Jazz Age
The Roaring Twenties was alternatively known as The Jazz Age. This movement in which jazz music grew in popularity by great standards in the U.S, also influenced other parts of the world. After World War I, around 500,000 African Americans in search of better employment opportunities moved to the northern part of the United States. With them, they brought their culture and in New York, the start of the Harlem Renaissance. During this period of time, the works of African Americans in fields such as writing and music went up. Styles of music including Dixieland and blues became popular as well. Many people took an interest in music. They owned their pianos, played sheet music, and listened to records.
Many Americans felt a distrust toward foreigners and radicals because they held them responsible for the war. These beliefs led to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, a racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic group. This general distrust of liberal movements and foreigners lasted throughout the decade. Young people, disappointed by their experiences in World War I, rebelled against prewar attitudes and conventions. Women also refused to give up the independence, they had gained from the jobs the got during the war. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote, and they demanded to be recognized as equals. Women adopted a masculine look: they bobbed their hair, they were more open about sex, quit wearing corsets, and smoked and drank in public. Most Americans were brought up to at least a modest level of comfort. They worked fewer hours and were making more money, so the development of leisure activities became important. Prohibition, made by the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, attempted to get rid of alcohol. Instead of ending the use of alcohol, Prohibition prompted the growth of organized crime. The Roaring Twenties was a time of flappers, gangsters, and prosperity. Unfortunately, when the stock market crashed in October 1929, all of this came to a stop. The Depression followed which ended all the celebration.
Jazz was a mixture of Blues and marching band music and was played by African-Americans they instruments like the cornet or marching drums. they entertained by cocktail music played by a typical jazz orchestra consisting of oboes, trombones, saxophones, viols, cornets and piccolos, low and high drums. It is also marked through the use of improvisation, because most of the former gifted jazz musicians weren’t able to read music at all. Soon the white man noticed the popularity of jazz and started to play it too. Therefore the European and African music culture melted together and a new style of jazz was born. Jazz bands started the musical revolution using for the first time the saxophone. It has been known to provoke close intimate dancing and many people were shocked by the loud and extraordinary sound of the sax .That’s some older people blamed jazz to be a bad influence on the younger generation. They began to rebel and refuse to follow the moral traditions. Jazz often got connected with alcohol, intimate dancing. this age seemed to be decaying, and the United States seemed to be changing in undesirable ways . so, Sexual mores, gender roles, hair styles, and dress all changed profoundly during the 1920s.
One of the most representative literary works of the Jazz age is american writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's The great Gatsby (1925), which highlighted what some describe as the corruption of the post -WW I age, as well as the growth of individualism. His writings often portrayed people who became successful in the social and financial worlds, but did not share the same prosperity in their morals. The Great Gatsby’s most obvious reference to “The Jazz Age” revolution taking place in America . The Jazz Age is Indivisibly associated with the wealthy white “flappers” and socialites immortalized in Fitzgerald's fiction. Gatsby’s parties are typical for this time period. at the party “people were not invited , “ came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission”. The way the people dress during that time is also very interesting. Their hair is “shorn in strange new ways” and around the women’s necks are “shawls beyond the dreams of Castile”. They wear “golden and silver slippers” and the best example is Gatsby “in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie”.
Seventy-one percent of American families lived below the poverty line during the Roaring Twenties. Nevertheless, a young white elite put this pleasure principle into practice by embracing jazz. the role of women as housewives changed dramatically as we see. They were forced to work and to earn their own money which was the first step towards their independence. They started drinking alcohol, smoking and dancing a new type of dance. This perioud after the ww I , it shattered Americans' faith in reform and moral crusades, leading the younger generation to rebel against traditional taboos while their elders engaged in an orgy of consumption.
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