Cultural change

Cultural change 1920s

The Jazz Age

Change                                                      

- USA's greatest contribution to world music

- First developed black Americans in New Orleans

- 1920s: Great Migration began to northern cities such as Chicago - 850,000 (search of employment/escaping legal segregation) - took their music with them. White musicians soon playing jazz + by 1929, form of music played across USA by whites + blacks alike. Development radio aided process.

- Jazz associated with cultural revolution that encompassed singing + dancing. 

- For first time, black American, in particular female black American, singers achieved widespread popularity e.g. Bessie Smith became household name. Black muscians e.g. Louis Armstrong began recording records bought by white and black fans.

- Accompanied new dance crazes e.g. the Charleston which replaced sedate waltz popular in early part of century.

Limitations

- Growth jazz not universally popular - only popular urban areas but rural areas still attached to country music while in black American rural areas the blues remained important.

- Denounced by groups such as KKK + others who saw cultural changes e.g. flapper as bringing decline of US society 

- Leading preachers of Protestant revival such as Billy Sunday condemned jazz as the music of the devil.

The Harlem Renaissance 

Change 

- Jazz part of much wider cultural movement known as 'New ***** Movement' which encompassed black American achievement in literature, art, plays and music. 

- Singers such as Ethel Waters + dancers such as Bill Robinson performed in growing number of black American theatres + night clubs such as the Cotton Club. All-black Broadway play Shuffle Along.

- Harlem black American ghetto became important destination in migration - black American community in northern cities began to assert its unique cultural identity - important to this development was magazine The Crisis produced by NAACP which aimed to celebrate black American achievement 

- Universal ***** Improvement Association, founded + led by Marcus Garvey who believed in Pan-Africanism (black people all over world should be united in…