The Jazz Age

The Jazz Age was a period of American history that lasted through the 1920s. As the name suggests, a defining factor of the time was the emergence and spread of jazz music and dance. It began about 1919, after the First World War, and lasted until October 1929, when the stock market crashed, plunging the country into the Great Depression.

Also known as the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age was a period of great social, economic, and cultural significance. After what was then called the Great War, Western society underwent a profound change. As a reaction to the severe hardships and brutality witnessed during the War coupled with advances in technology, merrymaking, decadence, and consumerism reached a new high.

Jazz Age Essay Examples

► The Jazz Age

The era of the Roaring Twenties, was a time of great societal change. Many of these changes were greatly influenced by jazz music. During this time, the country was coming out of World War I and the attitude of most people was dark and dismal. Dance and music clubs became tremendously popular in an effort to improve the quality of life for many people. 

► African American Influence on Society During the 1920s

African Americans struggled for years, and they finally made a comeback in the 1920’s. The African Americans during this time period had a huge influence on American society. The Great Migration had a great impact on African Americans moving to the north to find work, in the industrialized areas. 

► Rapid Changes During the Jazz Age

Conflict covered the world in the early 1900s during WWI. After four long years of fighting, treaties were signed. Following Armistice Day a new era began. New ideas and trends swept over the world after WWI in the era called the Jazz Age. During the Jazz Age, Paris became the center of the artistic movement. 

► The Impact of the Aviation Industry in the Jazz Age

The aviation industry in the 1920s took flight because of men and women like Charles Lindbergh, William Boing, Betty Coleman, William J. Powell, Richard Evelyn Byrd, and Raymond Orteig. Their efforts and risks helped shape the industry as well as the Jazz Age. 

► The Evolution of Jazz and the Jazz Age

Jazz. One of the music genres that all but demolished its competition back in the 1920s and for several decades after. It was so popular, it had its own period of time known as the “Jazz Age” in the 1920s. It was also home to some very famous artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.

Socioeconomic Conditions during the Jazz Age

A prelude to the Jazz Age was the passage of the 18th and 19th amendments to the Constitution. The former banned the manufacture, transport, and sale of liquor throughout the United States, initiating the Prohibition, while the latter granted women the right to vote. 

During the War, when men were summoned to fight at the front, women had begun to assume key roles in the workforce at home. Experiencing economic independence along with their newly acquired suffrage rights, the Jazz Age women achieved greater liberation than before, going down new avenues and creating new roles for themselves in society. 

The 18th amendment was legislated with the belief that outlawing alcohol would control and reduce a slew of social ills and health problems in the American population. However, the opposite seemed to occur, with the establishment of illegal speakeasies and similar illegal bars selling alcohol procured through smuggling operations run by organized crime gangs. The proceeds from these sales greatly increased the wealth and power of gangsters across the country. A wide range of people flocked to these clubs, among them the “Flapper” girls who became an icon of the decade. With short hair and dresses, they indulged in drinking, dancing, and smoking, flouting conservative norms for women.

Meanwhile, the post-War economy boomed, with the middle class becoming wealthier than before. The spending power of the average American greatly increased and consumerism grew to the point of decadence. Technology had advanced enough to make its products available to the public at reasonable prices and, as proof, people bought radios and automobiles and went to the cinemas in droves, making it the new national pastime. Cars, in particular, began to be viewed as status symbols even as the process of acquiring one was made easier.

Cities also experienced major growth during this time as people came to them looking for the wealth and culture they had to offer. Significantly, African Americans moved to Northern cities in an attempt to escape from the discrimination, poverty, and hardships they faced in the Jim Crow South. Their arrival swelled the workforce in these cities and also brought jazz to them. This migration also sparked the Harlem Renaissance.

► What Were The Benefits Of Flappers In The 1920s

Although the Roaring Twenties was filled with crime and radical behavior, it was an important era for women, African Americans, and society altogether. The Jazz Era contained the blossoming of American culture that helped shape the modern day.

