Jazz: The Effects on African American Society ...

Jazz:
The Effects on African American Society in the 1920s
Jerri Small
History 202-03
Professor Schaffer
April 23, 2009
Music has been around for centuries, but it was the birth of Jazz that sparked an interest in the African American community in the 1920s. Jazz as well as blues has played a big part in the Harlem Renaissance. The smooth melodies and the jazzy tunes in this era brought about negative and positive effects on the African American society. Still in the times of World War I and segregation between blacks and whites, jazz gave African Americans a sense of individuality and freedom to express themselves.
All about Jazz
Jazz itself was created by American blacks. Elements of music from the motherland of Africa joined together with the music of the whites in Europe came together to create this soulful melody.1 Back in the day, jazz was not called jazz; it was referred to as the term ragtime. Its history can be traced in the succeeding waves of music created by the black experience in America-from African songs and dance to plantation slave music, the minstrel show, ragtime, and the blues.2 The Jubilee was a traditional celebration that slaves performed for their masters on southern plantations. This celebration was to have a dominant influence upon American musical expression.3 Even though they were the ones putting on the show for their master, many slaves did not mind performing the Jubilee because it was a way to get out of endless, dreadful field work.4
Along with the Jubilee, whites created another form of entertainment called minstrel shows. White entertainers would paint their faces dark and sang in exaggerated black dialect and danced to tunes they called “plantation melodies”.5 These minstrels did not show the true life of the blacks. Whites portrayed blacks as happy and carefree but the true reason the minstrel masks were used was to remind whites of African Americans’ ostensible lack of humanity, their irresponsibility, and their willingness to embrace ill treatment.6 Minstrel shows gave a running start for how blacks got their big break in the musical realm.
In the 1920s, many famous people like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong got their time to shine in the jazz spotlight. A famous black poet, Langston Hughes, wrote an essay called “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”. Conveying his feelings about jazz in the African American community, Hughes wrote:
“We younger Negro artist who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We will build out temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we will stand on top of the ...