Nicholas Pinto
Professor Lynch
7/16/17
Analyzing How Jazz Changed African-American Society For The Better Jazz has been undeniably been tied to African American society since its creation. In her piece called the Social Effects of Jazz Zola Phillips tells us some of the origins of jazz, “Jazz developed from Afro-American music which included: work songs, spiritual music, minstrelsy, and other forms”. Another big contributor to the creation of Jazz is its direct descendant—the blues. The blues are a type of music created by blacks in America that includes the blues scale. The blues scale has what is called a blue note that gives the blues its aforementioned name. The blues uses wails, stories of the musician’s troubles, and of course the
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Jazz meant much more than just a type of music to blacks in the United States. Jazz gave African-Americans pride to be black, it gave them a strong identity of the culture that was stripped away from them, it gave them a reason to fight the injustice that they faced, and it allowed several …show more content…
As a matter of fact one of the supporters of jazz was a white man who happened to be a composer. In Lawrence W. Levine’s journal Jazz and American Culture he writes of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak saying: “Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was teaching and composing in the United States when he made this striking statement in 1893: ‘I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies’.”.1 In all reality Dvorak was right. Jazz would evolve and be the building block that created several other genres of “American music” such as rock n’ roll. Jazz ended up helping black society in America by eventually integrating whites in to the fold.
One of the white people that believed in jazz and tried to help the African-American community was Norman Granz. Norman Granz was an activist that used jazz as a platform to try and aid the black community. Granz helped several black artists make recordings of their jazz songs. With the help of Granz jazz music went from being played in nightclubs to actual theaters or concert venues. With Jazz being available at concert venues
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New entertainment helped to spread the jazz music across the United States. By the end of the 1920’s more than 12 million families had radios in their home, movie theaters started to become more popular, and jazz bands started to perform at dance
[the black musician] improvises, he creates, it comes from within” (Gerard 28). Despite Malcolm X’s criticism of the classically-trained musician’s inability to improvise, the European-influenced creole musicians began to learn to create variation within ragtime’s syncopated form. Likewise, blues musicians adopted parts of the genre of ragtime and implemented it into their call-and-response based music. The merging of these two styles of music occurred as a result of external socio-political pressure of Jim Crow segregation, but ultimately helped establish an innovative and swinging genre of jazz
James joseph brown, a name that will be remembered throughout history for lifetimes to come. To understand how he changed society throughout the world we must start from the beginning. James brown was born May 3rd, 1933 in Barnwell, SC in extreme poverty, James Brown worked his way to the top of the funk and R&B. When James was 16, he was arrested for stealing a car, there he met music producer Bobby byrd and together they changed the world. When both brown and byrd returned from prison byrd ask brown to join his R&B vocal group,”The Gospel Starlights”.
John Aglibut Mr. American Music 8 October 2016 History of Blues What is Blues? Blues is a music genre created in Southern States of the United States of America by African Americans. The rhythm of the blues form was organized into four-beats pattern and has a AAB structure.
Have you ever imagined being on the best jazz music concert, being surrounded by the best jazz musicians of the world? Have you ever seen a trompetist playing so passionately? During the crazy 1920s you are going to see the emerge of one of the greatest jazz soloist, who changed the history of jazz and African American culture. Back then jazz was just an African American music that you can dance, but Louis Armstrong transformed it making it a popular art. Jazz is a music genre that originated in the late XIX century and expanded globally in the XX century.
Blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American slaves. Without African slaves from West Africa, there would be no blues music. The immediate predecessors of blues were the Afro-American/American Negro work songs, which had their musical origins in West Africa. It is impossible to say how old the blues are but it is certainly no older than the presence of Negros in the United States. The African slaves brought their music with them to the New World.
In life, there are few things as organic as jazz music. With its raw sound and scrappy roots, one cannot help but feel life head-on whilst witnessing players produce such a sound right before their eyes. Its origins and arch are a product of the United States’ national culture and identity. Jazz exists not only as a deeply rooted form of art but as a cultural marker, particularly during its commercial peak in the first half of the 20th century. Its impact transcends borders, and it is one of the most beloved musical genres worldwide.
Jazz music has spread around the world. It has drawn on national and regional musical cultures. Jazz has been the most important social factor that black musicians were able to record the blues, gospel and more. These musicians lived through inequality and many discovered their freedom in jazz. It became African Americans freedom because jazz
Developed by African Americans, Jazz combined elements of European and West African musical traditions with African American forms of ragtime compositions, minstrel numbers, and blues songs. (Batchelor, Bob. " The Jazz Age: Music.") Jazz music featured many instruments like the saxophone, drums, pianos, trumpets, clarinets, violins, etc. Jazz helped influence dance, fashion, and culture in the 1920s.
From receiving heavy criticism due to a variety of factors to being the most popular musical genre for Canadians during the Great Depression, jazz music has been responsible for uplifting people’s spirits, shaping cities and changing the face of music. Prohibition and racial tensions in the United States attracted talent, whether immigrants were seeking employment in film or pursuing a career in jazz. The Golden Age of Radio also contributed to jazz’s success, leading jazz to be the most popular genre of the 1930s. It is often forgotten that Canada is home to some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, like Oscar Peterson. Jazz is not only an American concept, contrary to popular
The blues is the earliest genre of music to come from the United States. It started as the poor, often slaves, singing or playing music on whatever they could afford. Blues can trace its origins back to slaves and the poor of the U.S., who sang and played whatever acoustic instruments they could find. As the blues became more popular and mainstream, it began to take shape as a real genre. One of the first mainstream musicians was Charley Patton.
Jazz is most often thought to have been started in the 1920s as this explosive movement, but that is in fact not the case. Starting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many African American musicians have started to explore their taste in improvising, and where better to do that than New Orleans (Anderson). Before the 1920s these jazz musicians have already been going around sharing the unique sound, but up until then, jazz had remained majorly in New Orleans. Interestingly during this period, a common jazz band would consist of a cornet, a clarinet, a trombone, and a rhythm section when at this period of time the clarinet is not commonly associated with being a jazz instrument, it moved into being the saxophone rather. A big
Some of them included Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Jimmy Lunceford. Interestingly enough, because of the popularity of the music, African Americans were able to produce music and bring it into white society for them to listen to. These African American musicians also influenced many of the white musicians as well. White jazz musicians had taken inspiration from black jazz music for many years, but because of swing, they became even more deeply devoted to integrating this music to blacks and whites. Benny Goodman was one of these white musicians.
History of the BLUES MUSIC is full of curiosities and mysteries. Critics describe it as a soulful and emotional music. Lyrics is about the lives of African-Americans - their hardships, hopes and loves. It was created in the 19th century on Southern plantations. Slavers or descendants of slaves originated the genre.