American History

By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, Americas cultural and social perspective had changed. The experience of the first World War jaded Americans view of the world and their own mortality through introducing a whole new generation of youths to the horrors of combat. Despite or because of their experiences in the war, America had an economic renewal and a strengthening of the middle-class. In addition, prohibition and influx of traditionally black musical trends with the migration of African-Americans from the Southern U.S. to other parts of the country, created a new kind of model by which the younger middle-class generations of Americans could rebel against the old traditions. Jazz music provided a soundtrack for their lives, while a distinct counterculture arouse from the influence of the music and social changes that occurred during the decade.

While World War I had dealt a blow to American morale and brought home the true nightmare of mans battle against man, other changes to the social landscape of the U.S. created the perfect mixture of circumstances to allow for the revelation of a new counterculture. The adoption of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, also provided women with what Arnold Shaw describes as a  new feeling of power, pride, and independence that flowed from this right, sociologists attribute such emancipatory developments as women smoking in public, bobbing their hair (to look more like men), seductively raising the hem of their skirts, rolling their stockings to expose bare knees, and flaunting their sexuality  (Shaw 12). However, it would be incorrect to assume that all women adopted these new styles. On the contrary, the flapper image was limited in its scope but nevertheless touched even the most mainstream aspects of society. From movies, with the images of such women as Clara Bow, to the adaptation of certain style aspects for even the most conservative of American women, the cultural impact of the youth of the 1920s was strong (Shaw 15).

In finding an embodiment of the spirit of the 1920s flapperyouth counterculture, one need look no further than writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Along with his wife Zelda, Fitzgerald were the personification of the upper-middle class youths rebellion against the staid of popular culture. Himself an Ivy League drop-out, Zelda a wild and unconventional Southern belle, lived and partially helped create the lifestyle of the era (Shaw 4). The publication of Fitzgeralds first novel This Side of Paradise in 1920 was a seminal event in the finding of a cultural center for the lost youths of America, caught between their parents sense of propriety and their own desire to redefine the world. Described as the   laureate of the Jazz Age and its excessive accent on youth   the reckless exuberance manifested by the Fitzgeralds was typical of a young, affluent generation reacting not only to the tensions of the war just ended but to the emotional reserve of their elders  (Shaw 5). They represented a disillusioned and unrepentant choir of disciples whose cynicism was best vocalized by not only Fitzgerald but also poet Dorothy Parker and her partners at the New York City hotel the Algonquins famed  Round Table.  Made up of writers, actors, artists, musicians, intellectuals, and a mix of motley characters the society of these young people came to define the society of the  roarin twenties  (Shaw 5).

By 1922 editorials in the New York Times and other major publications were alternately condemning and defending the morality of the flapperyouth movement (Shaw 8). Aggravating this perception was the widely spoken rumor and reality of alcohol, as well as the involvement with minority communities, as a part of the culture. In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, effectively making alcohol both illegal to make and sell in the U.S. Tied into both concepts of morality by such organizations as the Womens Christian Temperance Union, prohibition was equally tied into the racial and ethnic prejudices of the middle and upper class white Americans by  linking immigrants to many social issues including the consumption of alcohol as European cultures had a tendency to imbibe  (An Overview of the 1920s ). Where prior, the youths of America were not ripe for the emergence of their own rebellion in the form of alcohol, music, and new freedoms, the environment after the war created a  confidence in most urban societies and a transition from old to new began. The new generation resented the hold of the crones of the temperance movements with their Victorian ideals and began their rebellion with a zeal matching that of the Prohibitionists  ( An Overview of the 1920s). At the center of their rebellion and providing not only a soundtrack but more importantly a context to their protest were the sounds of music, most specifically that of jazz.

An important aspect in the spread of jazz music across the U.S. during the 1920s was the strong presence of commercial radio and phonograph records. By the early years of the decade, jazz and other forms of popular music were the primary focus of radio broadcasting. Seen as  highly experimental  (Drowne  Huber 195), the music of this time reflected a broad range of musical genres. As Kathleen Morgan Drowne and Patrick Huber note that even in the later years of the decade,  it was still not uncommon for radio listeners to hear eclectic daily programming that might include a pianist, an opera tenor, a classical violinist, an old-time string band, a glee club, a Hawaiian guitarist, and a jazz band all on one station  (Drowne  Huber 195). In addition to providing a new venue for the music of the period, radio also came to have a major influence on the entertainment of the average American. Daily radio programs allowed housewives to listen to the new music from the comfort of their home, and the more conventional forms of music were enjoyed by the whole family  (Drowne  Huber 195).

