language in the 1920s due to the immense popularity of African-American
music.
Flappers, jazz musicians, trendy actors, and the people who adored them all
contributed to a marked shift in the English language. Literally thousands of new words
and phrases were coined by jazz age Americans, many of which we still use today. For
instance, these are just a few of the popular phrases many of should be familiar with
today:
Attaboy / attagirl (way to go)
Baby (as in the term of endearment boyfriends and girlfriends use)
Beat it (get lost)
Crush (infatuation)
Daddy-o (term of address)
Dame (a woman)
Dolled up (all dressed up)
For Crying Out Loud! (self-explanatory)
Gold-digger (a woman out for a man’s money)
Hair of the dog (hangover remedy)
Hopped up (on drugs)
Knocked up (to get pregnant)
15
Nookie (self-explanatory)
Sugar Daddy (older man who sees a younger woman)
Upchuck (to vomit)
Here are some of the lesser known, but funny, phrases to emerge from the culture
of the jazz age:
Blotto (drunk—as in “My name is Otto and I like to get blotto…”)
Fried (drunk)
Half seas over (drunk)
On a toot (drunk)
Ossified (drunk)
Splifficated (drunk)
Zozzled (drunk)
Giggle water (booze)
And, because this was the era when people of all backgrounds—rich, poor, white,
black, gay, straight—came into increased contact with one another, many derogatory
phrases also emerged during the 1920s, including:
Bohunk (an eastern European)
Dinge, jigaboo, and spade (African-Americans)
Fag (gay men)
Harp and Mick (Irish person)
Kike (jews)
Ofay (a black expression for whites)
Rube (someone from the countryside)
16
There were literally hundreds of different expressions with regard to women as
well. A lot of these indicate how sexuality was starting to become a much more openly
discussed feature of American culture:
Bear cat (a fiery or hot-blooded girl)
Bubs (breasts)
Bug-eyed Betty (an unattractive girl)
Chassis (the female body)
Dame (a female; popular in the 30s)
Doll (an attractive woman)
Dumb Dora (an especially stupid woman)
Face Stretcher (an old woman trying to look young)
Flour lover (a girl with too much face powder)
Gams (a woman’s legs)
Quiff (a slut)
Skirt (an attractive female)
Smarty (a cute flapper)
Tomato (a ripe female)
Men got off quite a bit easier—‘Esther’ was a term used to describe an effeminate male,
but for the most part the phrases used to describe the men of the 20s were not gender
specific like the female ones. Regardless, the important thing to note is how all these
phrases and words—and many more—were coined within the jazz culture—either within
the music itself or the night clubs and speakeasies. American English became much more
informal after jazz culture took off, and many of these changes live with us today.
17
Illegal drug use was also another common feature of the jazz age, a feature that
many middle-class white kids would use to rebel against their parents (again, this was
replicated with the Beatniks of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s). The most popular
illegal drug, of course was alcohol. As was mentioned earlier, jazz flourished in the
illegal speakeasies, brothels, and gin mills of the 20s, giving ammunition to the critics of
jazz who associated it with criminality and other immoral behavior. Amongst musicians,
alcohol was also the drug of choice, many believing that it contributed to the creative
process. Charlie Parker, perhaps the foremost jazz musician of his generation, was known
to drink eight shots of whiskey in less than an hour and then execute some of the most
challenging improvisations anybody had ever heard. Of course, there were other stories
involving Charlie Parker that were not quite so complimentary. Other stories have him
stealing from friends, pawning his saxophone, abandoning record sessions, sleeping on
stage, and urinating on the floor of a hotel lobby, all as the result of alcoholism (as well
as heroin addiction). One historian described an evening when Parker fired the entire
string orchestra during a performance, then left the empty stage to drink whiskey at the
bar. Jazz and the consumption of alcohol, in other words, were intimately associated with
each other, which explains why so many slang terms for booze and for getting drunk
emerged in this period.
Other illegal drugs were also quite common in jazz circles. Heroin, for example,
claimed a few prominent jazz musicians, most notably Charlie Parker. Cocaine could also
be found almost anywhere jazz was being played. However, cocaine and heroin use,
though more prevalent in jazz circles than in the rest of society, was still an exception
rather than the rule. The most common drug outside of alcohol was actually marijuana—
18
and this was true amongst both musicians and audience members. Again, as with booze,
many musicians felt that marijuana could add to their creativity up on stage. Musicians
talked about how marijuana helped the creation of jazz by removing inhibitions and
providing stimulation and confidence. It’s difficult to say whether this is true at all, but
one thing is certain: the youth culture’s obsession with marijuana in the 60s and 70s
(today as well) emerged in the 1920s. In 1928 the Chicago Tribune, under the headline
‘New Giggle Drug Puts Discord in City Orchestras’, reported that marijuana addiction
was common among local musicians. In 1934 a St. Louis newspaper reported that
traveling jazz acts had helped introduce marijuana use to students at the University of
Kansas. “[Narcotics Investigator] Johns says that he has learned that many members of
jazz bands not only in this section, but generally throughout the country, often resort to
marijuana or some other drug to obscure the monotony of their lives, the ceaseless
thumping of jazz night after night.” It is debatable as to whether marijuana use was
actually that rampant in the jazz world (many jazz musicians claimed that alcohol was
much more prevalent), but at least two things are certain: (1) parents took the media’s
claims at face value and became very wary of jazz and jazz culture. Hysteria over jazz
developed. Parents and legislators saw jazz as a contributor to crime and other immoral
behavior—to prostitution, drug use, and increased sexual license. One report even found
that jazz contributed to juvenile delinquency (this is from a book called ‘Waiting for the
Man’):
A report from the Illinois Vigilance Association claimed that in 1921-2, jazz had caused
the downfall of 1,000 girls in Chicago alone. The leader of the State Hospital in Napa,
California declared: 'I can say from my own knowledge that about fifty percent of our
young boys and girls from the age sixteen to twenty-five that land in the insane asylum
these days are jazz-crazy dope fiends and public dance hall patrons… Dope fiends and
public dance halls are the same; where you find one, you will find the other.
