The Jazz Age

(noun)

The Jazz Age was the period roughly coinciding with the 1920s (ending with the Great Depression) when jazz music and dance became popular.

Related Terms

Examples of The Jazz Age in the following topics:

  • The Jazz Age

    • The Jazz Age was a cultural period and movement that took place in America during the 1920s from which both new styles of music and dance emerged.
    • Several famous entertainment venues such as the Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club came to epitomize the Jazz Age.
    • The music of singer Bessie Smith was immensely popular during the Jazz Age and she both influenced and paved the way for generations of female artists.
    • Cab Calloway became one of the most popular musicians of the Jazz Age in the 1920s.
    • During the Jazz Age, popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes.

  • Literature

    • The loss of self and the need for self-definition is a main characteristic of the era.
    • At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in opposition to the specter of World War I.
    • As such, the period is also often referred to as the Jazz Age.
    • Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is often described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature.
    • The Harlem Renaissance was known as the "New Negro Movement," named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.

  • The Culture of the Roaring Twenties

    • Jazz music experienced a dramatic surge in popularity, and notions of modern womanhood were redefined by the flapper.
    • The first talking film, The Jazz Singer, was released in 1927, followed by the first all-color all-talking feature, On with the Show, in 1929 .
    • During the "Jazz Age," jazz and jazz-influenced dance music became widely popular.
    • Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti were the first musicians to incorporate the guitar and violin into jazz.
    • Scott Fitzgerald published some of the most enduring novels of the Jazz Age, including This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Great Gatsby.

  • The Lost Generation

    • In France, the country in which many expatriates settled after the war, they were sometimes called the Génération au Feu, the "Generation in Flames."
    • At the same time, Jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in opposition to the horrors of World War I.
    • As such, the period is also often referred to as the Jazz Age, with F.
    • Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, often described as the epitome of the Jazz Age in American literature.
    • Scott Fitgerald used to epitomize the Jazz era and the attitude of post-World War I America.

  • Popular Culture

    • With the transfer of people, music created and popularized by African Americans, including jazz, blues, and gospel, became increasingly popular in the North.
    • The 1920s (known as the "Jazz Age") witnessed the transformation of jazz from its modest African American/New Orleans origin to a global phenomenon.
    • Virtuoso soloists often led their swing big bands (thus swing was also known as "big jazz") and their popularity was enormous, also because swing music developed with corresponding swing dance.
    • The pioneer of jazz music, Louis Armstrong, continued to inspire both mass audiences and fellow musicians.
    • Evaluate how swing jazz and technology helped to shape pop-culture during the Depression Era

  • Cinema

    • The 1920s are often referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, with "Talkies" and the first all-color features replacing silent films.
    • In 1927, Warner Bros. followed that cinematic milestone with another in the form of "The Jazz Singer," the first sound feature to include limited talking sequences.
    • This release arguably launched the Golden Age of Hollywood.
    • Theatrical poster for "The Jazz Singer", the first feature film to include talking sequences, which began the era of the "Talkies."
    • American actress Louise Brooks was one of the box office stars who became famous in the 1920s at the outset of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

  • American Modernism

    • American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century.
    • Jazz was distinctly modern in sound and manner.
    • According to Lawrence Levine, "Jazz was, or seemed to be the product of a new age…raucous, discordant…accessible, spontaneous…openly an interactive, participatory music. " Players drew influences from everyday street talk in Harlem, as well as from French Impressionist paintings.
    • Modernism bridged the gap between the art and a socially diverse audience in the U.S.
    • Turning the focus away from classic portraiture and the pictorialist style, the photographers started using their pictures as means for representing the harsh realities of every day life, but at the same time tried to search for the beauty in the detail or the overall aesthetical structure.

  • Jazz and "Dorian Minor"

    • Major and minor scales are traditionally the basis for Western Music, but jazz theory also recognizes other scales, based on the medieval church modes, which are very useful for improvisation.
    • One of the most useful of these is the scale based on the dorian mode, which is often called the dorian minor, since it has a basically minor sound.
    • (So, for example, D Dorian has the same key signature as C major. ) In fact, the reason that Dorian is so useful in jazz is that it is the scale used for improvising while a ii chord is being played (for example, while a d minor chord is played in the key of C major), a chord which is very common in jazz.
    • (See Beginning Harmonic Analysis for more about how chords are classified within a key. ) The student who is interested in modal jazz will eventually become acquainted with all of the modal scales.
    • Dorian is included here only to explain the common jazz reference to the "dorian minor" and to give notice to students that the jazz approach to scales can be quite different from the traditional classical approach.

  • The Roaring Twenties

    • If freedom was the mindset of the Roaring Twenties, then Jazz was the soundtrack.
    • Following the war there was a mass migration of Jazz musicians from New Orleans to major northern cities like Chicago and New York, leading to a wider dispersal of Jazz as different styles developed in different cities.
    • Jazz and other energetic art forms also helped with the expansion of mass market entertainment such as radio and film.
    • The "Golden Age of Radio" began after World War I with the first radio news program in Detroit on August 31, 1920, followed by the appearance of the first commercial station in Pittsburgh that same year.
    • Duke Ellington led a renowned Jazz orchestra that frequently played the Cotton Club during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

  • Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy in the Gilded Age

    • During the Gilded Age, many new social movements took hold in the United States, supporting the rights of women and African-Americans.
    • During the Gilded Age, many new social movements took hold in the United States.
    • The Harlem Renaissance and the popularity of jazz music during the early part of the 20th century made many Americans more aware of black culture and more accepting of black celebrities.
    • The "Gilded Age" that was enjoyed by the topmost percentiles of American society after the recovery from the Panic of 1873 floated on the surface of the newly industrialized economy of the Second Industrial Revolution.
    • The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, employing the ironic difference between a "gilded" and a Golden Age.