Jazz was the central musical development of the 1920s, becoming the most  influential form of American popular music  (Drowne  Huber 200). Having emerged in the last decade of the 19th century, jazz was a creation of African-American and creole musicians in New Orleans and other Gulf towns and cities (200). Within a decade of these musicians first improvisations, this new forms of music was being called  jass or jazz, a word allegedly derived from southern black vernacular speech that   referred to the act of sexual intercourse  (Drowne  Huber 200).  Having grown among the populations of the Southern U.S., jazz spread to New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and many other cities throughout the country as the African Americans of that society migrated to escape racist Jim Crow laws and find better work opportunities By the 1920s,  jazz had spread throughout the United States and was attracting growing audiences of both black and white listeners  (200). Not only did jazz music create a new context for white Americans to hear and absorb the culture of African Americans but it also provided a musical tradition to compliment the literary and artistic ingenue of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, for the musicians themselves, jazz was an opportunity to record and perform their music for a larger and larger audience.

Jazz itself was a complex and eclectic mixture of previous musical elements from  ragtime compositions, brass-band marches, minstrel numbers, and, to a lesser degree, blues songs. However, with jazz these other forms of music became something entirely new. For instance, ragtime which is seen as an ancestor of jazz, had many similarities to jazz such as  ragged,  or syncopated, rhythms, that is, accenting the off-beat of rhythms  (200). But where ragtime was performed from previously outlined and published sheet music, jazz was free form with a mixture of  blues accents and collective improvisation, in which musicians embellished the melody. Early jazz bands featured cornets, clarinets, trombones, drums, and sometimes even banjos, violins, and pianos.

The influence of blues music on the growth and eventual form of jazz during the 1920s cannot be undermined. Even within itself, blues became a more mainstream musical genre during the 1920s. Predating jazz, blues arose from the  traditional black musical forms, including field hollers, work songs, ballads, and rags  (205). While first gaining ground in the Mississippi delta region, different styles emerged throughout the south and migrated throughout the nation. Drown and Huber describes blues as  a distinctive African-American secular music  (205). Unlike jazz, it follows within the confines of certain  central elements    Blues music ordinarily contains  blue  notes, which are essentially flattened third and seventh notes (played slightly below their true pitch), and the most common form of the music is the 12-bar blues, containing a series of three-line stanzas. However, even within this standard form there was the concept of improvisation that so colored and defined the jazz music that blues influenced. Like jazz it was able to cross cultural boundaries but had its strong roots firmly planted in the African American and more importantly human experience. Though it spoke of experiences unique to African Americans, feeling the weight of segregation and institutionalized racism at every turn, it also expressed universal truths of love and lust (205). Despite the sometimes conveyance of sadness and defeat, blues was also defined by   high-spirited, rollicking party numbers intended for social dancing  that appealed to the same middle-class whites who felt a freedom in jazz music.

Though an important part of the counterculture that emerged with the flappers of the period and the cultural revival in Harlem, jazz was not the sole form of music introduced during the 1920s. Dance bands also became a major form of musical entertainment, with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra leading the way Whiteman himself was the self-styled  King of Jazz  and the groups first major record sold over 2 million copies making him a  national celebrity  (Drowne  Huber 197). Along with Whiteman, there was Isham Jones and His Rainbow Orchestra, Ted Lewis and His Band, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, and Guy Lombardo with His Royal Canadians,  the Twelve Vampires and Babe Egans Hollywood Red Heads (197) all of which helped commercialize some of the more unconventional music emerging during the period. As Drowne and Huber explain, these bands were not limited to one form of music but instead  could perform a wide range of music, including arrangements of Tin Pan Alley Songs, jazz instrumentals, symphonic compositions, and occasionally waltzes and tangos.

Individual singers were also of great popularity during the era, with many emerging as  national celebrities  (198). Like the dance bands, these singers had their own self-defined icon in Al Jolson who   billed himself as  the Worlds Greatest Entertainer. The growing technology that allowed for greater accessibility to music also worked in the favor of the  crooners and torch singers  who emerged in the mid-1920s. Where as prior to this time singers were required to sing loudly in order for their voices to reach the entire theater, the invention of the microphone in 1925 allowed for a softer, more romantically toned style of singing called  crooning.  Among these singers were such names as Gene Austin, Jack Smith, Nick Lucas, Rudy Vallee, and Helen Morgan (Drowne  Huber 198). More conventional, like the dance bands, singers such as these created a music for the mainstream adults and youths of America. Where the flappers found rebellion in jazz, the average American housewife could find her own kind of freedom in the voices pouring from her radio.

Poised before the downward spiral of the Great Depression and the start of yet another war in Europe, American culture in the early 1920s was both jaded and nave. The large migrations of blacks from the South created new cultural centers and introduced a whole new musical approach to their audiences. Jazz and blues merged with the American mainstream. Through the influence of music, as well as greater social and economic changes, a rebellion was born. While brief and hedonistically concentrated on the individual, the  Roaring Twenties  nevertheless was important in its ability to briefly blur the color line and created a culture, that even now, does not fail to fascinate and influence us.