Exploring Jazz Music's Origins and World War I's Influence

This essay examines the origins of jazz music and its profound connection to the societal shifts of the early 20th century, particularly in relation to World War I. It explores how the cultural and technological advancements of the era, such as the rise of nightclubs and the development of radio, fostered the growth of jazz. The essay analyzes the influence of the war on American and European societies, the rise of consumer culture, and the migration patterns of musicians. Furthermore, it discusses the impact of jazz on the literary world and the broader cultural landscape, including its role in the Women's Liberation Movement and the emergence of influential artists like Bessie Smith. The essay highlights how jazz became a symbol of the era, reflecting the changing values and aspirations of a generation grappling with both the horrors of war and the promise of a new, more expressive culture.

Discuss the roots of Jazz and how it reflected the concerns of the time, such as World War
1?
Throughout 1920, jazz music rose in popularity among the people of America. The Jazz
Age was one of the cultural period that took place in 1920 from which music and dance emerged.
This music expanded to the America’s white middle class as well, when the African Americans
started employing different new musical technique along with some of their traditional traditions.
At the time of Prohibition, where alcohol was more prevalent in illegal nightclubs, jazz became
one of the popular music among the people of New York and Chicago (Hammond, 2016). Jazz
has a major effect on the literary world. It is involving the Women’s Liberation Movement where
there are rebellion activities that are seen against the societal standards. It is seen that the African
Americans were being elevated mainly due to the popularity of the different music forms. There
were different radio shows and big band jazz performances as well. The female singers like
Bessie Smith also emerged during this time where there were postwar equality and the open
sexuality to pave the way mainly for the future artists (McKay, 2017). There have been
nationalistic fervor which motivated the Americans and Europeans for enlisting in the war
efforts. The technological advancements in armaments made World War I as one of the major
conflict in the human history, and then claiming the causalities on the sides. The US and Europe
also tend to stand questioning on the values and the assumptions that were made on the Western
civilization. Jazz has been becoming one of the popular music where the consumer culture
flourished, and more music lovers started attending the night club or the concerts for hearing
jazz. The poetry and the music has been considered to be compelling enough for the different
arts, where it as notices that the different people were involved in listening to the Jazz Music.
There has been considerations about how the musicians who were coming from the jazz music
tend to migrate to the different cities of US. The people were involved in handling the trends
about instantly working over the demographical changes, which included young white people.
References
Hammond, P. (2016). Black Faced, Jazz Shaped: Race and American Popular Culture 1830-
1930. Journal of Liberal Arts Thammasat University, 16(1), 24-41.
McKay, G. (2017). ‘Unsafe Things like Youth and Jazz’: Beaulieu Jazz Festivals (1956–61), and the
Origins of Pop Festival Culture in Britain 1. In Remembering Woodstock (pp. 90-110). Routledge.