► Fads In The 1920s Essay

When people think of the 1920s they think of the great depression. What people don’t know is that twenties were much more than the depression. The 1920s were one of America’s most prosperous eras. This era brought peace, new technology, inventions, new dances, flappers, entertainment, prohibition and much more.

Pop Culture during the Jazz Age

The culture of the Jazz Age was driven and defined by the rebellion of the young. The fashions and morality now adopted ran counter to those of the older generations, who complained and lamented this sharp change.

In spite of Prohibition, alcohol and the related air of excess, decadence, and debauchery pervaded the 1920s. Young people gathered in speakeasies to indulge, and these places became vehicles of the culture.

The migration of African Americans to US cities coincided with the development of recording technologies and the investigation of the radio. These helped establish the popularity of the jazz music that they brought with them. While jazz bands provided the primary musical entertainment at the illegal bars, the new technology also made the music accessible to those who did not frequent such places. Musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Joe “King” Oliver, and even female singers like Ella Fitzgerald attained prominence. However, an important factor that propelled jazz among the American middle classes was its adoption by white musicians.

Simultaneously, sound and music began to be included in the previously silent movies. Credits began to be included, and the public started to recognize the names of actors they liked and wanted to see again and again on the silver screen. The cult of the film and music celebrity was born.

► Louis Armstrong and His Music

“The essence of jazz- making something new out of something old, making something personal out of something shared- has no finer exemplar than Armstrong.” (Hasse par. 3) During the 1920’s a young African American man, otherwise known as Louis Armstrong, helped create and represent a new twist on popular music.

► African American History: The Harlem Renaissance

One of the most influential and powerful movements in American history was the Harlem Renaissance. It affected African American culture, and artistic expression. This was a time when many poets, writers, musicians, and artists were able to come together to create a movement that would create a new identity for African Americans to be embraced in society.

Jazz Age Art and Literature

The art and literature of the Jazz Age was born in the shadows of the horrors of the First World War, and several of the artists and writers had served as soldiers during it and returned with the scars it inflicted. Known as the Lost Generation, they produced works that captured the frenetic madness and energy of the times as juxtaposed with the destruction that preceded it. Art movements such Dada and surrealism leaned into the elements of surprise, shock, and the absurd to evoke the brokenness of war. Meanwhile, the more popular and enduring Art Deco movement was a reflection of the tastes of the time as its geometric ornamentation showed up in design, fashion, and architecture. The Chrysler Building is a prime example of the style.

F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s “The Great Gatsby” is today widely regarded as among the greatest of American novels. It is also one of the most succinct representations of Jazz Age society and its priorities: “The parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the buildings were higher, and the morals were looser.” 

The term “Lost Generation” was popularized by his contemporary Ernest Hemingway. However, it had been coined by Gertrude Stein, who was Hemingway’s mentor and sometimes rival. The group was made up of writers and artists who lived as expatriates in Paris. It included, besides Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald, Erich Maria Remarque, T.S. Eliot, and John Dos Passos. 

Most of these writers saw the materialism, consumerism, and headiness of the Jazz Age as unsustainable. In fact, Sinclair Lewis as much as predicted the coming of the Great Depression about a year earlier. 

The decade-long party that was the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt on October 24, 1929. The US economy had been witnessing a gradual downturn for about a year at that point. However, the process was vastly accelerated with the crash of the stock market beginning on the day that has since been dubbed “Black Thursday.” It continued for five days and signaled the start of the Great Depression that lasted throughout the next decade, the 1930s. This economic depression affected not only the USA, but had a far-reaching impact on the economies of most other countries, especially in Europe.

► Jazz and Literature

The Roaring Twenties was also known as the Jazz Age. A famous author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, labeled the period from 1919-1929 as the “Jazz Age” because of the immense change it brought about in culture and music in America. African Americans originally developed jazz in the lower Mississippi Delta and it was nourished in New Orleans.

► The Jazz Age Explored in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

In the past century in America, one of the decades that has stood out most as a time of change is the 1920s. In a post-war economic boom, the decade was a time of cultural and societal change. Among the parties and the more relaxed way of life, Americans experienced new wealth and luxury.

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