The Influence Of Jazz On African-American Culture

In the 1920’s jazz greatly rose in popularity, due to the process of recordings. Jazz’s popularity directly correlates to how it personifies African-American culture. Many black musicians felt as though they weren’t getting the recognition they deserved. These musicians were upset about being ripped off by recording labels, and rightfully so. Apart from being upset about how they were being treated by record labels, white America did not feel comfortable with the music being solely from African-Americans. Jazz ended up becoming more of a commodity, and the most well-known artists were white. African-Americans were facing racism and random acts of violence against them, they took solace in their music as it was an essential part of their culture.

Jazz categories include Dixieland, swing, bop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, jazz-rock, and fusion. Bebop was the first major leap in creating the cultural phenomenon that was jazz. It gained a massive amount of popularity over a short span. Bebop gained popularity in the 1940’s and the reason bebop stayed primarily in African-American culture was that it was too complicated for white musicians to copy. This brought their culture back into the public’s eye. During the swing era of the 1930’s, jazz culture reached a new level of sophistication. With the great depression still fresh in everyone’s mind, Swing was exactly what the country