19
In other words, jazz, like comic books and rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s and heavy metal in the
80s, helped intensify the so-called generation gap, the idea that the values of the older
generation were directly opposed (and at times antagonistic towards) youth and youth
culture. Which leads me to my second point about drug use—namely, that American
youth (some of them anyway) realized that the drug use brought about in the jazz era
bothered their parents, and they used that to further rebel against their parents’ values—
especially white middle-class kids. Drug use, due to its criminality and its association
with black culture and black music, became cool. To this day, drug use has a veneer of
coolness to it that can’t be denied.
The final contribution of jazz to the emerging youth subculture was in the way it
defined style as an indicator of one’s individuality. Fashion trends, in particular, were
greatly affected by jazz, and American youth promptly took note of this by emulating the
clothing styles of their favorite musicians. As I mentioned earlier in the term, the greatest
fashion trend to emerge in the 1920s—and this was very much associated with jazz and
jazz culture—was the Flapper. With her short hair, her thin, waifish body, her made-up
face, and her sleek, revealing clothing, the Flapper best represented the relationship
between jazz and personal style. However, men’s fashions were also greatly changed by
the advent of jazz. For decades (1850-1920) most men wore a type of suit known as the
sacque suit (pic #1, see below). This was a fairly traditional suit that was appropriate for
all but the dressiest of occasions. It featured basic straight-legged pants with no cuffs, a
four button high neck coat, and you could wear it with or without a hat. Often times,
though, it was accompanied by a hat of some type, usually in a round style (i.e. a bowler).
By the 1920s, however, a new type of suit—the jazz suit—became common amongst
20
many American men (pic #2, see below). This suit featured cuffed pants that were
hemmed high with a slim-cut leg, and a three button coat that was cinched at the waist
and very closely fitted. Hats were also worn, but the bowler was abandoned for more of a
sleek, fedora-style hat. Thus, as with women’s fashions, men’s fashions emphasized
clean lines and a sleek look. However, later on in the 1920s, this sleek look—especially
in terms of pants—gave way to a baggy, exaggerated look. By the 1930s and 1940s zoot
suits became popular amongst the trendy urban set, especially blacks and latinos, as well
as their white imitators (pic #3, see below). Characterized by an oversized jacket with
large lapels, padded shoulders and baggy pants which were cuffed at the ankles (with a
wide brimmed fedora hat generally accompanying), the zoot suit was first popularized in
Harlem by young teenage "hepcats". Because of its racial / ethnic origins, the zoot suit
was seen by the dominant culture as a particularly obnoxious trend that would only die
out once America entered World War Two and the War Production Board restricted the
amount of material that could be used in men's clothing. I’ll talk more about this
particular type of clothing in a couple of weeks when we take a look at the Zoot Suit riots
of 1943.
*
*
*
The final thing I want to talk about today—and I’ll be very brief—is how jazz
culture represented a significant change in America’s relationship to Europe, particularly
in the realm of culture (be it popular or elite). In the previous term I discussed American
art, literature, and architecture, and how all these forms of culture were very much
affected by European trends. America, for much of its history, looked to Europe for
artistic guidance. Whether it was the influence of European modernism on American art,
21
the love of older European architectural styles, or the impact of World War I and
European stylistic innovation on the writers of the Lost Generation, it is safe to say that
America has always felt culturally inferior to the Europeans. However, with the advent of
jazz and other forms of African-American music, this relationship was essentially
reversed. Jazz became part of world culture in the 1920s, as the people of Europe
(particularly artists and intellectuals—particularly French artists and intellectuals)
embraced it in a way other American artists could only dream of. Though jazz had its
origins in Africa and Europe—due to the international slave trade of centuries past—
African-American music was nurtured entirely in America, found its greatest acceptance
there, and was ultimately exported to the rest of the world. For the first time in its entire
history, Europeans were emulating American culture, rather than the other way around.
*
*
*
So here are the important points to consider when appraising the importance of
African-American music:
(1) How it sprang from a mix of old and new, black and white, rural and urban, European
and African. In other words, I want you to note how jazz and the blues encompassed
features of both pre-modern and modern America, how it began in pre-modern
surroundings (the rural agrarian south) and came to prominence in modern ones (the
urban industrial north).
(2) And this one is very much related to point number one—the role of urbanization and
commercial capitalism in bringing African-American music to the world—specifically,
how African-American music started out as a folk tradition and was eventually
transformed into an important part of the modern capitalist economy.
22
(3) How African-American music contributed to an emerging youth subculture, be it
through illegal drug use, the use of slang, changes in fashion, and other trends associated
with the jazz era. Pay particular attention to how these trends very much resemble the
youth subculture of the 60s and 70s, as well as today’s youth subculture.
(4) And finally, how African-American music effectively reversed the relationship
between Europe and America in terms of culture and art—how it can be seen as one of
the most influential manifestations of early American cultural imperialism. Jazz was
America’s most unique contribution to world culture.
*
*
*
23
PICTURES
Pic #2. Jazz suit (1920-1950)
Pic#1. Sacque suit (1850-1920)
Pic #3. Zoot suit (1920-1950)